Alternate Perceptions Magazine, February 2021
Little Elf Man sighting in Sweden?
Interview by Swedish journalist Clas Svahn
It was an early morning in April 2017, just after five in the morning, and Björn Kindberg was sitting alone on the edge of the porch to an old hut between Lillhärdal and Särna in the middle of Sweden. Inside the house the others lay asleep. The sun was shining and the snow was still on the ground. Ryflovallen, as the hut was called, dates back a long time and lies along what was once the pilgrimage route towards Nidaros in Trondheim. Today the house is refurbished and what was a stable many years ago no longer has any horses. This is where Björn Kindberg met something he calls "the little stable boy" when I talked to him:
– He came walking to the right of me, from a door to one of the buildings. He was 15–20 meters away from me. I could see him clearly when he showed up, says Björn Kindberg.
To see someone walking there at five o'clock in the morning was not something Björn Kindberg had expected. Neighbors were far away and the little figure did not look like anyone he had seen before. He looked like an adult but was much smaller and with strange clothes. In the end, the creature was so close that he could see details on his face:
– He was perhaps a meter tall, like a boy or little elf, wore shaggy gray calfskin clothes and a small round hood or hat. It was also gray. His face was wrinkled and old but he had no beard but was clean shaven. He was probably an old man and looked worn out, says Björn Kindberg.
The little man came from one of the buildings in the yard and then walked near the wall of one of the longer log houses where the snow was not as deep. After the little one had walked about ten meters, he stopped opposite to Björn Kindberg:
– He turned around and looked at me and said something, that may have been in a local dialect, that it was sad that there were no longer any horses in the stable and that it was converted to live in. It was no fun to be there anymore, he said.
Björn Kindberg himself became completely silent and did not come to answer. Instead, he just nodded when the little one complained that there were no more animals to take care of. Any animals had not been in the barn for perhaps fifty years.
– Maybe I should have talked to him but I was so surprised that I did not know what to do, says Björn Kindberg.
– After a while, he just disappeared. Like when you snap your fingers. Had it been an ordinary human being, he would not have been able to disappear in that way.
When the others woke up, Björn Kindberg showed them the tracks that the little one had left behind in the snow:
– They looked like they were made of wooden slippers with a lace forward. None of us who had such shoes. And it was far, far to the next farm.
Björn Kindberg was never scared but he describes what happened as "inconceivable". Admittedly, he had heard about little people from his grandmother who grew up in Röjden in Värmland, but to see something like that himself, he was not prepared for.
– When she was young at the beginning of the 20th century, a new barn had been built, but the animals were not allowed to be there in peace. Every morning when they came out, the animals stood outside. Then an old lady in the village had told them to move the barn a bit, and after that the problems would end. Once they had done so, the animals were allowed to rest in peace.
Interview by Clas Svahn
