I'm a freelance journalist. I specialize in folklore and cultural documentation, particularly in rural Scandinavian communities. That's how I ended up on Bornholm in the summer of 2008. Bornholm is this small Danish island in the Baltic Sea, about 25 miles across. Rocky coastline, dense forests in the interior, population of maybe 40,000 people. It has a long history of folklore, particularly stories about underground beings and nature spirits. The kind of place where the old beliefs still have some hold on people, you know. I'd heard through a contact that there had been unusual sightings near the Almindingen forest in the center of the island. Multiple witnesses over several months. I figured it was worth investigating for an article. I flew into Bornholm Airport and rented a car. Planned to spend just a weekend talking to locals, maybe get some good material.
The first person I interviewed was a farmer named Henrik. His property bordered the forest on the eastern side. He told me he'd seen something crossing his field around dawn one morning in late May. Small figure, maybe two feet tall. Moving fast, hunched over. He said it had strange proportions. Big head, long arms. And bright blue hair. Like electric blue. I thought maybe he'd seen a child in a costume or something. But Henrik was insistent. He'd been farming that land for thirty years. He knew what belonged there and what didn't. And this thing didn't belong. The second witness was a woman named Inger. She lived in a cottage near Øster Sømarken. She'd seen it twice. Once crossing the road in front of her car late at night, once in her garden near the compost area. Both times it was moving quickly, but she got a clear look at it. Same description. Small, maybe two or three feet tall. Troll-like features. Rough skin. And that vivid blue hair on its head and down its back.
What struck me was the consistency. Four different witnesses, all describing the same basic creature. Same size, same coloring, same behavior. All the sightings were within a three-mile radius around the forest. Then I interviewed a teenager named Mikkel. He'd seen it in broad daylight. He'd been hiking one of the trails through Almindingen when he spotted it near a stream. He watched it for maybe thirty seconds before it noticed him and ran off into the undergrowth. Mikkel was embarrassed to tell me this part, but I pressed him. He said the creature was male. Anatomically, obviously male. It was aroused. Conspicuously so. He said the thing was small, but that particular feature was disproportionately large. He kept saying he knew how it sounded, but that's what he saw. It was moving through the forest in that state. I didn't know what to make of that detail. But Mikkel wasn't joking around. He was genuinely disturbed by what he'd seen.
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