Verses 2–5 are in the troll's voice, promising gifts of twelve steeds, twelve mills, a gilded sword and a silken shirt, respectively; verse 6 is in the man's voice, rejecting the proposal, calling the troll "of the tribe of the neck and the devil" (af Neckens och djävulens stämma, while in the Näshulta he declines because he swore not to marry a heathen).
5050) in the classification of Christansen (1958);[4] the same theme was notably adapted by Hans Christian Andersen in The Little Mermaid (Den Lille Havfrue, 1837), influenced by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's Undine of 1811, and ultimately based on the theory by Paracelsus that there are certain nature spirits who lack a soul and are therefore "willing to surrender their carefee lives to marry a mortal, experience human suffering, and thereby win spiritual immortality".
The sexes are reversed in the German ballad Es freit ein wilder Wassermann, recorded 1813 in Joachimsthal, Brandenburg, where a male water spirit woos a young woman.
The song in the 1877 version has become popular in the Neofolk, Folk rock or Neo-Medieval musical genres since the late 1990s, following its inclusion in the album Guds spelemän by Garmarna in 1996.
Later performances include In Extremo, Verehrt und angespien (1999), Haggard, Eppur Si Muove (2004), Heimataerde, Dark Dance (2009), Midnattsol, The Aftermath (2018), SKÁLD, Huldufólk (2023), among others.