Rolf Lidberg

The trolls Lidberg painted were not the grim creatures of older Scandinavian folklore but small, recognizable beings absorbed in the same preoccupations as the people around them, gathering mushrooms and berries, fishing, watching the sky. The Indalsälven provided the setting for many of his watercolors, and those images carried an implicit argument: the river valley as Lidberg knew it was being transformed by hydropower development. The Bergeforsen plant had flooded his home village in the 1950s, and Lidberg's pictures of troll life by the old river became a form of documentation as well as art. He was active in conservation efforts throughout his life, including a campaign that successfully protected the Ljungan river to preserve its wild salmon.

Botany sat at the center of his intellectual life. He founded Sundsvall's mycological society in 1970 and traveled widely across Europe to study and paint vegetation, spending extended periods in Sicily. There, in the mountains near Geraci Siculo, he discovered an orchid species previously unrecorded in the region, which was subsequently registered under his name at the Botanical Garden of Palermo. Geraci Siculo awarded him honorary citizenship in recognition of his contribution. Swedish national television marked his dual identity as artist and naturalist with a three-part series in the early 1980s titled "En man och hans blommor" (A Man and His Flowers). Svenska Dagbladet named him Årets Naturkämpe, Nature Hero of the Year, for his environmental work.

Lidberg's physical appearance, a pronounced hump and a full beard, lent itself to a standing joke he readily embraced: that he resembled his own subjects. He titled one troll watercolor "Självporträtt." His designs were licensed to RBA Olofström, which produced hand-painted ceramic figurines and postcards that circulated widely across Scandinavia and found their way into collector markets internationally.

His published books number more than twenty, including Trollboken (1984), A Troll Wedding (1992), The Elf Book (1995), The Troll Valley (2001), and Trollfisket (2001), as well as a memoir, Mitt liv som troll. He died on 15 February 2005 in Sweden, having spent the last years of his life near his birthplace in Järkvissle.

At Nordic auction houses, Lidberg appears regularly in mixed-category sales spanning watercolors, ceramics, prints, and RBA figurines. Stadsauktion Sundsvall, located close to his home region, has handled the largest share of his lots. Watercolors consistently outperform the secondary market for his ceramic pieces; the watercolor "Barnens brevlåda" sold for 4,299 SEK, while troll figurine groups have achieved between 2,600 and 2,700 EUR at international auction. Prices remain steady rather than speculative, sustained by a loyal collector base.