Ysätters-Kajsa

Also Known As: also Ysätterskajsa; “Kajsa of Ysätter”, after Ysätters-kärret, the Ysätter marsh in Asker parish, Närke
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Swedish Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: In the older Närke record she is a rådande, a ruling land-spirit of the eastern forests, who leads travellers astray and favours or punishes people as she pleases, while the later literary telling turns her into a wind-troll who raises whirlwinds, snowstorms, downpours and fog.
Role in Mythos: She is the presiding spirit of a single Swedish province, the one supernatural neighbour every Närke farmer could name.
Relation to Humans: The people who kept on good terms with her were helped on many occasions, while sharp-tongued old women, boasters and the quarrelsome had the worst of her. A hunter she liked could not miss, and a man who threatened her was struck in the mouth by a hand nobody saw.

A hunter comes through the pines of eastern Närke and stops, because someone is sitting on a stump ahead of him. A young woman in clothes far too fine for the forest is combing her hair, and the hair runs off the stump and along the moss behind her like a dropped rope. He looks at her. She is gone.

That is the oldest Ysätters-Kajsa on record, and she has almost nothing to do with the weather. Herman Hofberg took her down in 1868, in the chapter of folk legends in *Nerikes gamla minnen*, and he was precise about what she was. She was a rådande, one of the ruling spirits that Swedish belief set over a stretch of forest or water, and she kept to the wooded country of eastern Närke. Her home ground was Ysätters-kärret, a marsh in Asker parish, which is where the first half of her name comes from. The old people who told him about her said she had lived through several generations of men. Nobody offered him an origin for her, and none is recorded anywhere. She was simply already there.

What they did remember was specific. Women down at the water with their washing would look up and see her a little way off, beating laundry of her own, and hers came out whiter than theirs ever did. At night she walked people off the road, and when they were properly lost her laugh came down at them, harsh and rattling, like a magpie’s. Farmers complained about the grain she flattened by passing back and forth across their fields. She had a particular cruelty for old women with sharp tongues, and seemed to enjoy nothing more than following them and copying their walk and their snappish little gestures behind their backs.

Her favour was worth having. A hunter called Bottorpa-Lasse was so good a shot that he only had to stand in his porch and call the bird he meant to shoot, or draw the animal he wanted on a wall, and it fell when his gun went off. One night he was out with a neighbour when Kajsa came to them and looked over their guns. She picked up the neighbour’s first and said one word: “Fy!” Then she took Lasse’s, blew down the barrel, checked the priming powder and handed it back. “Bra, bra, bra, min gosse!” Good, good, good, my boy. In the morning Lasse brought home a rich bag. The neighbour never got off a single shot.

She could also protect. Hofberg’s informants said that when the bell tower at Asker burned, in the 1750s as they remembered it, the church caught as well and stood in the utmost danger, and Kajsa was seen standing on the church roof, holding the fire off. The county’s own record of the building tells a harder story. Lightning struck on 21 July 1764, and both the church and the bell tower burned. The church was rebuilt by 1768. Folk memory kept the woman on the roof, moved the fire back a decade, and quietly forgot that it went up anyway.

Crossing her was another matter. At a haymaking the workers stopped for their evening meal, and once their spirits were up a farmhand said, on the subject of Kajsa, that he would like to meet her and give her a hiding for all the trouble she had caused in the world. A fence close by gave a violent crack. An invisible hand hit him across the mouth, and his nose ran with blood. Then the butter on the workers’ bread turned to blood as well. It is the last story in Hofberg’s account of her.

Almost every English-language account describes a different creature, and the difference has an author. In 1906 Selma Lagerlöf opened chapter twenty-four of *Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige* with Ysätters-Kajsa, and she made her a vindtroll, a wind-troll, a thing Närke had that no other province could match. Lagerlöf even supplied the name: she was called Kajsa, the book says, because wind-trolls always are. Nothing in Hofberg’s record gives her any power over the weather at all. The storms are Lagerlöf’s, and every later retelling that leads with them is retelling Lagerlöf.

It is a good storm. Wind gathers over the Baltic, slips between the Södermanland hills into Närke by Hjälmaren, and races west across the plain until it hits the high wall of Kilsbergen. Thrown back, it bends south like a snake, is knocked east by Tiveden, sent north by Tylöskog toward Käglan, and comes round at Kilsbergen again, spinning tighter each time. Lagerlöf’s Kajsa is in the middle of it, dancing, her long hair up among the clouds and the train of her dress sweeping the ground as a column of dust. On calmer mornings she sits in a tall pine on a crag and watches the plain. When the winter sleighing is good she throws snowdrifts over the crowded roads. When the hay is perfect she waits until the first wagons are loaded, and then sends the rain.

The book gives her a whole calendar of small damage. The charcoal burners in Kilsbergen dared not leave a kiln unwatched, or she would blow it into open flame and ruin the burn. The ore carters from Laxå and Svartå got fog so thick that men and horses went off the road into the bog. Washing vanished off the lines, smoke was forced back down chimneys, the dean’s wife at Glanshammar lost her coffee cloth, the mayor of Örebro chased his hat across the whole market square, and the Vinön vegetable boats ran aground in Hjälmaren. Yet Lagerlöf insists there was nothing truly evil in her. She was merry and playful, hardest on the quarrelsome and the mean, and she often took honest people and poor little children under her protection. Her version of the church fire has Kajsa come rushing down through the smoke onto the roof and turn the danger away.

The two tellings agree on how it ends, and disagree on whether to believe it. Hofberg’s old people told him, with a kind of regret, that it was all over with Kajsa too, because the thunder had killed her like the others. Nothing in the record could hold her or strike back at her, and a man who tried only bled for it; it took the sky itself to finish her, and only in the telling. Lagerlöf reported the same rumour of her death and refused it. Believing it, she wrote, would be like being told that the air over the plain would stand still from now on, and the wind never dance across it again.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ysätters-Kajsa?

Ysätters-Kajsa is a spirit of Swedish folklore from the province of Närke. The earliest record, Herman Hofberg’s *Nerikes gamla minnen* of 1868, calls her a rådande, a ruling spirit of the eastern Närke forests whose home was Ysätters-kärret, a marsh in Asker parish. Her name means “Kajsa of Ysätter”.

Is Ysätters-Kajsa a wind spirit?

Ysätters-Kajsa became a wind-troll in Selma Lagerlöf’s *Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige*, published in 1906, and most modern accounts follow that version. Hofberg’s 1868 folklore record gives her no power over the weather. The whirlwinds, snowdrifts, downpours and fog all come from Lagerlöf’s chapter.

What did Ysätters-Kajsa look like?

Ysätters-Kajsa appeared as a young woman in splendid clothes with extraordinarily long hair. Hunters saw her sitting on a stump in the forest combing hair that trailed along the ground. She vanished as soon as anyone looked at her properly.

Who was Bottorpa-Lasse?

Bottorpa-Lasse was a hunter who enjoyed Ysätters-Kajsa’s favour, according to the Närke legend recorded by Hofberg. One night she inspected his gun and his neighbour’s, said “Fy!” to the neighbour’s, and blew down the barrel of Lasse’s before returning it with praise. The next morning Lasse made a rich catch while the neighbour did not fire a single shot.

Did Ysätters-Kajsa save Asker church?

According to Närke tradition, Ysätters-Kajsa was seen standing on the roof of Asker church during a fire, holding the flames back. The county heritage record dates the fire to a lightning strike on 21 July 1764 and says that both the church and its bell tower burned, with the church rebuilt by 1768.