The Skogsrå of Folklore and Strindberg’s The Crown Bride

The Skogsra of Folklore and Strindberg’s The Crown Bride Larry E. Syndergaard Strindberg seems to have a folklore element at every turn in The Crown Bride (Kronbruden): herders’ calls and songs, the wild hunt, riddles, the castle submerged in a lake, curses, the child-haunt, horn-calls, the despairing riverman (forskarl or nack), the bridal crown itself—even a ballad-like interrogation at the beginning of the play. But the most surprising and per­ plexing folk element appears when the midwife turns her back. Suddenly we are aware that Strindberg has given us a hybrid: not just an old crone, but the fox-tailed skogsra or wood-nymph as well. This is the erotically tempting but later derisive “cour­ tesan of the forest” who, when she wears no animal tail, is foul and hollow behind,l Granted, her most general associations fit the play. The skogsra is an ominous figure in Swedish folklore,2 and the midwife -skogsra is a direct accessory in the two basic transgressions of the play: Kersti’s bearing an illegitimate child, and its death. The very reappearances of the midwife-sfcogsra help build the atmosphere of lurking evil. And her delivering the illegitimate child, her insisting on attending the wedding as payment, her helping get rid of the child, and her appearing to Kersti at the wedding support the theme of the evolution and inescapability of sin. Yet these points alone can hardly explain Strindberg’s graft­ ing of the skogsra onto the midwife. The wood-nymph of folk­ lore, after all, preys on men; in the play she pursues Kersti. And there is a visual anomaly in fusing the normally young and seductive skogsra with the older midwife. There were alterna­ tives. A midwife alone would seem to have been ominous 310 Larry E. Syndergaard 311 enough.3 Strindberg might also have chosen a witch,4 or he might have constructed a troll-midwife, the success of whose blandishments on Kersti would reflect trolls’ abilities to bewitch humans.5 Clearly, however, the skogsra figure seemed more useful—enough so to compensate for the anomalies. In this paper I will seek to sketch the way in which the skogsra is useful to the dramatist and essential to the play, and hence to suggest a possible rationale for Strindberg’s choice. I will proceed by examining the way he adapts the qualities in­ herent in the skogsra of the folklore sources available to him,6 and by analyzing his dramatic use in general of the midwifeskogsra figure. I Certain factors may have played a specific if limited role in Strindberg’s choice and use of file skogsra. For example, the raucous and wanton skogsra provides a better figurative counter­ weight to the bridal crown, an emblem of virginity, chastity, and decorum, than could witch or midwife alone. The skogsra was sometimes identified as the quarry of the wild hunt, an­ other of Strindberg’s folk motifs.7 Even one bit of the play’s auditory embellishment, the thunder in the stove into which the midwife has ducked at the wedding celebration, seems suspi­ ciously like an adaptation from legends in which thunder can strike down the heathen skogsra8—particularly when we note that the Christlike White Child issues forth immediately after­ ward in apparent symbolic victory. The problems of fusing skogsra and midwife may have seemed less formidable in view of the minor tradition of skogsra as shapeshifter who was known to appear as an old crone.9 And Strindberg may have inferred what later statistical studies show: the skogsra tradition is asso­ ciated with the old “summer-dairy culture” or “chalet culture” generally and with the region of Dalama in particular. These form, of course, the setting of the play.10 Such factors, however, are not deeply organic to the play. More important is the fact that, in contrast to the other creatures we have mentioned, only the skogsra is always finally inimical to man.11 The midwife of folklore can help as well as hurt, and trolls can often treat men fairly.12 Neither leaves as strong an impression of an actual malevolent principle at work as does the skogsra. And, this is...