Reimer the Ferryman’s Aerial Voyage

[A Christmas Eve tale from Scandinavian Folklore, William Craigie, 1896]

At Ottesund Ferry on Limfjord there was a ferryman whose name was Reimer. He had gone all the way to Copenhagen to get a licence to allow him to ferry over the Sound. It took him a long time to get all the arrangements in place, and it was Christmas Eve by the time he had finished with the Lords of Council. 

As he went off along the street, wishing that he was at home and very upset that he wasn’t, he met a little old man in a grey coat who called him by his name and asked, “Wouldn’t you like very much to get home this evening?” 

“Of course I would, but it’s impossible!”

“O no,” said the little man, “if in return you will do for me a service I shall shortly have need of – and for which I shall also pay you richly – you shall be home this very evening at suppertime, quite unharmed.”

 

“All very well,” said Reimer, “but first I should like to know just what sort of a service you want me to do.”

“Only this,” said the little man, “that you and your ferryman, one night, will carry cargoes for me from the south to the north side of the Sound. And for that you now have a licence, and permission.” 

 “No objection to that,” said Reimer, “but how are we to travel home? What conveyance do you have?”

“We’ll get on my horse together,” said the little man, “you shall sit behind me; the horse is only a little one but I know how to guide it.” The little horse was waiting outside one of the city gates; they both mounted – and then went through the air like a flash of lightning, without meeting anything until two hours after they had begun their journey, when Reimer heard a clink, as if two pieces of iron struck together.  “What was that?” he asked. “O, nothing except that the beast’s hind shoe touched the spire of Viborg Cathedral,” said the little man. Soon after, the horse touched down in Reimer’s own courtyard. He dismounted, and his guide and the horse disappeared in the same moment.

Glad to be home, Reimer soon forgot his promise; but one evening the little man reappeared and reminded him of it. He made haste then to get all his things ready, and his travelling companion came to him as it was growing dark. “Come now, and bring all your men!”

Reimer’s ferryboats came and went all the long night, and many heavy chests and boxes were ferried over, but they saw no people except the one man.  When all the goods had been carried across, the bergman (for so he was) took a basket, opened one of the chests, filled the basket with chinking coin, gave it to Reimer and said, “Take that for your trouble and goodwill towards one that you know not, but don’t thank me for it. I suppose you would like to know what you have ferried over tonight – there! You can see it!” and taking the cap off his own head, he put it on Reimer’s, who at once  saw the whole beach swarming with thousands of little trolls of both sexes. He pulled the cap off his head, quite terrified, and asked the old man, “And where are you going with all this?”

“North,” said the bergman. 

“Why so?” asked Reimer.

“Because Christianity is pushing further and further up from the south,” said the bergman, “but it will hardly get up to the Ice Sea in my time, so we are going there.”

Picture credit:

Troll by Theodore Kittelsen

Folklore Snippets: The River Horse

From Scandinavian Folklore, William Craigie, 1896

The River Horse

The river-horse (bäck-hästen) is very malicious, for not content with leading folk astray and then laughing at them, when he has landed them in thickets and bogs, he, being Necken himself, alters his shape now to one thing and now to another, although he commonly appears as a light-grey horse.

It is certain that the river-horse still exists, for it is no more than a few years back that a man in Fiborna district, who owned a light-grey horse, was coming home late one night and saw, as he thought, the horse standing beside Väla brook. He thought it strange that his man had not taken in Grey-coat, and proceeded to do so himself, but just as he was about to lay hold of it it went off like an arrow and laughed loudly. The man turned his coat so as not to go astray, for he knew now who the horse was.

In Kristianstad there was a well, from which all the girls took drinking water, and where a number of the boys always gathered as well.  One evening the river-horse was standing there, and the boys, thinking it was just an old horse, seated themselves on its back, one after the other, till there was a whole row of them, but the smallest one hung on by the horse’s tail.  When he saw how long it was he cried, “Oh, in Jesus’ name!” whereupon the horse threw all the others into the water.

Another version:

One evening, many years ago, some young girls from Ryslinge had been out at a farm in Skirret, to help the woman there to card her wool, and it was pretty late before they started home. They followed the path from Skirret to Ryslinge, which went through the marsh. The girls were frightened as to how they were to get over this dangerous spot, but on coming to it they found there a lean old horse, so lean that one could count its ribs.  The boldest of the girls immediately mounted on its back, and the others followed her example, for the more that mounted it, the longer grew the horse.  They then rode into the marsh, but when they had got half way over, the foremost girl looked behind her, and when she saw that they were all on one and the same horse, she was so scared that she cried out,

“Jesus Christ’s cross!

We are sitting all on one horse.”

As soon as this was said, the horse suddenly disappeared, and the girls were left standing in the middle of the bog, and had to wade to land. 

Picture credit: 

An t-Òrd, Skye:  Stranded water horse (Wikimedia Commons) Photo by Martin Gorman, who writes:

"The skeleton of a stranded sea monster lies in a garden next to the beach at Ord. A sign informs that these are the only known remains of the long-tailed water horse Hydro equus extendus. Apparently they are only sighted twice a year when they swim inshore to browse on whelks. This one was stranded on an exceptionally low tide in 1967. You can't beat a good monster story!"

Watermill Stories

I like stories about watermills. A watermill figured largely in my first two books, ‘Troll Fell’ and ‘Troll Mill’, and if you think about it, in past centuries the mill which ground your corn was about the most important building in any village after the church – and for similar reasons. The church provided your spiritual food, the mill provided your daily bread. The miller was an important man in any community. And like the church, the mill was a hub, a place where you could expect to meet your neighbours on a fairly regular basis, even the ones who lived on outlying farms.

Millers, like clergymen, were not always liked, of course. (The ones in my books certainly endear themselves to no one.) The song ‘I am a jolly miller and I live by myself’ has the refrain, ‘I care for nobody, no not I, if nobody cares for me,’ and rather suggests that millers felt themselves a little above the rest of the community. People couldn’t afford to offend the miller, whose mill with its machinery was one of the first non-cottage industries. No one wanted to go back to hand-grinding their own grain with a quern.

Machinery at Venn Mill, Oxfordshire, just up the road from me and the model for Troll Mill! © Copyright Steve Daniels and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence 

This tension between the miller – whose hands were never dirty, but on the contrary who was always powdered in white – and the labouring villagers, may help explain the number of ghost stories and horror stories set around mills and millpond – but I think one also has to take into account the fact that a working mill is an impressive place. The whole building comes alive, full of purpose:

Everything vibrated. Old dust trickled and cobwebs shook on the walls. …And the noises were so spooky: the rhythmic thumping of the water wheel like a dark heart beating, the creaking machinery, the clatter of the shoe that shook down the grain, and the sibilant mutter of the rotating millstone.

(Troll Fell)


Here are a couple of folk-tales about watermills. One from Peter Asbjørnsen’s collection of Norwegian tales, East of the Sun and West of the Moon:

There was a man who had a flour mill, close to a waterfall, and there was a mill-goblin in that mill. Every time he went to grind his corn, the goblin got hold of the tub-wheel and stopped the mill, and he couldn’t get any corn ground. The man knew very well it was the goblin who had his hand in this and one evening when he went to the mill, he took a big pot full of pitch-tar with him and put it on the fire. He turned the water on to the wheel and the mill went for a while, but then it stopped as he had expected it would. He opened the door which led out to the wheel and there stood the mill goblin in the door, gaping. His jaw was so big that it reached from the threshold up to the lintel.


“Have you ever seen such a jaw?” said the goblin.
The man ran for the pot and pitched the boiling tar into the gaping jaw and said, “Have you ever felt anything do hot?”
The goblin uttered a terrible shriek and let go the wheel. He has never been seen or heard there after that time, nor has the mill been stopped since.

Serbia's most famous vampire, Sava Savanović, was said to have lived in an old watermill, where he drank the blood of the millers: Serbian folk legends held that water mills were an invention of the devil and a gathering place for demons – a belief which seems reflected by this tale from Ireland, from Great Blasket Island off the coast of County Kerry, told in Gaelic by a woman called Gobnait and written down by Robin Flower some time in the early 1900’s. ('The Western Island', Robin Flower, Oxford 1944) It’s an extract from a much longer tale, itself a version of ‘Mother Holle’, in which a king’s daughter is sent by her jealous stepmother to perform an number of difficult tasks, and succeeds though courtesy and goodness, while her ugly stepsister fails through rudeness and selfishness. For one task she is sent to a mill to get a bag of wheat ground: ‘and nobody in the world ever came back from that mill’. She has to stay there overnight:

And it wasn’t long till a tall, black man came down the chimney to her. “Stretch out your long white legs beside my long black legs.” “I’ll do it,” she said, “if you’ll make me a golden cupboard.” He wasn’t long in making it. “Stretch out your long white legs beside my long black legs.” “I’ll do it if you’ll make me a golden dresser.” “Stretch out your long white legs beside my long black legs.” “I’ll do it if you’ll make me a golden ladder.” Yerra, he hadn’t put the last nail in the ladder when the little cock flapped his wings and crowed, and the tall, black man went through the chimney.

Of course the stepsister makes the mistake of being rude, and ‘All he did was to gulp her up in his mouth and fly out of the chimney with her.’

Was it because of the elemental power of the water, that mills were regarded with awe?  In contrast to the Serbian legends, here’s a poem attributed to the epigrammatist Antipator of Thessalonica, dated 85 BC: it celebrates the change from the wearisome female task of hand-grinding at home to the miraculous power of the water-driven millstones:

Hold back your hand from the mill, you grinding girls; even if the cockcrow heralds the dawn, sleep on. For Demeter has imposed the labours of your hands on the nymphs, who leaping down upon the topmost part of the wheel, rotate its axle; with encircling cogs it turns the hollow weight of the Nisyrian millstones. If we learn to feast toil-free on the fruits of the earth, we taste again the golden age...

Or, in an 18th century translation:

Ye Maids who toiled so faithfully at the Mill
Now cease your word and from these toils be still,
Sleep now till dawn and let the birds with glee
Sing to the ruddy morn from bush and tree
For what your hands performed so long and true
Ceres has charged the Water Nymphs to do.

Folklore Snippets - "To Catch a Nisse"

From: "Scandinavian Folklore" ed: William Craigie 1896

As every one was eager to have a nisse attached to his farm, the following plan was formerly made use of to catch one. The people went out into the wood to fell a tree. At the sound of its fall the nisses all came running as hard as they could to see how folk did with it, so they sat down beside them and talked with them about one thing and another. When the wedges were driven into the tree, it would often happen that a nisse’s little tail would fall into the cleft, and when the edge was driven out, the tail was fast and nisse was a prisoner.

Down in Bögeskov (Beech Wood) lived two poor people who, as they lay awake one night, talked of how fine it would be if a nisse would come and help them. No sooner had they said this than they heard a noise in the loft, as if someone were grinding corn. “Hallo!” said the man,“there we have him already!” “Lord Jesus, man, what’s that you say?” said the woman; but as soon as she named the Lord’s name, they heard nisse go crash out of the loft, taking the gable along with him.


Picture credit: small troll or nisse by John Bauer (d. 1918)

Folklore Snippets - The Nidagrísur

From: "Scandinavian Folklore" ed. William Craigie, 1896

The Nidagrísur is little, thick and rounded, like a little child in swaddling clothes or a big ball of yarn, and of a dark reddish-brown colour. It is said to appear where new-born illegitimate children have been killed and buried without receiving a name. It lies and rolls about before men’s feet to lead them astray from the road, and if it gets between anyone’s legs, he will not see another year. In the field of the village of Skáli on Österö stands a stone, called Loddasa-stone, and here a nidagrísur often lay before the feet of those who went that way in the dark, until once a man who was passing and was annoyed by it, grew angry and said “Loddasi there,” upon which it buried itself in the earth beside the stone, and was never seen again, for now it had got a name.

No Nidagrisurs available online, so here's a picture by John Bauer of a changeling child reared by trolls, 1913

Folklore Snippets - The Grav-so or Ghoul

THE GRAV-SO or GHOUL

From "Scandinavian Folklore" ed William Craigie

This monster is properly a treasure-watcher, and lies and broods over heaps of gold.  For the most part it has its dwelling in mounds, where a light is seen burning at by night, and it is known then that the treasure lies there.  If anyone digs for it, he may always be certain of meeting a ghoul, and that is hard to deal with.  Its back is as sharp as a knife, and it is seldom that anyone escapes from it alive.  As soon as anyone begins to dig in the mound, it comes out and says, “What are you doing there?”  The treasure hunter must answer, “I want to get a little money, and it’s that I am digging for, if you won’t be angry.”  With this the ghoul must content itself, and they make a bargain.  “If you are finished,” it says, “when I come for the third time, then all you find is yours, but if you are not finished by then, I shall spring upon you and destroy you.”

If the man has courage to make this compact, he must lose no time, for if the ghoul comes for the third time before he has finished, it runs between his legs and splits him in two with its sharp back. Old Peter Smith in Taaderup, who is now dead, had the reputation for having got his wealth in this fashion: he and another young fellow were desirous of digging for treasure, and went one night to a mound where they knew that there was a ghoul.  When they began to dig, it came up and asked what they wanted, and then fixed a certain time within which they were to be finished.  They worked now with all their might, and finally got hold of a big chest which they dragged out as fast as they could, but before they had got quite clear of the mound - Peter Smith still had one of his legs in the hole - the ghoul came for the third time and managed to rub itself against Peter’s legs.  Although it only touched him slightly, he had got enough for all his life, for however wealthy he was, his legs were always so feeble he could neither stand nor walk.  

 

 

 

Picture credit:

 

Troll or ghoul by  Ernst Koie (1872 - 1960)

Folklore Snippets - “Light High, Light Low.”

This is the first of an occasional series of 'Folklore Snippets' - little tales which pleased me and I hope will please you.  In honour of the Nis, the good-hearted but hot-tempered and unpredictable little house spirit in my 'troll trilogy' West of the Moon, here is a traditional Danish tale about one.

"Light High, Light Low"

From "Scandinavian Folklore" ed. William Craigie 1896

In Tylstrup lies a farm which has a nisse on it. Two ploughmen served there, one of whom was very fond of the nisse, while the other found his greatest delight in annoying him. Once he took away his porridge from him. “You’ll pay for that,” said the nisse, and when the man woke next morning he found that the nisse had placed a harrow over the ridge of the barn, and then laid him upon the sharp spikes.

“You’ll pay for that yet,” thought the man. Some time passed and the other man asked the nisse to sew something for him. It was a bright moonlit night, so the nisse took needle and thread, seated himself on top of the haystack and began to sew. Just as he was hard at work, there came a shadow over the moon, at which the little fellow became impatient and cried. ‘Light! Light high!” The man who teased him, however, was standing down below with a flail in his hand, and when he heard the shout he brought this over the nisse’s legs. Nisse thought it was Our Lord who had thus punished him for his imperious shout, and said very humbly, “Light high, light low, light just as you please, Lord!”

Picture credit: wikipedia: A tomte/nisse by Carta Marina,1539