Rumpelstiltskin and the power of names

 by Inbali Iserles



In the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, a mill owner boasts to the king of his daughter’s talent for spinning straw into gold. Presumably he utters this fib in a moment of reckless abandon, consumed with ambition and the desire to please. Why the king believes him is another question. Avarice and hubris rub shoulders thickly. So the mill owner’s daughter – beautiful, naturally, but quite lacking such talents, is set to work amid bales of straw. She must spin it into gold by morning, or perish at the king’s command. Men do not emerge well from this tale.

Yet the despairing maiden is visited by an odd little fellow. A dwarfish caliban without much to endear him, he nevertheless possesses the skill she lacks and he agrees to spin the straw into gold in exchange for her necklace. By morning, the man has gone, the room is full of gold, and the maiden is overjoyed. But the king is not satisfied: he wants more.

So the maiden is placed in a room, this time larger and with many more bales. Again she must spin them into gold, on pain of death. The little man returns to save the day, but creepily so – this is no prince on horseback, not the sort of character with whom you wish to do deals. But a deal must be struck, and the maiden offers him her ring. When the man has gone, and the room is full of gold, the king is overjoyed. But still he wants more.

Once last time the maiden is placed in a room, this time vast, with towering bales. As she wallows there, alone in her despair, the little man returns. This time she has nothing to offer him. He asks for her firstborn and the maiden agrees – thoughts of children are far from her mind. All turns out well, then, for a while. The delighted king offers his hand in marriage (the girl is of low birth but she is attractive, and she has made him rich beyond imagining). It is only later, long after the wedding festivities have concluded, that the young queen gives birth to her first child. And the little man returns to claim what is his.

Desperately the queen offers him the fortune of the kingdom, but the man will not be appeased – he longs for something living, not for the trappings of human wealth. Stirred with pity at the queen’s tears, he agrees that the she may keep the child provided that she can guess his name within three days.

The queen tries every name she knows but all to no avail. She despatches messengers across the kingdom to hunt down unusual variations. Only on the third day, moments before the little man is due to appear, a messenger returns with a peculiar tale: on the very outskirts of the kingdom, he saw someone dancing a jig around a bonfire and singing of his unusual name: Rumpelstiltskin. The jubilant queen repels the little man by uttering his name. The man stamps his foot in fury, so hard that it sinks deep within the earth. Stamping his other foot, he rips himself apart. And that is the end of Rumpelstiltskin.

Here is a story where the greedy succeed, the victim is unsympathetic (was it wise of the maiden to promise her first born?) and the villain curiously wretched. What is the message of Rumpelstiltskin if not that cheaters are winners? After all, the little man had fulfilled his side of the bargain. Couldn’t it be that he was merely seeking that human affection that was denied him in his solitary life? He is odious, of course, but tragic too. I know that my interpretation of the story is a controversial one. I was always inclined to identify with the bad guy.

What struck me most on first hearing this fairytale as a child was the power of a name. Rumpelstiltskin’s name was ultimately his undoing. As the bearer of an unusual name: my bête noir, my curse, my identity – I could empathise.

In most cultures names have symbolic meaning. They are not just labels by which we distinguish ourselves but avatars that hold a deep message, whether about our origins (Moses, in Hebrew “Moshe”, meaning “plucked out of water”), our intention for the name-bearer (Linda – “beautiful” in Spanish, Aslan – “lion” in Turkish) or a homage we pay to a deity or a saint for protecting the name-bearer.

Modern fantasy reveals a fascination with names. In The Lord of the Rings, there are names in many tongues, and ancient words hold in them the power of revelation. Most characters have multiple monikers. The shift in a hobbit-like creature to a wasted, tormented obsessive is characterised through a change of name from Smeagle to Gollum. The handsome hero of the epic is known, among other things, as Aragorn, son of Arathorn, the Dúnadan, Longshanks, Wingfoot and Strider.

Names may be dangerous and, in the world of books, their expression alone can be folly. Characters in the early Harry Potters are urged not to speak the name Voldemort, due to its perceived power, and in the later books dare not do so because of a trace placed on its utterance (Harry’s foolishness in breaking the taboo almost costs him and his friends their lives). In a world of spells, where language is gateway to untold power, a presence can be called upon by a name alone.

Invocation of this kind does not appear in Rumpelstiltskin, but another theme familiar to fantasy does. If someone knows your name – your true name – they can defeat or even rule over you. Take, for instance, the Earthsea series by Ursula K Le Guin. As the Master Namer explains: “A mage can control only what is near him, what he can name exactly and wholly.” A name, then, is the very essence of a thing. It is not simply a useful appellation by which is it known – it is the actual knowledge. Symbolically, Rumplestiskin’s name is his sacred identity. Revealing it cleaves him to his very core, taking his identity away from him.

It is probably imprudent to stray into the realm of souls, a thing’s essence, or whatever we may call it, and yet I suspect that the longing to communicate this is at the heart of creativity: the desire to be understood. If the wicked would seek to enslave us by possession of our true names, could that knowledge, shared with those we love, dismantle the barriers between human minds? Where could such insights take us, should we seek to do good? How else might poor Rumpelstiltskin have responded, had his name been invoked with love?

Inbali Iserles was born in Israel, but came to London with her family at the age of three when her father took up a post at London University. When she was eleven the family spent a year in Tucson, Arizona – she claims to have arrived a tomboy and departed well-groomed and tidy! – before returning to England, where she eventually studied at the Universities of Sussex and Cambridge before becoming a lawyer. She lives in Islington, London, with four degus - exotic rodents rescued from the RSPCA. 

 

Inbali has been an animal-lover all her life. And from childhood she has loved to write. Aged eight, she wrote a poem called ‘Rich Cat/Poor Cat’, which won a prize (I’m not allowed to reproduce it here!) – but it would take years of secret scribbling before she revisited feline themes in her first book, ‘The Tygrine Cat’ and its sequel, 'The Tygrine Cat on the Run'.

In her spare time she's a committed globetrotter, a passion that has taken her to the depths of the Amazon Rainforest and the bubbling geysers of Iceland.  In addition to her two books about the Tygrine Cat, she has written another children’s book called ‘The Bloodstone Bird’.

Picture credits: Rumpelstiltskin, Walter Crane
Rumpelstilskin, artist unknown
Rumpelstiltskin, Arthur Rackham

Fairytale Reflections (18) Inbali Iserles

Inbali Iserles has been an animal-lover all her life. And from childhood she has loved to write. Aged eight, she wrote a poem called ‘Rich Cat/Poor Cat’, which won a prize (I’m not allowed to reproduce it here!) – but it would take years of secret scribbling before she revisited feline themes in her first book, ‘The Tygrine Cat’.  The sequel, 'The Tygrine Cat on the Run', has just been published by Walker.


One of the nice things about this Fairytale series is the wide variety of writers and books I get to talk about before the fairytale post itself. The fantasy/fairytale tradition is so flexible, so very much wider than the stereotype (of medieval-style, magic-filled alternative world). One variety which I don’t think has yet been represented in these posts is the ‘animal’ fantasy. There are numerous examples, ranging from what C.S Lewis called ‘dressed-up’ animals (Beatrix Potter, Brian Jacques) to romantic idylls of humans and animals living together (Kipling’s Jungle Books, Selma Lagerlof’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils) to semi-naturalistic (Watership Down): the point of it all is – I suspect – to fulfil the age-old yearning to be one with the animals – to understand what they ‘say’. 

Konrad Lorenz, in his classic book about the language of animals, ‘King Solomon’s Ring’ (1950) refers to the ancient legend that wise King Solomon possessed a magical ring which gave him power to talk to the beasts. He continues that he has every reason to credit Solomon’s powers: “I can do it myself, and without the aid of magic, black or otherwise.” Further on:

The mysterious apparatus for transmitting and receiving the sign stimuli which convey moods is age-old, far older than mankind itself. In our own case, it has doubtless degenerated as our word-language developed. Man has no need of minute intention-displaying movements to announce his momentary mood: he can say it in words. But jackdaws and dogs are obliged to ‘read in each others’ eyes’ what they are about to do in the next moment. For this reason, in higher and social animals, the transmitting as well as the receiving apparatus of ‘mood-convection’ is much better developed and more highly specialised than in us humans.

Inbali tells me she got the idea for her book ‘The Tygrine Cat’ as she ‘distracted a peevish infant with an encyclopaedia of cat breeds.’ She began to imagine a rivalry between ancient feline tribes. But, unlike Brian Jacques’ fantasies, these were not to be ‘dressed-up’ animals. Her cats are cats. They live in the modern, human world. They behave and react to one another as cats naturally do. However, they can ‘speak’ to one another, and – as owners of cats sometimes suspect! – lead rich, adventurous lives under the very noses of oblivious mankind.

Mati is ‘the Tygrine Cat’, exiled princeling of a cat kingdom far away, stranded on our shores and left to fend for himself among the feral and stray cats of ‘Cressida Lock’, a vividly imagined city marketplace. Inbali has a wonderful sense of place, and Cressida Lock and the desert kingdom from which Mati comes are presented from a low-down, cats’ eye viewpoint, tactile and full of smells and noises. Moreover, the cats have their own mythology, or spirit world. It’s called Fiåney, and is the home of powerful cat spirits and forces for both good and evil. ‘The Tygrine Cat’ and its recently published sequel ‘The Tygrine Cat on the Run’ is the story of how Mati ‘comes of age’, learns to trust himself and his friends, and reclaims his lost kingdom.

In this passage, Mati enters the spirit world:

A dim light filtered through the open door of the chamber from the overhead grille. Twilight. Mati settled back in the warm chamber and closed his eyes. He waited for sleep to reclaim him. A breeze drifted through the catacombs, nudging the door to and fro. Heat rose from the base of his paws. Fiåney was calling. His whiskers trembled, than relaxed. His head felt light, his body weightless. Floating into the dream-wake, the air became a rich, indigo blue. He sensed three passages unfurling before him, tugging at him at once in different directions. He started towards the middle passage with fluid steps… Dimly, at the end, he saw a sandy hilltop with a small mound of rocks. Beyond it the sky was crimson. Mati started to approach… [then] from the passage to his left, a voice called his name – the beautiful sonorous voice of a queen.

Here's an animated Youtube trailer (created by Sarah Sellars, a talented 16 year old fan!) for The Tygrine Cat


Part of the pleasure of the books comes from Inbali’s sharp observation of cat behaviour, the ‘mysterious apparatus for transmitting and receiving sign stimuli’ of Lozentz’s remarks. As I’ve already said, her cats really are cats. Here’s a moment when Pangur, leader of the Cressida Lock cats, considers Mati’s warning of danger:


Pangur sat in silent thought for a moment, studying the catling. His ears were pointed forward and he seemed relaxed. Only the twitchy beats of his tail betrayed his worries.

A page later, he addresses a meeting of the cats:

“Mati’s senses are not like others. He can commune with spirits – spirits from Fiåney.” This was news to no one at Cressida Lock. Still, the cats mewed and whispered as though in surprise. Several looked at Mati, whose ears were pressed flat against his head as his tail clung to his flank. He hated the attention.

Of course – cats hate being looked at by other cats…

Inbali was born in Israel, but came to London with her family at the age of three when her father took up a post at London University. When she was eleven the family spent a year in Tucson, Arizona – she claims to have arrived a tomboy and departed well-groomed and tidy! – before returning to England, where she eventually studied at the Universities of Sussex and Cambridge before becoming a lawyer. She lives in Islington, London, with four degus - exotic rodents rescued from the RSPCA. In her spare time she's a committed globetrotter, a passion that has taken her to the depths of the Amazon Rainforest and the bubbling geysers of Iceland.  In addition to her two books about the Tygrine Cat, she has written another children’s book called ‘The Bloodstone Bird’.

Besides Solomon's legendary ability to talk to the animals, the Bible has other stories.  There's Balaam's ass, miraculously given the power to speak to its owner and deliver some good advice.  And there's the archetypal myth of Adam, who names the animals as a sign of mastery over them. So it's very appropriate, I think, that Inbali, who loves animals and writes about them so well, has chosen to talk about the power of names and naming, in the fairytale -

RUMPLESTILTSKIN

In the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, a mill owner boasts to the king of his daughter’s talent for spinning straw into gold. Presumably he utters this fib in a moment of reckless abandon, consumed with ambition and the desire to please. Why the king believes him is another question. Avarice and hubris rub shoulders thickly. So the mill owner’s daughter – beautiful, naturally, but quite lacking such talents, is set to work amid bales of straw. She must spin it into gold by morning, or perish at the king’s command. Men do not emerge well from this tale.

Yet the despairing maiden is visited by an odd little fellow. A dwarfish caliban without much to endear him, he nevertheless possesses the skill she lacks and he agrees to spin the straw into gold in exchange for her necklace. By morning, the man has gone, the room is full of gold, and the maiden is overjoyed. But the king is not satisfied: he wants more.

So the maiden is placed in a room, this time larger and with many more bales. Again she must spin them into gold, on pain of death. The little man returns to save the day, but creepily so – this is no prince on horseback, not the sort of character with whom you wish to do deals. But a deal must be struck, and the maiden offers him her ring. When the man has gone, and the room is full of gold, the king is overjoyed. But still he wants more.

Once last time the maiden is placed in a room, this time vast, with towering bales. As she wallows there, alone in her despair, the little man returns. This time she has nothing to offer him. He asks for her firstborn and the maiden agrees – thoughts of children are far from her mind. All turns out well, then, for a while. The delighted king offers his hand in marriage (the girl is of low birth but she is attractive, and she has made him rich beyond imagining). It is only later, long after the wedding festivities have concluded, that the young queen gives birth to her first child. And the little man returns to claim what is his.

Desperately the queen offers him the fortune of the kingdom, but the man will not be appeased – he longs for something living, not for the trappings of human wealth. Stirred with pity at the queen’s tears, he agrees that the she may keep the child provided that she can guess his name within three days.

The queen tries every name she knows but all to no avail. She despatches messengers across the kingdom to hunt down unusual variations. Only on the third day, moments before the little man is due to appear, a messenger returns with a peculiar tale: on the very outskirts of the kingdom, he saw someone dancing a jig around a bonfire and singing of his unusual name: Rumpelstiltskin. The jubilant queen repels the little man by uttering his name. The man stamps his foot in fury, so hard that it sinks deep within the earth. Stamping his other foot, he rips himself apart. And that is the end of Rumpelstiltskin.

Here is a story where the greedy succeed, the victim is unsympathetic (was it wise of the maiden to promise her first born?) and the villain curiously wretched. What is the message of Rumpelstiltskin if not that cheaters are winners? After all, the little man had fulfilled his side of the bargain. Couldn’t it be that he was merely seeking that human affection that was denied him in his solitary life? He is odious, of course, but tragic too. I know that my interpretation of the story is a controversial one. I was always inclined to identify with the bad guy.

What struck me most on first hearing this fairytale as a child was the power of a name. Rumpelstiltskin’s name was ultimately his undoing. As the bearer of an unusual name: my bête noir, my curse, my identity – I could empathise.

In most cultures names have symbolic meaning. They are not just labels by which we distinguish ourselves but avatars that hold a deep message, whether about our origins (Moses, in Hebrew “Moshe”, meaning “plucked out of water”), our intention for the name-bearer (Linda – “beautiful” in Spanish, Aslan – “lion” in Turkish) or a homage we pay to a deity or a saint for protecting the name-bearer.

Modern fantasy reveals a fascination with names. In The Lord of the Rings, there are names in many tongues, and ancient words hold in them the power of revelation. Most characters have multiple monikers. The shift in a hobbit-like creature to a wasted, tormented obsessive is characterised through a change of name from Smeagle to Gollum. The handsome hero of the epic is known, among other things, as Aragorn, son of Arathorn, the Dúnadan, Longshanks, Wingfoot and Strider.

Names may be dangerous and, in the world of books, their expression alone can be folly. Characters in the early Harry Potters are urged not to speak the name Voldemort, due to its perceived power, and in the later books dare not do so because of a trace placed on its utterance (Harry’s foolishness in breaking the taboo almost costs him and his friends their lives). In a world of spells, where language is gateway to untold power, a presence can be called upon by a name alone.

Invocation of this kind does not appear in Rumpelstiltskin, but another theme familiar to fantasy does. If someone knows your name – your true name – they can defeat or even rule over you. Take, for instance, the Earthsea series by Ursula K Le Guin. As the Master Namer explains: “A mage can control only what is near him, what he can name exactly and wholly.” A name, then, is the very essence of a thing. It is not simply a useful appellation by which is it known – it is the actual knowledge. Symbolically, Rumplestiskin’s name is his sacred identity. Revealing it cleaves him to his very core, taking his identity away from him.

It is probably imprudent to stray into the realm of souls, a thing’s essence, or whatever we may call it, and yet I suspect that the longing to communicate this is at the heart of creativity: the desire to be understood. If the wicked would seek to enslave us by possession of our true names, could that knowledge, shared with those we love, dismantle the barriers between human minds? Where could such insights take us, should we seek to do good? How else might poor Rumpelstiltskin have responded, had his name been invoked with love?

Sailing with the Vikings

In about 1030 AD, the people of Roskilde Fjord in Denmark deliberately sank five old ships to block two of the three navigable channels leading into the fjord. This meant the only remaining entrance could easily be controlled, and any ship wishing to come down the fjord to Roskilde town would be spotted, challenged, and perhaps charged a toll for use of the harbour and the chance to trade.  Handy for the townsfolk then – and handy now: for those five scuttled ships have been rediscovered, raised and preserved, and are now a major tourist attraction as well as offering invaluable insights into Viking ship construction.  As an amazing bonus, while digging the foundations for the new Viking Ships Museum  they discovered not one, but nine more Viking ships buried in the silt.  One of them is the very longest longship ever found – over 36 metres!

Replicas of those first five ships, the ‘Skuldelev ships’, have now been built, and it was on some of these – five years ago this month – we were about to sail.

Arriving at Roskilde on a hot sunny June evening, we walked down through the town, past the great cathedral where no less than 28 of the Kings of Denmark lie buried, across the slanting cobbled square, and downhill under cool trees to the broad fjord.

The sun was low, but it wouldn’t set properly till eleven o’clock or later.  The western sky was full of colours, reflected in the fjord: stripes of tangerine, purple and blue.  And there they were, outlined against the sky: the tall masts and upcurved prows and sterns of four Viking ships, tethered to the jetty.  We walked past staring at them greedily: the two longships, Helge Ask and Sea Stallion of Glendalough; the fishing vessel, Kraka Fyr, the cargo ship, Roar Ege.  And then we saw a square sail, black against the sunset.  Another Viking vessel sailing towards Roskilde harbour, just as it would have done over a thousand years ago…and two swans swam across its path, like little Viking ships themselves, proud prows uplifted.

I was there because I was in the middle of writing the third and final book of a series of historical fantasies about the Viking era, and in this book, ‘Troll Blood’, my characters would sail across the Atlantic to the shores of ‘Vinland’ – the far-distant northeast coast of America – just as Leif the Lucky, son of Eirik the Red, did over a thousand years ago.  

And, no matter how much research you do in libraries, no matter how many books you read, there’s nothing to beat hands-on personal experience.  I’d found out that the Viking Ship Museum here at Roskilde ran a week-long sailing course in which I could learn a great deal about how to handle those great square-rigged sails, and all sorts of general things about how it really felt to be on the sea in a Viking age ship. 

Well, I learned a lot.  Here are some of my scribbled notes:

The sail towers over the boat – how big it is! – seems to cut off the sky and a large part of the horizon. 

The chuckle and truckle of water running along the sides and under the bottom boards.  Jellyfish pass by the end of my oar – ghostly circles in the dark water, frilled, pulsating.

It’s really hard work on the sheets when we change the tack, wrestling in these yards of struggling, flapping sail – the ropes are harsh and soft at the same time, dark horsehair, softish but prickly to the hand.  We yank and yank again, and the rope comes in through the hole in the gunwale, soaking wet, scattering spray like a dog shaking its coat. 

The boat heels, but nothing like so far as a modern yacht.  To change tack, the opposite lower leading corner of the sail changes and is fastened close to the bow to the ‘tack stick’.

Søren tells how his grandfather thought nothing of sailing thirty miles up and down the fjord to market, or of wheeling a barrow of live fish to Copenhagen and returning in a day

I learned how the mast could be taken down (unstepped) in a couple of minutes by flipping up the ‘shroud nails’; how a longship on a raid might cross the sea in three days rowing continuously: if one bench at a time rested, little speed was lost, so the resting period would ‘roll’ down the ship in a relay for the rowers to relax, drink, and answer calls of nature in turn.  And I learned that the round shields (so often depicted in overlapping rows along the ships’ sides) would only be hung out in an actual battle, ‘to cower behind’, said our skipper Søren, with a laugh.  ‘You can’t sail or row,’ he added, ‘with the shields in the way.’

Of course, most of the technical stuff never made it into the book; but I came away with confidence to write more truly, more realistically, about my characters’ voyage – even though they were headed out into the wild Atlantic, and I’d been sailing and rowing only in the fjord.  Who says research is dull?  We were there over midsummer.  On St John’s Eve, we camped in a hayfield with the boats on the shore below, ate barbecued fresh salmon, and watched the bonfires being lit along the fjord, and later the fireworks competing with a full, yellow moon.  

One of the things I liked best about being on our ship was the feeling of camaraderie amongst the crew, and the way, when things got lazy and the wind was blowing, those of us not needed to handle sails could lie back, relax, and tell stories, jokes and tall tales.  You realise how those Viking sailors must have done just the same thing.  

Thorstein, leaning back on the benches, says shyly, ‘So do you want to know about trolls?  We have lots of stories in Iceland about trolls.’

I say I’d love to hear, so he begins. ‘There was once a farmer’s wife, a lazy woman who would not weave the wool her husband provided.  One day a huge, ugly woman came to the farm, and offered to card, spin and weave it for her – but on condition that the farmer’s wife should guess her name, and if she didn’t guess right, she would have to go away with the troll (for this is what the ugly woman was) and serve her.

So the farmer’s wife agreed.  She thought it wouldn’t be hard to guess the troll woman’s name.  The troll woman sat down and carded and spun all the wool, and wove it into good cloth as fast as lightning.  The farmer’s wife was very happy – but not so happy when she tried to guess the troll’s name.  She tried this name and that, and they were all wrong.

‘Very well,’ said the great ugly troll woman, ‘I shall come back tomorrow, and if you can’t guess my name then, you shall come and serve me.’

The farmer’s wife was very frightened and began to cry and wail because she didn’t want to have to go with the troll.  And that evening the farmer came home…  ‘A funny thing happened to me today, wife.  I was passing a hill and saw a cave, all lighted up.  And inside, a huge troll woman was dancing and singing, “Tomorrow I shall have a new servant to do all the work for me.  She’ll never guess my name is Gilitrutt!”’

I tell Thorstein we have the same story in England, called ‘Tom Tit Tot’ (‘Rumpelstiltskin’ in Germany, and I think there’s a similar North of England story called Dame Habbitrot).  He adds with a smile, ‘But my mother’s father, who told me this story, used to say, ‘You know, probably the tall ugly troll woman was really the farmer himself – in disguise – to teach his wife a lesson…’