[1] Gås-Anders got his derogatory nickname as a child when he worked as a goose herder at a mansion house in Gamla Uppsala.

As he grew up he never used the name Gås-Anders, and it was not until the 1920s that folk musicians started referring to him by that name, which was by now used as a positive epithet rather than a slur.

Rumour had it that Näcken had taught him to play, signing a contract in blood on human bones from the churchyard.

According to the stories, Gås-Anders played the polska he had learnt from Näcken on his death bed, after which all four strings on his fiddle broke and he was able to die in peace.

[2] Gås-Anders left a legacy of folk music, upwards of 150 different melodies; both tunes he himself had written and those he had learnt from other fiddlers.