'BORDER' – A MINI-REVIEW OF A MAJOR MOVIE INSPIRED BY SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY AND CRYPTOZOOLOGY

Publicity poster for Border, featuring Eva Melander as Tina (© Ali Abbasi/John Ajvide Lindqvist/META Film/Black Spark Film & TV/Karnfilm/TriArt Film – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational and review purposes only)

Last night, I watched a very strange Scandinavian fantasy movie, made in Sweden, but it was strange for all the right reasons. Entitled 'Border', it was directed by Ali Abbasi, produced by META Film/Black Spark Film & TV/Karnfilm, and released by TriArt Film in 2018. I'd wanted to see it for ages, but it only received limited cinema release here in the UK despite being an Academy Award nominee. Happily, however, I recently managed to purchase it on DVD.

Based upon an original short story entitled 'Gräns', written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote this movie version's screenplay, 'Border' tells the story of a shy Swedish customs/border guard named Tina, whose decidedly homely physical appearance belies her remarkable gift for quite literally sniffing out human emotions, enabling her to detect by olfactory means if a person is feeling guilt, shame, anxiety, or other normally concealed traits. Needless to say, this unusual talent proves very useful in identifying incoming visitors to Sweden who are smuggling contraband or worse.

Always ill at ease with other people, Tina is only truly at peace when alone in the forest, among Nature - until an equally strange and homely-looking man named Vore appears on the scene, and to whom she is instantly attracted, especially when she discovers that just like her, he bears a mysterious scar at the base of his spine, as if something has been surgically removed, something like a tail...? Those readers of this mini-review who are au fait with Scandinavian mythology and/or manbeast-related cryptozoology will no doubt have already guessed where this plot is going. Suffice it to say that Tina finally learns the shocking truth that although they are humanoid, she and Vore are not human. But more shocks are to come, especially in relation both to a very disturbing investigation that she is involved in as part of her work, and also to her origin.

See the present ShukerNature article's Postscript to read the story of this delightful 'Border'-relevant entity (© Dr Karl Shuker)

This movie at times makes for very dark, bleak, desolate, and quite merciless but also very compelling viewing, its otherworldliness holding my interest and attention at all times, although the penultimate scene, when Tina finally visits the past that had been hidden from her throughout her life, is truly heart-rending. Having read a great deal on the subject of the entities that Tina and Vore are, I have to say that I strongly suspect that this movie's makers took great liberties when it came to depicting certain aspects relating to their, shall we say, procreative anatomy and behaviour, but perhaps I am simply ill-informed here (if I am, I hope that my Scandinavian friends and colleagues will educate me accordingly!).

Ideally, 'Border' could benefit from being dubbed into English, but its English subtitles more than adequately suffice, especially as the acting prowess of its two leading stars (Eva Melander as Tina, Eero Milonoff as Vore) is of such quiet (and occasionally not so quiet) intensity that very often words are not required, their visual strength is more than sufficient to tell the audience all that it needs to know. All in all, 'Border' is quite simply unlike any movie that I have ever seen before, truly bewitching, often disturbing, and ineffably sad, a very unexpected example of humanity's inhumanity to those who are different, for whatever reason. As for anyone who hasn't seen this movie but would like to know the true nature of Tina and Vore, let's just say that those who enjoy insulting, demeaning, and arguing with others on social media provide a major clue, albeit in name only - think about it...

Finally, please click here to view a trailer for 'Border' that is currently accessible on YouTube.

Another publicity poster for Border, featuring Eva Melander as Tina and Eero Milonoff as Vore (© Ali Abbasi/John Ajvide Lindqvist/META Film/Black Spark Film & TV/Karnfilm/TriArt Film – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational and review purposes only)

POSTSCRIPT – CONTAINS 'BORDER' SPOILERS!!

If you don't want to discover what Tina and Vore were in 'Border', read no further!

About 13 years ago, I was walking round a local car boot sale at the end, while all of the sellers were packing away their unsold wares, ready to go home, when, lying amidst a forlorn pile of unsold items discarded by various sellers, and staring up at me disconsolately, was the delightful plush-furred, tufted-tailed, Scandinavian troll pictured in the two photographs included above and below by me in this present ShukerNature blog article.

I knew full well that, just like all discarded items there, his fate was to be loaded onto a lorry by one of the car boot sale's litter pickers and then tipped onto a fire and burnt. Needless to say, therefore, without further ado I picked him up, and found that he was perfectly clean and intact, but unwanted by his owner and unchosen by any of the buyers at the sale. So I duly took him back home with me. Ever since my rescuing him from his destined fiery fate, he has sat very happily upon a pile of postcards and CDs in my study, surveying his surroundings and clearly very content to be here, just as I am to have been able to save him and add him to my eclectic menagerie.

Don't you just love a happy ending!!

Rescued from a fiery fate! (© Dr Karl Shuker)

'LOFTY ABODES', BY PHILIPPA FOSTER – A REVIEW

Front cover of Lofty Abodes by Philippa Foster (Text and cover artwork © Philippa Foster)

Over the years, I have been very fortunate and privileged that a number of my cryptozoological articles and books have contained exquisite illustrations by the extremely talented artist Philippa Foster. One of her most beautiful and, indeed, spectacular artworks, featuring a pair of ethereal sky medusae, even featured on the front cover of one of my books, Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008).

Knowing of and sharing Philippa's abiding love of the countryside and all of nature's endearing, enduring works, as well as her interest in magical realms, I have wondered on more than one occasion whether one day she may venture beyond the art world and into the written word too during her depictions of these mutually fascinating subjects, and I'm delighted to say that recently she did indeed do so.

Front cover of Dr Shuker's Casebook featuring sky medusae backdrop by Philippa Foster (© Dr Karl Shuker/CFZ Press; front cover artwork © Philippa Foster)

The result is an absolutely charming story for children entitled Lofty Abodes, written and published by Philippa, which I read a while ago and thoroughly enjoyed.

Set in the Brecon Beacons of Wales, and unfurling under the watchful eyes of the Red Sandstone Guardians, it weaves a magical, enchanted tale featuring both the familiar and also various cryptozoological creatures that make their home in this famously spectacular realm in Great Britain, from lonely trolls and friendly red kites to a glow worm city, rollicking rabbits, and a tantalising assortment of teasing puzzles and riddles too.

Back cover of Lofty Abodes by Philippa Foster (Text and cover artwork © Philippa Foster)

Significantly, it also includes something that Philippa (and I) consider very important (but sadly all too rare nowadays) in books for youngsters – a happy ending. Why do children's authors seem obliged lately to include some gritty, heartless denouement to their stories? The real world is gritty and heartless enough – surely the whole point of fiction, especially children's fiction, is escapism, to flee from the hardships of existence if only for a little while by seeking the warm, comforting, uplifting solace of a story in which the world is a finer, happier place, where worries can be forgotten and dreams of a better land and life can be born, nurtured, and, who knows, possibly even retained and given substance to when their dreamers have returned to grim reality.

With Christmas rapidly approaching, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Lofty Abodes here on ShukerNature, as I am certain that it would make a delightful and much-treasured gift for children, and not just young ones but children of all ages, for anyone, in fact, who carries in their heart the joy and unadulterated love of nature and wild things that they first experienced as children. Copies can be purchased directly from Philippa via her website, and also here on Amazon's UK website when available there.

CRYPTO-PHILATELY IN THE FAROES

Iceland is not the only island nation from the far north of Europe that has lately issued a set of postage stamps with a theme bridging cryptozoology and animal mythology – as documented by me in the previous ShukerNature blog post (click here).

On 30 April 2012, the Faroes issued a set of four very distinctive stamps depicting a quartet of legendary entities endemic to their own land's ancient traditions.

Portrayed on the 6.50 króna stamp is the gryla, which occupies the traditional bogeyman role here, but is also sometimes described as a hairy ogre-like giant or man-beast. During carnival time at Shrovetide in the Faroes, children dress up in festive, imaginative costumes and visit houses to receive sweets and other treats, rather like the 'Trick or Treat' custom at Halloween elsewhere. And according to folklore, the gryla also wanders around at this time, carrying a big sack, inside which he drops any child who has breached the Lent fasting.

The mera or mare pictured on the 11 króna stamp is the original nightmare - a monster that appears at night, often adopting the guise of a beautiful woman according to Faroese belief, and sits upon a sleeping person's body, suppressing their breathing as well as disturbing their sleep, stimulating evil, frightening dreams. Worse still, if it succeeds in inserting its long skeletally-slender fingers into the sleeper's mouth and counts all of their teeth, that person will die.

Even more eerie and grotesque is the entity depicted on the 17 króna stamp, for this is the niðagrísur - the ghost of a newborn or infant child who was murdered without ever having been christened. As a result, the child returns to earth as a niðagrísur, an apparition no bigger than a ball of yarn, in search of its missing name, but it will disappear forever if it is finally given one.

Last but definitely not least is the florutroll or Faroese beach troll, featuring on the 19 króna stamp. Despite its horrifying appearance, covered in seaweed and pebbles, the florutroll serves an important, beneficial function – by scaring children away from the beach, it shields them from the danger of drowning in the sea or being swept away in the raging waves and surf.

Having seen such interesting stamps as these two series from Iceland and the Faroes, it is to be hoped that other nations will consider issuing comparable series focusing upon legendary entities from their own traditions, because they would definitely make fascinating additions not only to philately but also to the artwork and archives of zoomythology and cryptozoology.

FOR WHOM THE BELL TROLLS!

Painting of trolls by Swedish artist John Bauer (1882-1918) (Wikipedia)

Trolls are famously frightened of sunlight and the tolling of church bells, but did you know that they are also scared of thunder and sometimes transform into ball lightning? No? Well you do now, and so do I – thanks to an extremely interesting email that was kindly sent to me just a few days ago by a ShukerNature reader.

One of the delights of writing this blog has always been the receipt of additional and often very unexpected, significant information from its many readers and followers, some of whom post their thoughts and data directly here, whereas others send theirs to me privately. In this vein, after emailing me previously with valuable new data in response to my post on the night-raven (and which I duly included in full within the comments section of that post), on 8 January 2011 Swedish correspondent Håkan Lindh sent me another very informative and enlightening email, but this time on the subject of Scandinavia’s most famous folkloric entities - trolls.

If, like me, you were a child somewhere in Europe or North America during the mid-1960s, then it is very likely that your first encounter with the term ‘troll’ came via those ubiquitous toy figures originally created in 1959 by Danish fisherman and woodcutter Thomas Dam but which soon became toy sensations worldwide. Of varying size and often unclothed, but invariably topped with great shocks of silky hair, ‘troll dolls’ were created in their millions and in every conceivable combination of skin and hair colour (click here for more details). Fascinated by these weird yet strangely intriguing entities (clearly my future passion for cryptozoology was already beginning to surface!), I pestered my parents into buying me a sizeable, multicoloured array of them – and, hoarder that I am, I still have some of the smaller ones standing in line along the shelf of one of my bedroom bookcases, as well as a larger, fiery-haired biker troll! (Yes, my motorbike passion was an early developer too!)

My miniature troll dolls retained from childhood (Dr Karl Shuker)

From these Westernised toy trolls, it was just the smallest of steps for me to begin reading in British and American books of fables and folklore about more traditional, Nordic trolls – or what I had at least assumed until now were traditional Nordic trolls. Here I came across all of the classic troll stereotypes – slow-witted, hideously ugly, huge, hairy, and unclothed, living underground during the day and only emerging at night, liable to eat unwary humans if any strayed into their dark, forested domains, sometimes encountered lurking beneath bridges, and fated to turn to stone if caught above-ground by the first rays of the morning sun.

And then, in later years, along came cryptozoology, which introduced to me the exciting notion that perhaps trolls were more than just a myth. Could they instead have been inspired by misty, preserved memories from long ago of encounters between modern man’s ancestors and Neanderthal man? And could some of these latter have even survived into historical times, explaining reports of woodwose or hairy wild men allegedly spied in various of the more remote reaches of Europe? Moreover, there were even suggestions that perhaps trolls were man-beasts, comparable to the Himalayan yetis and North American bigfoot.

But how close – if indeed close at all – were any of these varied Western concepts of trolls to those prevalent in their Scandinavian homelands and traditions? Let’s just say, as you’ll now discover, that Håkan Lindh’s email to me regarding trolls was nothing if not eye-opening - revealing that the ‘real’ Nordic troll is very different indeed from what I had previously been led to believe or expect. It also contained a most interesting snippet concerning the possibility favoured by some cryptozoologists that dragons were real animals:

"I have been interested in cryptozoology for as long as I can remember, but I’m also very sceptical of the value of folklore as a source. Sure, stories may sometimes hide grains of truth, but folklore itself spins that according to its own "rules".

"The early folklorist/ethnographer Hyltén-Cavallius did a serious cryptozoological survey in the nineteenth century Sweden about dragons. His theory was that dragons really were a Scandinavian species of python, so he sent out advertisements to get in touch with witnesses. And people did contact him, but it is obvious that what they told him was of no real substance, exaggerated stories of grass-snakes and the staples from dragon-folklore mostly, so it ended in nothing. Hyltén-Cavallius sure was a pioneer, but also seen as something of an eccentric already in his own time. His theories about trolls and giants were also seen as too much.

"Besides a general knowledge of a phenomenon, I’m unsure if there are much facts to find from folklore.

"I read a few years back on the net about cryptozoologists trying to identify our trolls as some kind of bigfoot, and that is very strange indeed. Trolls are never described as giant apelike animals, they are people living in societies, wearing clothes, having laws and language etc just like humans. They are not even very monstrous to look at, troll-girls especially could even be exceptionally beautiful. However, they were magical, and "contrary" to humans. They lived under cliffs and mountains, they shunned steel, they feared thunder, were not Christian, and were cunning thieves. As shapeshifters they were most often seen as shadows, animals or "balls of string" (ball-lightning perhaps), and of course often they were invisible.

"After the industrialism arrived, illustrators of children’s books like John Bauer created the "modern" troll, but those were not the trolls people actually believed existed once.

"So there is nothing in the real folklore that connects trolls with bigfoot-type cryptids. No more than British fairies actually.

"But cryptozoology will continue to be a favourite interest of mine, just as folklore is, even if I’m sceptical about [whether] the two subjects will really meet very often."

Troll societies bound by laws and gifted with language, the wearing of clothes, exceptionally beautiful troll maidens, and the ability to change into spheres of string or lightning? It all sounds less like the grunge-associated trolls of yore that we all thought we knew, and more like the synopsis for a new slick fantasy movie franchise.

That gives me an idea! Hold on – what do you mean there’s already a series of films out there starring a giant green ogre who actually turns out to be quite a caring, sharing, loveable kind of guy?! You’ll be telling me next that there’s also a series of films out there starring modern-day vampires more concerned about romantic teenage angst than blood, and sporting a fetchingly wan pallor to match! What? Oh...

My biker troll doll (flanked by a pair of Biker Mice From Mars!) (Dr Karl Shuker)

SEEKING TROLLS ON CANNOCK CHASE

Here I am on sunny (for some of the time!) Cannock Chase

Today, on Britain's May Bank Holiday, I spent part of the afternoon (the part when it wasn't raining!) seeking trolls, as you do, on Cannock Chase - a vast expanse of woodland not far from where I live. Just in case you are wondering whether I've been spending too much time in the sun (though in rainy old Britain, opportunity would be a fine thing!), please let me explain.

Cannock Chase, a vast protected expanse of wooded and heather-carpeted countryside near Stafford in Staffordshire, England, has been for many years the scene of alleged encounters with a bizarre hairy entity variously likened by its startled eyewitnesses to a bigfoot or even a werewolf. These reports (some of which, according to one investigator, have come from such credible claimants as scout leaders on patrol, military, police, ex-police, and even a local postman) have attracted considerable interest and attention from local paranormal and cryptozoological researchers. Moreover, a wide variety of suggested identities have been proffered – from paranormal man-beasts, or crazed tramps, to huge stray dogs, or even extraterrestrial aliens.

In May 2007, moreover, a local resident (who has chosen to remain anonymous) hit the headlines in this area with a new and truly extraordinary proposal. He has soberly claimed that a tribe of primitive humanoid beings may be inhabiting the vast honeycomb of subterranean tunnels and passages beneath the surface of Cannock Chase, which was formerly a major mining area, but occasionally coming above-ground to hunt deer and other wildlife for food. And it is rare sightings of these latter-day trolls, he believes, that is responsible for the accounts of hairy bigfoot- or werewolf-type entities – as well as for an unexpectedly high number of local pets going missing here.

Sadly, I did not encounter any trolls during my own brief foray here today, but remembering from Nordic folklore their carnivorous proclivity, this is probably no bad thing!