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Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960), which won the 1961 Academy-Award for Best Foreign Language Film, takes place in medieval Sweden and tells the story of a prosperous Christian named Töre (Max von Sydow), who takes vengeance on the two men who raped and murdered his daughter, Karin (Birgitta Pettersson).

While this foreign classic may seem like your typical tale of revenge, the screenplay by novelist Ulla Isaksson is actually based on the 13th-century Swedish balled, “Töres döttrar i Wänge”, or, “Per Tyrsson’s daughters in Vänge”, which was still being sung in the early 19th-century, when historians Erik Gustaf and Arvid August were collecting songs for their three-volume 800 page work, entitled “Ancient Swedish Folksongs”, published in 1814 and 1816.

Like The Virgin Spring, “Per Tyrsson’s daughters in Vänge” explains the local legend of how the 12th-century church of Kärna, which is near Malmslätt in Östergötland, Sweden, was built. In the folksong, there are a total of three daughters that are slain by what are referred to as “highwaymen,” while in Bergman’s adaptation there is only one. However, Karin travels with a pregnant servant named Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom), who is jealous of Karin’s innocence and secretly worships the Norse deity Odin. But, ultimately in both renditions the father kills the two men responsible for the heinous crime, becomes guilt ridden, and vows to build a church on the very spot that his daughter(s) died.

In both versions the herders travel with a younger third party member who is left deeply disturbed by the actions of his older counterparts. In the folksong, the young boy reveals that the men who were killed were actually his brothers, and it is later discovered that all three are actually the disowned sons of the father who decided to take justice into his own hands. Thus, Pehr Tyresson, as the father is referred to in the balled, ironically kills his own sons, who had previously killed their own sisters.