Bergtagen

In all Scandinavian languages there is a word which literally means 'taken to the mountain', now often used in the sense 'bewitched' (bergtagen). An English equivalent is ”taken by the fairies”.

In old days it was common belief that when a person had disappeared, he/she had been taken by the trolls/giants/elves and were now kept prisoner in the mountain/hill. Until the beginning of the 17th century Swedish church records even mentioned this as a reason for people disappearing or people who had temporarily lost their memory and did not remember a certain period in their past.