Norwegian Folk Tales E-Book

Georgiana Keable

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 253

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'I summoned my courage, took a hammock and some maps and set out to walk in the stunning landscapes of Lofoten and beyond. For years I had wondered if it would still be possible to go out and collect stories. Raw stories that had been passed on by word of mouth since before people could read.' Norway's tiny population has a vibrant storytelling tradition – myths, legends and sagas from bogs and snow-capped peaks, some lyrical, others outlandish, all united by their connection to a harsh but splendid nature. In this collection by wandering storyteller Georgiana Keable, you will find beloved classics retold for modern times, alongside stories never printed before.

Leseprobe

First published 2025

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Georgiana Keable, 2025

The right of Georgiana Keable to be identified as the Authorof this work has been asserted in accordance with theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprintedor reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented,including photocopying and recording, or in any informationstorage or retrieval system, without the permission in writingfrom the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-8370-5024-6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Great Britain

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

The History Press proudly supports

www.treesforlife.org.uk

EU Authorised Representative: Easy Access System Europe

Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia

[email protected]

Introduction

Norway has a powerful oral tradition. How can a country with such a tiny population have so many stories? Are these stories hopelessly outdated and irrelevant?

Go two hundred years back and most Norwegians lived from farming and fishing. They didn’t start building roads until around 1850, so most transport was by water along the extraordinarily long coastline, or on sledges over the snow in winter. Many people I’ve met spent their childhood summers on the family farm – small farms on rocky mountains, with short growing seasons. People describe conditions of hard work and freezing temperatures we can hardly imagine, and at the same time an extraordinary connection with the nature around them. Is that why they developed such vibrant myths, legends and fairytales? Surely the high mountains, powerful waterfalls, long fjords, endless forests and wild animals furnished and fuelled their imaginations.

One hero comes up time and again in the Norwegian fairytales. He is called Askeladden in posh Norwegian, but they say he used to be called Ashy Fart in many places. Ashy Fart has two big brothers, Per and Pål. His big brothers are handsome and successful, but he seems pretty useless and just hangs around staring into the fire. Then one day the time is right to act.

Ashy Fart listens to the birds, the old women and the tiny wild thyme plant, and they give him abundant help. He seems to have become truly creative and a great listener through staring into the fire!

Oh my goodness – the number of trolls there are in these stories! These trolls are iconic mirrors of human greed, amassing and hoarding vast treasures and human princesses in their dingy caves, far from the light. You may recognise many nasty trolls alive in the world today. Yet every single hideous troll and cruel troll-hag is foxed by the young, the true, the poor, the bright. These stories are a pattern for sustainability. They paint in vivid colours the consequences of generosity and love of the living world versus the wages of grasping avarice.

There is another way these stories feed our deeper understanding of the living world around us. It’s through our extraordinary human capacity to identify. Perhaps we can imagine being almost anything. These stories encourage our wonderful elastic ability. Like the girl in the final story who can transform into a lion, a falcon or an ant, we too find ourselves shape-shifting. With our minds we embody the desperate hen who harnesses a mouse to pull a broken saucer over the snow to rescue her beloved cockerel. We merge into the mind of the bull’s heroic journey to save Kari from being beaten and starved by the queen. In this way we identify with other people but also with the More-Than-Human beings who people our world.

I’m still very romantic about Norway but I have to acknowledge that we produce more emissions than most countries in Europe and get rich on huge amounts of oil and weapons, and that the salmon industry pollutes fjords and drives wild fish towards extinction. I believe that makes the stories from this time, when people were deeply connected to nature, more important than ever.

Norway also hosts many unique cultures, among them the indigenous people of Norway, the Sami. During the process of making this book I discovered such a wealth of oral tradition from the Sami that it deserves its own collection. However, there are several Sami stories here, as well as tales from other peoples you may not have heard of, and stories from a wide range of geographical locations. You’ll find folk tales, wonder tales, myth, epic, saga and legend.

The foremothers and forefathers of Norway spun these tales to help us navigate the world, but also for our enjoyment – and I hope you enjoy them!

About the Author

Georgiana Keable is a pioneer for the renaissance of storytelling and she likes adventures. She moved to a large deserted farm in Norway in 2020 and leads the work for biodiversity and storytelling. She has taken thousands of teenagers up the Norwegian Pilgrims way and on botanical story adventures, prompting 12-year-olds to spontaneously hug trees and learn their names. In the remote Lofoten Islands, collecting stories by day and sleeping in a hammock, every stranger had a tale of connection with nature. Georgiana taught storytelling at Oslo University college for 20 years, founded ‘Fortellerhuset’ (The Storytelling House), the Norwegian Storytelling Festival and Storytelling Radio, and received Oslo’s Artists Prize for outstanding contribution to cultural life. Her prizewinning book The Natural Storyteller was published by Hawthorn Press, who then commissioned Fairytales, Families and Forests published in 2023. Norwegian Folk Tales, published by The History Press, is her third book.

www.opsalgard.no, www.georgiana.net,

www.fortellerhuset.no www.fortellerfestivalen.no

Your Storyteller

I grew up in London, believing my town was the centre of the universe. I began to work as a storyteller at the age of 22 – we were the first full-time professional storytellers for centuries. When I told people that was my job they stared at me in disbelief, as if I’d said I worked as a full-time fairy.

Most Londoners lacked a living oral tradition, yet many school children were so thrilled to be told live stories that they spontaneously hugged me after a session. If I came back to their school a year later, they’d remember the stories in detail. Why? I believe storytelling has been part of human culture for so many millennia that it’s hard-wired into the creative part of our brains. When I tell a tale to children who have never experienced live telling before, they seem to recognise something that delights them!

Coming to Norway when I was 24 was a huge shock, like a different universe from London. Most Norwegians had experienced a living oral tradition: they had been sung to, had met a troll or at least knew someone who had seen the forest woman Huldra. I fell in love with this country and have now lived here for 26 years.

In October 2020, during Covid, I moved out of Oslo to a huge ancient farm that had been empty for 50 years. Suddenly I was collecting water from the well and living without electricity. I had moved from the city to the real Norway. Really cold, really dark but spellbinding. The place where stories live.

The Choice of Stories

Which of the thousands of stories to include in this collection? There are so many layers of myth, fairy tale, saga and legend in this country. The History Press encouraged me to include stories I myself have told, tales that have swilled about in my mind and crossed the portal of my mouth through crisp mountain air or in a stuffy classroom.

I taught storytelling at Oslo University for 20 years – a wonderful job – but sometimes I found myself asking students, ‘Why are you telling that? What’s the point? Have you chosen this story because it’s romantic or makes you look cool? Find a story that burns in you, one that must be told!’

My wish is that you will find stories in this book that are not just exotic, but that fascinate you and resonate with you. Perhaps you will even feel tempted to retell them in your own way. You’ll find some stories here that haven’t changed much over many centuries, while others have been re-envisioned for our times. I try to do what storytellers have always done. We shape the tale according to the listener, remould it to fit our minds, our times.

What are the sources of these stories? Many have come to me from other tale tellers; others have grown from written versions collected over the last 200 years. Then there are the stories collected from random strangers as I walked for seven weeks tramping up mountains and down valleys, sleeping in a hammock.

A Note on the Illustrations

When Asbjørnsen and Moe made their celebrated collection of Norwegian stories, the famous artists of the time rallied round to produce images that gave the tales new life and breath. In this collection you’ll find a range of contemporary artists from our time, plus many gems from the illustrators of Asbjørsen and Moe, notably Theodor Kittelsen.

Contents

Collecting stories in Lofoten, Vesterålen and Senja

Folk tales from South and East Norway

Seven-year-old Porridge

St Peter and the Oak Tree

The Spoilt Brat

The Seventh Father of the House

The Battle of Red Fox and Ashy Fart

The Tragedy of the Christmas Beer

Henny Penny Skips into the Mountain

The Magic Mill

Kari and the Bull of Wisdom

The Seven Foals

Sami Folk tales 87

Sea Woman - Ábifruvvá

The Bear Shapeshifter

Folk tales from North Norway 95

Regine Nordmann

Child of the Sea

The Three Trolls

The Otter

The Big Tree

Røst

The Puffin

Circle Story

Folk tales from West Norway 115

The Hen’s Mission

Meeting the Troll

Who is the Laziest?

The Guest

Legends – Stories of the Parallel Worlds 124

Huldra

Sami Huldra

A Norwegian Huldra, or Alma

Huldra Calf

Huldra the Protector

Fishing

Midsummer Night’s Music

The Holy Tree and the Spirit Mound

Hope at the Round Mound

Draugen and the Fishermen

Bjesas-Maiku of the Forest Finns

Nisse Suffer from Human Thoughtlessness

Myth, Saga and Ballad 141

Yggdrasil

The Waterfall of Pee

The Saga of King Harald the Fair-haired and Snøfrid

The Ballad of the Crow

The Road Winds Towards its End – Some Adventures of a Story Collector

The Ragged Girl Who Transformed into a Lion, a Falcon and an Ant

Sources

List of Illustrations and Artists

Collecting Stories inLofoten, Vesterålen and Senja

In 2012 I summoned my courage, took a hammock and some maps and set out to walk for seven weeks in the stunning landscapes of Lofoten, Senja and Vesterålen. Ever since I first came to Norway I had wondered if it would still be possible to go out and collect stories – raw stories that had been passed on by word of mouth since before people could read. In the 1850s the Brothers Grimm found a wealth of folk tales in Germany, starting a trend to collect all over Europe. In Norway Asbjørnsen and Moe made their iconic collection but I wondered: are there still stories out there to be found?

I was nervous. Was this just a romantic dream? But I had to try, so off I went, knocked on doors and said, ‘Hello, my name is Georgiana. I grew up in London and work as a full-time storyteller. I’m collecting stories about people and nature. Do you have a story?’

Pretty much everyone said, ‘No. Go and ask the neighbour,’ or ‘Ask in the museum or the library.’ But I had not walked far and further than far to go to a library. Everyone was happy to chat; they asked me in for a coffee and after a while the stories began to bubble up. It was often difficult to leave once they’d started. I didn’t meet a single person without a story.

In Norwegian the word for ‘fairy tale’ is ‘eventyr’, which also means ‘adventure’. This is the perfect word for what this trip was, on several levels. In the north of Norway, above the Arctic Circle, people are direct. They don’t mince words but once they trust you, they are generous hosts. I met people who as children had no running water, no road and often no school for weeks at a time. Once the boys had undergone Confirmation, they were out fishing with the men. I met a girl who’d worked from the age of four as a shepherd up in the mountains. Beside the poverty and hardship, the song of connection sang out. As the old retired fisherman Bård Børresen said to me:

We were never alone, our Lord was looking down from heaven, himself up from hell. And all around us were the beings from the Other World. We were also close to the cows, the chickens, even the fish. Our small house was so full that until I was confirmed I had to stand and eat.

He spoke of the joy he felt beside the hardship. As dusk fell, they would sit for an hour at twilight, watching the fire until the lamp was lit. This was called ‘The Blue Hour’ and that was when stories were told.

Beside all this was my own adventure as I struggled to climb the dramatic heights with my special talent for losing the path. As night neared, there was the fear of knocking on doors, and of the rain and strong north wind. But outside or inside, up hill or down dale, I was met with kindness. Some of the stories I collected are here in this book.

Folk tales from Southand East Norway

This first section is mainly a selection of stories from the iconic collection of Asbjørnsen and Moe. Some I have retold faithfully; others are retold with a more contemporary twist.

SEVEN-YEAR-OLD PORRIDGE

When I was about to get married to a Norwegian, someone warned him: ‘English women don’t know how to clean.’ Luckily neither he nor I was worried about this, but moving to Norway I was made aware time and again that I was gravely lacking in hygienic talent. However hard I tried, I could never seem to clean the floor like a Norwegian. I attribute this to two cultural phenomena: the necessity to do things thoroughly in Norway otherwise one would die in the cold winter, and the fact that going to ‘housewife school’ was a normal educational choice for women until the 1960s.

There was once a boy who wanted to marry a girl. In his house everything was spotless. ‘Everything should be as clean as if it had been boiled,’ said his mother. The boy wanted to check if his girl was as germ-conscious as his mother, for he thought this must surely be the most important quality in a wife.

But how was he going to find out whether the girl he had fallen for was clean? He pondered on this and at last found a solution. He cut a long strip of an old but very clean sheet, wrapped one hand in a bulky bandage and went off to visit his girl’s family. When he arrived, they received him in the usual way, with beer and strong drinks, with food and chat. Of course one of the first things they asked about was his hand, what in the world had happened?

Oh, he had a finger with a devilish infection in it. Water trolls it was called, he said; he had been to the doctor and the wise woman, but there was nothing that could be done.

Was there really no cure, would he die? the family asked anxiously.

‘There is just one thing they say might help,’ said the boy.

‘What, what?’

‘A poultice of seven-year-old porridge, but sadly no one has any,’ he said.

‘Phew, nothing worse than that?’ said they. ‘That’s no problem; our cooking pots and gruel troughs contain porridge that is at least seven years old, if not fourteen,’ they assured him.

Yes, very hygienic people.

ST PETER AND THE OAK TREE

One day St Peter and God were out strolling over the earth to see how things were. That day the sun was shining and sparkling on the leaves and the birds were tweeting blissfully, but St Peter was in a terrible mood. I don’t know why he was angry; maybe he had blisters on his toes or had missed breakfast.

He stomped along, past animals and trees.

At last they came to a meadow where a herd of deer sat in the shade of a large oak tree stretching its branches up towards the light. The deer disappeared in a moment. St Peter marched over to the tree and threw himself into the shade.

‘Would you like a drink?’ asked the Lord. ‘I have a bottle of milk. It’s a bit sour but it’s not bad.’

‘No!’ said St Peter irritably, and stared up at the large oak leaves.

It went quiet. St Peter lay and thought how rubbish the world was. He was hungry and thirsty and all he could see was inedible grass and stupid acorns.

At last he blurted out, ‘You made so many blunders when you created the plants! Someone should tell you. Look at this oak tree, for example. Absolutely useless, ridiculous little nuts that taste disgusting. Then you made melons, which are so much work to grow in the garden. This huge tree would be so much better if it grew melons. Why, just this one tree would have more melons than a whole farm does. How could you make such a stupid mistake?’

‘I didn’t make the oak tree for the sake of the acorns,’ answered the Lord quietly. ‘I made it for itself. But pigs think acorns are delicious and even people used to eat them. The bark is used to tan leather and the wood is used for both ships and floors. If an oak tree is left alone, it can live 1,000 years and be home to vast numbers of other species. I would say oak is a king of the forest.’

St Peter sighed deeply. ‘Well, obviously it can be handy for this and that, but why don’t you listen to what I say for once? An acorn is an acorn – you must admit that. And melons are melons, something quite different. And which is the biggest is pretty obvious. If only acorns were melons they would be a suitable fruit for a tree like this. The tree must be really ashamed of those pitiful small nuts.’

‘Hmm,’ answered the Lord and touched the tree. The oak trembled, the crown whispered, the branches sank and suddenly the tree was full of melons. Hundreds of melons – watermelons as big as car tyres and honey melons the size of footballs – hung all over the tree. St Peter gasped.

‘Was that what you had in mind?’

‘Y-y-yes!’ stammered St Peter.

‘Are you satisfied now?’

‘Am I satisfied? This is fantastic! This is the best tree I have ever seen. Just perfect!’

‘You don’t think the melons are a bit on the big side?’ asked the Lord. ‘Not at all, not at all,’ said St Peter, and jumped up to pick one.

At that moment one of the largest melons came loose and began to fall. It hit St Peter and since it was perfectly ripe, it cracked open over his head down to his shoulders. There it sat like a massive bucket stuck on his head, covering his eyes, mouth and ears. He ran around, swishing his arms here and there and banging into the tree.

At last he gave a desperate tug while kicking out like a wild horse. It looked like he was pulling off his whole head, but the melon flew off and dropped to the ground.

He spat out the melon pips and took a deep breath. ‘Get those melons down! Another one might fall and kill someone!’ He stood trembling and shivering, with melon juice running down his face. ‘Quickly, I tell you! I was wrong. It was a very bad idea.’

‘Very well,’ said God quietly and laid his hand on the trunk. ‘Let it be.’ There stood the oak tree quietly, with its green leaves and round small acorns.

Every acorn sat in its own little cup, peeping out between the twigs and glorifying the tree in its simple way.

‘How lovely,’ thought St Peter. ‘Actually, the acorns really suit the tree.’

THE SPOILT BRAT

A challenge of telling Norwegian stories today is that many seem patriarchal. In fact, for centuries here many women ran farm and family alone as husbands were absent. This was especially true along the coast when men were out fishing for months at a time or drowned as so many did each year in the treacherous seas. There are lots of stories with active heroines, but the majority stick to boys winning a princess. One way to meet this is just to gender switch as I did with this story. This tale, by the way, is popular with young audiences and is the classic recycling story.

In a valley between the steep mountains of Norway there lived a prince. The king and queen fussed over their little diddums every day. The handsome boy got piles of new toys and ice cream for breakfast. So, he grew up as a spoilt brat who was never satisfied with anything.

‘The sun is too hot! The wind is too cold! My new cape is half a centimetre too short, and my pantaloons are half a centimetre too long – you idiot!’ said the prince, no matter how carefully the royal tailor had worked.

‘Luckily it’s ages before he will rule the kingdom,’ thought the people. ‘Maybe he’ll get nicer as he grows up.’

But the day after the prince turned 18, the king collapsed out jogging and died of a heart attack. The poor queen was left with an almost grown-up son who did nothing at all except argue and moan. The queen was desperate. She told all the journalists in the kingdom that any girl who could put a stop to the prince moaning and groaning would get half the kingdom and the whole prince thrown into the bargain.

That evening the palace courtyard was full of girls and women who wanted to try. They rang the gilded bell endlessly; the queen didn’t get a moment’s peace and the prince was even more grumpy than usual. So, the queen sent out a proclamation that girls who tried without success would be tattooed with the words, ‘I failed miserably’. It wasn’t long before the whole city smelt of roasted skin.

Far off in the countryside lived a poor widow. Her three daughters thought the prince looked very cute in the pictures, and how hard could it be to stop him moaning and complaining? The two eldest girls put on their best dresses, glued on false eyelashes and argued about who should use the last bit of nail varnish. Soon they were ready to totter away on their high heels.

‘Wait for me,’ said the youngest girl.

‘There’s no way you’re going to traipse along after us making us look stupid,’ said the older girls. ‘Stay here with Mum.’ But the younger sister grabbed her old school satchel, gave her mum a hug and walked barefoot after the other two.

The two older girls marched off as fast as they could in their high heels. The younger one took her time, sniffing the delicious fresh air and the smell of spring. Suddenly she called out, ‘Girls, look what I’ve found!’ The others looked back.

‘Yuk, a disgusting dead bird! You can’t be serious. Put it down.’

‘It’s a magpie. It’s beautiful; look at the rainbow shine on its feathers,’ she said as she put the dead bird carefully into her satchel. The older girls hurried on, chattering nonstop about everything brilliant they would say to the prince.

Then they heard, ‘Look!’

The two older girls sighed. ‘What is it now?’

‘A stick!’

‘Fantastic, you found a stick in the forest! Let’s call the bank manager. That must be worth a million pounds.’

‘But this is an especially nice stick,’ replied their sister, grinning, and she put it in the bag with the magpie.

They hadn’t walked much further when they heard, ‘Hey, look what I found! This is lovely. An old plate!’

‘Stop picking up rubbish. Drop it. It’s filthy and chipped,’ said the older girls.

But the youngest sister cleaned the plate lovingly with a bit of bright green moss and put it into her bag.

The sun was climbing higher in the sky and the two older girls stomped onwards in silence, wondering how much further it could be.

The youngest sister ambled along looking to her right and her left at everything that was growing in the forest. Suddenly she cried out, ‘Looook!’

‘What is THAT?’ The younger sister held it up.

‘A truly huge pair of underpants!’

‘Put them down at once!’

‘But they are so massive. I wonder who lost them? They must have had an enormous bum,’ she said, carefully folding them into her bag.

Before long she was shouting again, ‘It’s my lucky day today!’

The two older girls looked at each other and said, ‘Give us a break!’

‘Wait, you are going to be amazed by this!’ She held up a curly ram’s horn.

‘Yuk! It’s probably full of diseases, rotten inside and stinking.’

‘It smells fine. I’m going to keep it. But hold on a minute. You’ll never believe it––’

The two older sisters shouted together, ‘WHAT IS IT NOW?’

‘Another one! It must be from the same sheep. Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said.

‘NO!’ shouted the sisters. ‘It’s old-fashioned, disgusting and stinky. Throw it away this very minute!’

‘Sorry if you’re jealous. I can share if you want,’ she said, and popped them both into her bag.

They carried on in silence. The two older girls had got blisters from their high-heeled shoes and were in a bad mood. At last the palace came into sight. They walked up the grassy hill with the younger sister trailing along behind.

‘Oho! Well I never did!’ she said.

Furious, the two older sisters glared back at her. ‘That’s it! We happen to be going into the royal palace right now. People might think we are in the same family. From now on, you are not to say a single word to us. We are going to act like we never ever saw you before. Get it?’

‘OK. I just want to say one last thing. Look at this jogging shoe! I wonder who left it here? Maybe it was the one the king used on his very last jog. In that case he had pretty worn-out old trainers. Look, there’s a hole in it.’ There was no answer. She took the shoe and put it into her old school satchel.

At the palace was a line of young ladies. At the front was a princess. A servant was fluffing up her hair with silver hairspray. Behind her a giant lady was standing and practising a speech in a booming loud voice. Then came a girl reading feverishly through a thick pile of books. Beside her was a girl in a red kung fu suit who shouted ‘HAI!’ so loudly that all the others jumped. The last one had a golden dress and a whole choir, which sang, ‘Berit is the best!’ as she pushed towards the front of the queue. The three sisters waited at the back of the queue. One after the other the girls went in. One after the next they came out again, weeping from the tattoo.

At last it was the turn of the oldest sister to be shown through the huge front door.

Inside the palace it was hot. The prince lay on the sofa, eating ice cream. ‘Oy, it’s warm in here,’ the oldest sister said.

‘It’s hotter in the fire,’ drawled the prince.

She turned and saw the crackling hot fireplace. Then she saw the tattoo needles, still steaming from the last girl, and all the clever and funny things she had planned to say flew out of her head like a flock of birds. So you can imagine it didn’t take long before she was tattooed too.

Then it was the turn of the middle sister. In she came and there was the handsome prince lying there and eating ice cream.

‘Goodness, it’s boiling in here.’

‘It’s hotter in the fire,’ said the prince in an irritated tone.

She turned and saw the fire crackling fiendishly and the tattoo needles glowing in the coals. She, too, forgot all her clever ideas and in no time was hurrying out with a mark on her skin.

Now it was the turn of the youngest sister. ‘Nice and warm in here,’ she said.

‘Not another idiotic girl – they all say the same thing. It’s hotter in the fire!’ said the prince.

‘Perfect for roasting my dead bird then,’ said the girl, and she took the magpie out of her bag. She began to pluck it so the feathers flew around the room and the prince stared at her, hardly believing his eyes.

‘Um, you can’t possibly roast a disgusting dead bird in here. You’ll burn your fingers.’

‘That was kind of you,’ she said, ‘But luckily I’ve brought this beautiful stick with me.’ She pulled out her stick, stuck it through the bird and started to barbeque it on the posh fireplace.

The prince glared at her for a moment, then said, ‘You’re not going to be allowed to borrow any of my golden plates, you know, to eat it off.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of being so cheeky, Your Majesty,’ she said, smiling. ‘But luckily I found this plate on the path. Look it’s got a nice blue picture on even though it’s a bit chipped on the edge.’ And she took the plate out of her bag to show him.

The smell of the roasting bird was getting quite delicious and the prince was getting hungry after eating ice cream all day.

‘You will be thrown out at once if you let any fat or dirt spill onto my priceless silk carpet,’ he said.

‘Not to worry. I’ll just mop it up with this,’ she said and she waved in the prince’s face the massive pair of underpants she’d found.