{"id":1456,"date":"2023-10-28T19:04:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T19:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/?p=1456"},"modified":"2025-11-06T19:35:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:35:00","slug":"den-trollete-smorkatten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/den-trollete-smorkatten\/","title":{"rendered":"The trollish butter cat"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the old days, people believed that the butter cat, which the Sami called \u00absmierg\u00e0htu\u00bb and the Kvens called \u00abpara\u00bb, stole sour cream and milk from people's cows. It also ensured that the cream did not turn into butter when it was churned. The butter cat was made and revitalised by sorceresses.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Oddgeir Johansen, originally published on maloalo.no<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trollkatt, also called sm\u00f8rkatt, sm\u00f8rhare, skratt, tusse, pukhare, was a creature in folklore that was in the service of sorceresses or witches. In Sami, the creature was called smierg\u00e1httu, while the Kvens called it para. The troll cat's most important task was to provide its mistress with milk from other people's cows. It sucked up the milk and spat it out when it got home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What it consisted of<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

On the website of the Varanger Sami Museum, we can read that in Finland they used to make butter cats. Many different kinds of materials were used. A ball of wool was used for the head, a hand stone for the back, a sheep's stomach for the belly, a bird's wing bones for the feet and eagle wings for the wings. A butter cat was only made on a weekend Thursday while the priest was in the pulpit, and was not finished until the third weekend Thursday. It was only made in the sauna. When it was finished, it was brought to life with these words: \u00abStay, stay, butter cat! Half I give of my life, half I give of my longevity, and half I also give of my bell cow. Just believe me and do everything I ask!\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milk and sour cream<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Buttercat then asks: \u00abWhat should I wear?\u00bb<\/em> Those who owned the butter cow usually always asked it to carry both milk and sour cream. A pit was then made under the bell cow's belly and a floor laid over the pit and finally a small hole in the floor. Every time they milked, they would pour some of the milk into the pit, because the butter cat was there every time the cow was milked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The butter cat walked through seven parishes every day, petting the cows. Once its belly was full, it returned to its owner, went to the milking parlour and spewed all the milk into a vat. Once it had emptied its stomach, it went on its way again. It also ate sour cream from people's cores, and every time it was churned at home it spewed the sour cream it had stolen into its mistress's core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dangerous for the owner<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Those who had a butter cat were always in fear of death, because if someone got hold of the butter cat and killed it, the person who made it also died. And whatever evil happened to the cat, its mistress also had to suffer. No one dared to make a butter cat except those who knew how to read the words used for it. This is how it is written in \u00abLappish fairy tales and legends\u00bb, (Qvigstad 1927)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere, it was said that the butter cat, or troll cat, was a cat-like creature that people believed witches and wizards could create from rags and similar material. The term sm\u00f8rkatt is native to Northern Norway. In the old days, dolls were made from rags. Sometimes witches could conjure life into these dolls. They then set the doll to attract things they could use, and skilful dolls could attract from seven parishes. These were the drag dolls, as they were called.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not just in the north<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Some people thought there were two kinds of buttercups. One looked like an old fell, and the other looked like a nut. And when the witches made the buttercups, they drained some of the blood off the little finger<\/em>. The butter cat had a heart like the head of a pin and if you shot it, you had to hit the heart or it wouldn't die. If you wanted to see who had buttercats, you had to burn seven types of wood. And if the butter cat was killed, the person who made it was also killed. According to tradition, Sokndal was home to a sorceress who had a butter cat. The cat rolled like a black ball and helped the witch to perform her spells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eilert Sundt wrote \u00abOn domestic life in Norway\u00ab (1873): \u00abFrom Hedemarken the folk belief is thus reported that the sorceress makes the so-called \u00bbtroldkat\u00ab, elsewhere also called \u00bbtroldkj\u00e6rringkat\u00ab, \u00bbsm\u00f8rkat\u00ab or \u00bbtuss\u00bb, in addition to Friday nails, hair of other people's cattle, etc., also of hair-tugn, kvist-tugn and fadeklud\".<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Known in many places<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Eldar Heide writes in his 2006 PhD thesis at the University of Bergen that the most common folk belief in the Nordic countries and in Finland and Estonia was that those skilled in sorcery stole milk with a creature that was specialised for the task. It consisted of yarn or similar and was called sm\u00f8rkatt or trollkatt in Norway, bj\u00e4ra (bj\u00e4ru, bara etc.) in Sweden and snakkur or tilberi in Iceland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 In the Scandinavian peninsula north of south-west Sweden, the thieves' milker normally looks like a skein. In Iceland, it was made from the side bone of a corpse, with yarn or wool around it. Similar types are found in V\u00e4rmland, J\u00e4mtland and Finnmark. In northern Norway and Finland, this thief milker could be partly or wholly a hand stone with yarn on it.<\/em>, writes Einar Heide in his doctoral thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traces in the escape hatch<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

My mother Ester Marie Johansen from B\u00f8rselv (1930-2007) told me that, according to folklore, the butter cat ruined the cream for people so that no butter was produced when it was churned. The butter cat was invisible, but the old people used to say that you could see traces of it in \u00abfiilipunkki\u00bb, i.e. in a special wooden container where you made cream. The traces in the charcoal showed that there had been a butter cat there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finnish folklore researcher Samui Paulaharju, who visited the Kvenish settlements in Finnmark and Troms several times, said that one of his sources referred to the butter cat as a bird. You could see the drift of this bird on the ground in the form of a mushroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Associated with mushrooms<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Another source from B\u00f8rselv told us a few years ago that a certain type of white mushroom was called \u00abparanpaska\u00bb (butter cat shit). This mushroom was the size of an egg, but flatter. According to this source, when the butter cat had been out and about, you had to churn extra hard to get butter out of the cream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A third source from B\u00f8rselv also described the fungus called \u00abparanpaska\u00bb. She said that the butter cat ate cream. She went on to say that the cream didn't turn into butter in a thunderstorm, and that the milk became strange. She probably thought that it was the weather and not the butter cat that was the cause. This source also says that the butter cat was invisible, except that you could see traces of it in the \u00abparanpaska\u00bb in the field. According to her, the \u00abparanpaska\u00bb was 5-6 cm in size, roughly the size of a hen's egg and not evenly round.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the old days, people believed that the butter cat, which the Sami called \u00absmierg\u00e0htu\u00bb and the Kvens called \u00abpara\u00bb, stole sour cream and milk from people's cows.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fortellinger-sagn-og-myter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1458,"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions\/1458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nordligefolk.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}