THE TROLL FOREST, Sweden
Introduction
Andrew Kobos
In South-Western Scania (Skåne) in Sweden, about twenty kilometres east of the city of Lund, passed Dalby, near Södra Sandby there is a small but most unusual forest called Trollskogen, The Troll Forest.
In the Scandinavian mythology the trolls were frenzied creatures featured in many sagas. Giant or more frequently goblins, grotesque and ugly, trolls lived deep in the mountains, in caves amid their treasures. They were very strong, hostile and malicious to people whom they robbed and caused great damages to.
Trollskogen's most striking trait is a relatively large number of fairly tall trees whose stems and main boughs are unusually twisted. These trees, called here trollboks, and are one of the sub-species of beech-tree, named vresbok (spiral beech). These spirally twisted vresboks grow among tall and slender "straight" beech-trees and the less numerous oak trees. Another peculiarity is that Trollskogen, or more properly its lower zone with the trollboks spreads only over a very limited area: a belt of land approximately 500 m in width and 2,000 m in length. Beyond this belt, the trees, mainly beech, have their stems and boughs straight again. Literally across the Smedjehusvägen, the road along which Trollskogen spreads, the trollboks are not found and there is no indication thay have been cleared off there. Reportedly, trollboks grew in Trollskogen (particularly near Smedjehus – the forge) in the Danish times, when Scania belonged to Denmark, i.e. at the latest in the early 17th century or before.
I found no scientific explanation as to why the vresbok (trollbok) has such a bizarre shape. A quantitative theory claims that it has developed and genetically fixed its twirled and arched shape for, when growing, it had to pierce through high and dense thicket of hawthorn and blackthorn bush. Another reason for such a mutation could have been a peculiar chemical composition of the soil or even a very special microclimate. For one reason or another the vresbok grows up in such a spirally twisted manner. Also, it is not known why vresbok appears in Trollskogen exclusively over such a limited area. There are similar small enclaves of vresbok at several other locations in Sweden, further to the North.
At present, it would certainly be possible to read the genetic code in vresbok's DNA, but I am not aware of any such study having been done in Sweden.
Trollboks, as frequently other weird trees, are the subject
of legends and supernatural tales. On Trollskogen they say that one night
the trolls had arrived here and in frenzy they twirled these trees for fun or
folly. And why only in such a small area? Oh, that's quite simple! Simply they
quickly got tired and went back somewhere into the mountains of the North...
