Sweden Myths and Legends

A kind of re-post in video form of old posts from my blog

Sweden, wolves and Dogmen

By some immensely fortunate fluke Dogmen seem to be, at least as of right now, non-existent in Sweden.
Or are they?
Quite regularly I do search for a bunch of terms in Swedish. Upright wolf, wolf on two legs, strange creature in the woods etc. So far I have found nothing online indicating that Dogmen are in Sweden right now.
However, while searching for wolf attacks on sheep to see if I could find any discrepancies that might point me in a particular direction I did come across a peculiar case, which I will soon discuss.

After having been as good as extinct in Sweden in the 1960’s, the current 415 wolves in Sweden seem to mainly hang around the Värmland, Västmanland, Södermanland, Uppland and Dalecarlia areas, as seen on the map on the left. Naturally, many of the attacks on sheep happen in this area.
Strangely though,there has been quite an increase in later years of wolf attacks around the Scania area, in the Southernmost part of Sweden.

Location of Scania

Of course, wolves can wander far, still, it seems somewhat strange that little Scania alone is subjected to 30% of all wolf attacks on sheep.
There is a possibility though that some of the Scania attacks are actually by dogs.

Another strange coincidence is that Scania is the only Swedish province where Werewolves have allegedly been sighted in the 20th century.

Books, photos and a general update

Happy spring to everyone!
I hope you are all well?
I’m so pleased the dark, heavy winter has finally lifted here in Sweden. I’ve been immersing myself in nature every chance I get lately which has been wonderful!
Though, on my last outing I was quite spooked by the sudden appearance of a sinister-looking tree root. At least I hope it’s just a tree root…
Had I not been in the middle of the woods with no one knowing my whereabouts I might have checked it out a bit more but as it was I just took a few photos and turned back.
I know I will need to return one day to have some clarity but I will NOT do it alone.

Book recommendation

I’ve just finished reading a very interesting book by a Swedish author.
The book is called Stallo and is written by Stefan Spjut and it’s been translated to a few other languages. The English version seems to be called The Shapeshifters. Those of you who are unfamiliar with the term Stallo might now understand why this book was very interesting to me…

Lake Monster coming up for air again

Statue of Storsjöodjuret in Östersund by Lake Storsjön

Sweden’s most famous lake monster, “Storsie” or Storsjöodjuret, has been making headlines again. This time the legendary beast said to dwell beneath the waves of Lake Storsjön may have been caught on video by a group of people out to watch the sunset.
Storsjöodjuret seems to pop up every now and then, to the bewilderment of eyewitnesses and patronizing amusement of others.

In 2009 the below photos were taken by eyewitnesses of the alleged beast.

 

In 2011 this photo was taken:

In 2013 a witness saw something yellowy-beige slithering through the water like a snake:

So, what do we think? Is there anything in the lake and if so, what?

The only Swedish Bigfoot footage?

Greetings blogizens!

After my long winter hiatus during which I have done nothing of value whatsoever (which was lovely by the way), I’m now back in the cryptic world of cryptids and the like.
I have been catching up on my Phantoms and Monsters newsletters (love, love, LOVE!) and I have already found a few things I’m going to have to write about here.
That will however have to wait in favor of what landed in my lap yesterday…

The troll situation in Sweden

Sweden is the country with the worst cryptozoological climate I have found so far. We are Sweden, rational, scientific Sweden with the Nobel Prize and all that. How dare you assume there could be creatures out there not known by The Holy Science?!
Yet in the olden days, folklore and folk beliefs were extremely rife here. Just imagine the good old days when the legacy of Odin was law .
The Northland part of Sweden was the last to be integrated and converted to Christianity. The Asatru lived on up here for much longer and we fiercely resisted being forcefully converted. We may have chased an apostle sent from Bremen in Germany and stoned him to death after he destroyed some of our heathen altars and knocked over a few stones of blood sacrifice. This happened in 1060. We may also have done the same with a tax collector from Sweden proper in 1317 for daring to consider us a part of Sweden they could squeeze extra income from.
Eventually we were incorporated into Sweden proper but I think many of us in Northland still feel that the heathen savage is still in our genes, even though he’s suppressed by a thin layer of civilization.

Something odd maybe?

I saw a peculiar thing in the sky on Thursday night. It wasn’t dark, it’s midsummer in Sweden so it just never gets particularly dark, but you could see the moon against the blue summer night sky and under it I saw an object moving across the sky. It looked to be sort of cylindrical in shape and seemed to be lit as much as the moon was. It wasn’t dimmer or brighter than the moon, and looked to be the same white color. It moved from right to left, eastward, at about the same speed as a satellite and after watching it for 30 seconds or so it disappeared behind some clouds. It must have been flying at an altitude higher than the clouds then, and the sky was pretty clear and the clouds were light cirrus, which tend to be pretty high up if I remember correctly. I don’t remember ever having seen planes flying at above the clouds altitudes, but I suppose it might have been a plane, though it looked too big to be a plane at that altitude.
I tried to illustrate it on a photo. The moon was slightly fuller than the one in the photo but the sky and the color of the moon looks about right. The weird lines on the left side are supposed to be the clouds, although they had a slight reddish-brown tint due to the low sun.

 

 

Edit June 22 22.06:
Just checked the possibility of the object being the ISS but it has had no passes visible in Sweden during this period.

The fuzzy blue, but color changing, blob muppet and other charming bedtime stories

The fuzzy

In case there was anyone left thinking I started out just a normal girl and might have picked up a quirk or two through the journey of life, let me now relieve you of such illusions and tell you about what happened in my earliest childhood.

So… Swedish Bigfoot after all?

Like I’ve said, I’m nothing if not persistent.
Weeks ago I read comments in an old thread on a Swedish forum making references to some Bigfoot-sightings in Sweden in the 80’s. Generally speaking, Bigfoots have not been a particularly common part of our local fauna, which I wrote about here: Why are there no Bigfoot in Sweden.
Well, finding out more hasn’t been too easy.  Some days I’d sit and google for up to 8-10 hours, finding all sorts of interesting side tracks, but not a damn thing on Swedish Bigfoots. But last night, at long last, I managed to stumble over another thread in that forum where someone was nice enough to also post a working link.
Of course one must end up on an American website to find out what happened around the corner in the 80’s! Gah! But finally I found someone posting the following (without a working link to the source of course, but it’s pretty much the same story as has been published here: http://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.se/2009/05/snomannen-scandinavian-bigfoot.html). Ignore the occasional bad English, I didn’t write it. Except for the commentaries in red.

Why are there “no” Bigfoots in Sweden?

The taiga belt. The coniferous forests stretching all around the planet, right between the arctic regions and the temperate zones. The largest biome on the planet, making up 29% of the world’s forest cover.

The taiga belt

Preferred habitat of Bigfoot and its ilk.
All around the world the taiga seems to be teeming with Bigfoot/ Sasquatch. Even the arctic and temperate zones get theirs in the forms of the Yeti of the Himalayas, the Almas of the Kaukasus and Pamir mountains. Heck, even tropical and subtropic areas have their own big hairy hominids! The Yowie of Australia, The Orang Pendek of Malaysia, the Skunkape of Florida and the southern States of America, The Mogollon monster of Arizona.
The list goes on.
Sweden, however, remains Bigfoot-less.
Why? And is it really?
To answer that question one needs to delve deep into the psyche of the Swede.