Bysen

Accounts present Bysen as a local forest spirit of Gotland and as a liminal figure bound up with property boundaries. Some sources liken Bysen to the Norwegian Deildegast: deceased people who cheated others by moving boundary markers and are condemned after death to walk the faulty border, moving the sticks while mumbling. Thus variants treat Bysen either as a nature-associated, gnome-like woodland being or as a punished human soul whose restless existence is tied to a crime involving land markers.

Descriptions vary: Bysen is often called gnome-like and is said to appear as either a tree stump or an insignificant, little, grey man. He is reported to carry an axe and is sometimes described as wearing a red woven cap.

Bysen is credited with mischief and interference in the forest economy: he attracts people and causes them to become lost, meddles with foresters by delaying transports and tipping loads of timber over, and is broadly 'accused of all sorts of mischief.' If Bysen 'catches sight of you where you are in the forest,' he is said to enchant your vision so that you cannot find him again. In boundary-related variants, condemned Bysen walk borders moving markers while mumbling 'This is right, this is wrong.' One account associates him with long-term forestry work, carrying an axe and cutting down Gotland's forest slowly (sometimes described as one tree per century).