Bergsrå

Within Scandinavian folk tradition the bergsrå is not usually presented as a singular creator or primordial being but as the localized 'rå' (a genii loci-type spirit) of a particular mountain. As such the bergsrå functions as the mountain's proprietor or potentate — an autonomous supernatural personage whose life and authority are bound to that place. Scholarly treatments that place the bergsrå among the family of nature-spirits (see also Mannhardt's comparative work on forest spirits) and the English glosses recorded in modern summaries present the bergsrå as the mountain's own supervising spirit, sometimes paralleled in popular usage with labels like 'mountain troll' or 'mountain king' but most precisely identified in the native term rå (sources: Wikipedia: "Bergsrå"; Mannhardt archive listing).

Source accounts indicate the bergsrå may be either masculine or feminine and is often described as living in the mountain with a court of relatives and sometimes accompanied by trolls; beyond sex variability and the presence of a retinue the supplied materials do not give a single fixed physical description. Ethnographic and folkloric summaries thus portray the bergsrå less as a narrowly fixed bodily type and more as an individualized, place-bound personage with household and attendants inside the mountain (sources: Wikipedia: "The bergsrå could be either masculine or feminine. It lived in the mountain with a court of relatives and sometimes surrounded by trolls.").

The primary behaviours attributed to the bergsrå in the supplied sources are proprietorship of a mountain domain, operation of a household or court within the mountain, and the power to entice or trick humans into the mountain interior — a phenomenon known in Swedish folklore as bergtagning ('being taken into the mountain'). Historical accounts incorporated into tradition record intimate encounters between humans and bergsrå (for example the 1691 courtroom account of Sven Andersson claiming sexual intercourse with a female bergsrå), and summaries indicate bergtagnings frequently involve lone individuals with victims often described as women (sources: Wikipedia: bergtagnings; trial reference to Sven Andersson 1691). Mannhardt's comparative survey places such figures among forest- and nature-spirits whose activities reflect anthropomorphized relations to specific natural features (source: Mannhardt archive listing).