Harald Finehair and the Jøtun Dovri

Here is a story about the (possibly legendary) Norwegian King Harald Fairhair or Finehair, pictured above as a youth with his father Halfdan the Black, King of Vestfold, in an illustration from the Icelandic Flateyjarbók.  The story tells of Harald's relationship with a troll, or jøtun (interchangeable concepts, but a jøtun is always a giant) who gave his name to the mountain range called the Dovrefjell. If Harald actually existed, he is said in the Heimskringla to have become king at the age of 10 after his father’s death in 860, and was clearly a character to whom tall stories became attached: this one is from  Flateyjarbók and deals with an episode of his brief childhood. Really, it’s a fairy tale... The translation is by William Craigie in his book ‘Scandinavian Folk-Lore’, 1896.

 

 

While King Halfdan sat in peace at home in the Uplands, it befell that much treasure and valuable things disappeared from his treasury, and no one knew who was to blame. The King was greatly troubled, for he thought that this would not be the only visit of the thief. He then had things so arranged – with cunning devices and powerful spells – that whatever man entered to take the treasure would have to stay there till someone came to him. He guessed that the one who did the mischief would be both big and strong, so he ordered men to make ponderous fetters of the hardest steel, and twisted leaden bands.

            One early morning when they came to the treasury, they found there a huge troll, tall and stout. They fell on him in a body and put the fetters on him, but he was exceedingly strong; sixty-four men were needed before he could be secured with the fetters. Then they bound his hands firmly behind his back with the leaden bonds, and after than he became quieter. King Halfdan asked him his name; he said he was called Dofri, and lived in the fell that is named after him.

            The King asked whether he had stolen his gold; he admitted it and asked pardon, promising to repay it three-fold, but the King said he would never pardon him; he should stay there bound until the Thing could be summoned, and there he should be condemned to a shameful death. He said too that he would give him no food, and whoever did so should lose his life. Then the King went home, and Dovri remained in his bonds.

            Soon after this, Halfdan’s son Harald came home, and learned all these tidings, and what his father had said. He was then five years old. Going to where Dovri was sitting with a grim and gloomy look, Harald spoke to him and said, ‘Hard stead are you: will you accept your life from me?’ ‘I am not sure,’ said Dovri, ‘whether, after what your father said, I ought to bring you into so great danger.’ ‘What does that concern you?’ said Harald, and with that he drew his short sword, which was of the best steel, and cut the fetters and leaden bands off Dofri – who, as soon as he was freed, thanked Harald for giving him his life, and took himself off at once: he took no long time to tie his shoes, laid his tail on his back, and set off so that neither wind nor smoke of him was seen.

            When Halfdan discovered this, he was so angry that he drove Harald away, saying he could go and look for help from the troll Dovri. Harald wandered about for four days in the woods, and on the fifth, as he stood in a clearing, worn out with hunger and thirst, he saw a huge fellow coming along in whom he thought he knew the troll Dovri.

 

             ‘

          ‘You are in no good plight either, prince, as things are now,’ said Dovri, ‘and all this, one may say, you have fallen into on my account: will you go with me to my home?’          

           Harald agreed, and the jøtun, taking him up in his arms, carried him swiftly along till he came to a large cave. In entering, he stooped rather less than he intended and struck the boy’s head so hard on the rock that he was at once made unconscious. Dovri thought it would be a terrible accident if he had killed the boy, and was so deeply grieved that he sat down and cried over him. As he sat shaking his head and pulling wry faces Harald recovered, looked up at him and saw his mouth distorted, his cheeks swollen and the whites of his eyes turned up: - ‘It is a true saying, foster-father,’ said he, ‘that “few are fair that greet [cry]”, for now you seem to me very ugly. Be merry, for I am not hurt.’

            Dovri fostered Harald for five years, and loved him so much that he could oppose him in nothing. Dovri taught him much, both of learning and of feats of skill, and Harald increased greatly both in size and strength. There he stayed until the death of his father Halfdan, when Dovri sent him to succeed him as king. ‘I charge you,’ said he, ‘never to cut your hair or nails until you are sole king over Norway. I shall be present to assist you in all your battles, and that will be of service to you, for I shall do all the more harm in that I shall not easily be seen. Farewell now, and may everything turn out for your glory and good fortune, no less than if you had stayed with me.’

The Heimskringla lists Harald’s victories – over ‘Ringerik, Heddemark, Gudbrandsdal’ and other regions of Norway, on his way to becoming the first king over all of Norway, but it doesn’t mention Dovri the jøtun. It tells a different tale: Harald sets his heart on a young woman called Gyda, daughter of King Erik of Hordaland, but she sends him word that she will not take for husband a king with such a small kingdom as his to rule over:

Gyda spoke to the messengers and bade them bear her words to King Harald, that she would only become his wife when he had first for her sake laid under himself all Norway, and ruled over the kingdom as freely as King Erik of Sweden or King Gorm in Denmark, ‘for then for the first time,’ she said, ‘it seems to me that he can be called the king of a people.’

Inspired by her answer, Harald swore that as ‘the god that made me and rules all things shall be my witness, never shall my hair be cut or combed till I have possessed myself of all Norway – or else die.’ It took him ten years and he married a number of other women in the interim, but he succeeded and according to the tale, married ‘the great-minded maid’ Gyda too. After ‘subduing the whole country’, the story goes:

King Harald was feasting in Möre with Ragnvald the Jarl … there King Harald took a bath, and had his hair combed; and then Ragnvald the Bard cut off the hair, which had been uncut and uncombed for ten years. Hitherto he had been called Harald Tanglehair, but now Ragnvald gave him the nickname Harald Fine-hair and all who saw him said it was the truest name, for he had thick and beautiful hair.

When my viking trilogy ‘Troll Fell’, ‘Troll Mill’ and ‘Troll Blood’ came out, I used to tell school children this story of Harald’s vow not to cut or comb or wash his hair, and that he was nick-named ‘Tanglehair’ and finally earned a new tag that means something like ‘Splendid-Hair’ – for the Old Norse Harfargr does not imply any colour. The kids loved it; there were many screwed-up noses and cries of ‘Eeew!’ But back then I didn’t know the story of Dovri the jøtun, and his friendship with young Harald. It’s fascinating when two tales come up with such different explanations for the same thing, and it makes me think that maybe Harald really did exist – and really did perhaps swear such an oath. 

 

Picture credits

Halfdan and Harald - in the Icelandic Flateyjarbók

Skovtrold (Forest Troll) - Theodor Kittelsen, Wikimedia Commons 

The Ash-lad and the Troll - Theodor Kittelsen, Wikimedia Commons

The Troll who wondered how old he was - Theodore Kittelsen, Wikimedia Commons

 

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #28: 'THE HEN IS TRIPPING IN THE MOUNTAIN'

'Will you be my sweetheart?'

This story was collected by Jørgen Moe in Ringerike, eastern Norway, and published in Asbjørnsen & Moe’s Norske Folkeeventyr in 1852; it’s a good example of ATT Type 311, Rescue by the Sister. In this type of tale, three sisters set out on some adventure, the two eldest fail and the youngest rescues them: the Welsh Romany tale, The Three Sisters, #2 in this series is a striking and unusual example. In this kind of story princes do not feature, and there is rarely any wedding at the end.

The best-known example is probably the Grimms’ tale Fitcher’s Bird (KHM 46), a dark and curious tale which goes like this: a wizard kidnaps one of three sisters to be his wife, and like Bluebeard forbids her to open a particular door in his house. He also gives her an egg which she must carry about and keep with her. When the wizard is out, the girl looks into the forbidden room and finds a basin of blood and human body parts. She drops the egg and gets blood on it which she cannot remove. The wizard returns and kills her.  

The same thing happens to the second sister; the third sister, however, is clever enough to put the egg safely away before looking into the forbidden room. There, finding her sisters dead and in pieces, she gathers the parts together and brings them back to life. The returning wizard believes he has been obeyed (seeing no sign of blood on the egg) and wants her for his bride. From now on he has no power over her. 

She tells him to carry a basket of gold to her parents’ house as a dowry, but hides her sisters under the gold (feasibility has no place in fairy tales), ordering him not to rest or sit down on the way, for she will be watching him from the window. The wizard toils under the burden, but each time he tries to rest one of the sisters calls out. Certain that his betrothed is watching him, he carries the sisters and the gold to their home. Back at his house, the girl prepares a marriage feast and invites the wizard’s friends. She sets a skull in the window, wreaths it with bridal flowers, smears herself with honey and rolls in feathers till she looks like ‘a wondrous bird’, and sets off home. On the way she meets the arriving guests who greet her in rhyme as ‘Fitcher’s Bird’ coming from ‘Fitcher’s house’; the disguised girl tells them that all is ready and the bride is peeping from the window. As soon as the wizard and all his friends are in the house, her brothers and kinsmen arrive (warned by her sisters), barricade the doors and burn it down with the wizard and his crew inside. 

The Hen Tripping in the Mountain is a lot more rustic and comical than Fitcher’s Bird, and the troll is so simple and stupid and cowardly that it’s hard not to feel a tiny bit sorry for him.

 

There was once an old woman who lived with her three daughters way up under a mountain ridge. She was so poor she owned nothing but a hen, the apple of her eye. It was always cackling at her heels and she was always running after it. Well one day, the hen vanished. The old woman went round and around the cottage searching and calling, but the hen was gone, and there was no finding it.

            So the woman told her eldest daughter, ‘You’ll have to go out looking for our hen. We have to get it back – even if we have to dig it out of the the hill.’

            The daughter went off looking and calling for it. She went all over, here and there, but no trace of the hen could she find, till just as she was about to give up, she heard someone calling from over by the cliffs, 

Your hen is tripping in the mountain!

Your hen is tripping in the mountain!

            

So she headed that way to see what it was, but right by the cliff foot she fell through a trap door, deep, deep down into an underground vault. At the bottom she made her way through many rooms, each finer than the first, but in the innermost room a big ugly mountain troll came up to her and said, ‘Will you be my sweetheart?’

            ‘No I won’t!’ she said, ‘not at any price!’ She wanted to get back above ground at once, and find her lost hen. Then the mountain troll was so angry he took her up and wrung off her head, and threw her head and her body down into the cellar.

            While this was going on, her mother sat at home waiting and waiting, but no daughter came back. She waited a while longer, and then told her middle daughter to go our and call for her sister, and, she added, ‘you can call for our hen at the same time.’

            So the second sister went out, and the same thing happened to her; she went about calling and looking, and she too heard a voice from the rock face saying, 

Your hen is tripping in the mountain!

Your hen is tripping in the mountain!

            This was very strange, she thought, so she went to see what it could be, and she too fell through the trap door, deep, deep down into the vault. Then she went through all the rooms to the innermost one, where the mountain troll came up to her and asked if she would be his sweetheart? No, she would not! All she wanted was to get above ground again and look for her hen which was lost. So the troll got angry and wrung her head off, and threw head and body down into the cellar. 

            Well, when the old woman had sat and waited seven lengths and seven breadths for her second daughter, and no sign of her was to be seen or heard, she said to the youngest, ‘Now you really will have to go out after your sisters. It was bad enough to lose the hen, but it would be much worse to lose both your sisters, and you can always give the hen a call or two at the same time.’

            Off went the youngest girl, and she went up and down hunting for her sisters, and calling the hen, but neither saw nor heard anything of any of them until at last shecame up to the cliff face and heard how something said:

Your hen is tripping in the mountain!

Your hen is tripping in the mountain!

            She too went to see what it was and fell down through the trap door, deep, deep down into the vault. When she reached the bottom she went from room to room, each one grander than the other, but she wasn’t at all scared and took good care to look around her, and she spotted the cellar door and looked through it and there were her sisters lying dead! And the moment she got the door shut, the mountain troll came up to her.

            ‘Will you be my sweetheart?’ he asked.

            ‘Yes, certainly!’ said she, for she could see quite well what had happened to her sisters. And when the troll heard that, he gave her the finest clothes in the world and anything else she asked for, he was so glad that anyone would be his sweetheart. 

            But after she’d been there for a while, there came a day when she was very downcast and silent. The troll asked why she was moping. 

            ‘Oh,’ said the girl, ‘it’s because I can’t get home to my mother. She’ll be hungry and thirsty, I’m sure, and there’s no one to stay with her either.’

            ‘Well you can’t go to her,’ said the troll, ‘but put some food in a sack and I’ll carry it to her.’

            Well she thanked him for this, and said she would. But she put lots of gold and silver at the bottom of the sack, and laid just a little food at the top, and gave the sack to the troll and told him not to look into it. The troll promised he wouldn’t, and set off, but the girl peeped after him through the trap door and saw that when he had gone just a little way, the sack was so heavy he put it down to untie the neck and look inside it.  Then she called out, 

I see what you’re up to!

I see what you’re up to!

'I can still see you!'

            ‘Those are damn sharp eyes you’ve got in your head,’ said the troll, and he didn’t dare to try it any more.             
        

When he reached the widow’s cottage he threw the sack in through the door. ‘Here’s some food from your daughter. She lacks for nothing!’ he said.

            Now one day, when the girl had been in the hill for a good while longer, a billy goat fell down through the trap door. ‘Who said you could come in, you shaggy-bearded beast?’ said the troll in a fury, and he took the goat and wrung its head off and threw it into the cellar. 

            ‘Oh! What did you do that for?’ said the girl. ‘I could have had that goat to play with; it’s dull enough down here.’

            ‘Well don’t sulk about it,’ said the troll. ‘I can soon bring it back to life, I can,’ and he took a flask which hung on the wall, put the goat’s head back on, smeared it with some ointment out of the flask, and up sprang the billy-goat as frisky as ever.

            ‘Oh ho,’ thought the girl, ‘that flask is worth something, it is!’ So she waited for a day when the troll was out, then took her eldest sister and put her head back on. She rubbed her with ointment from the flask, the way she’d seen the troll do to the billy-goat, and her sister came back to life at once. Then the girl stuffed her into a sack, covered her up with a layer of food, and said to the troll when he came back, 

            ‘My dear friend, it’s time to take some food to my mother again. Poor thing, she must be hungry and thirsty, and with no one to look after her! But you mustn’t look in the sack.’

            The troll was willing to take the sack, all right, but when he had got a bit on the way it was so heavy that that he thought he would see what was in it. ‘No matter how sharp her eyes are, she won’t see me from here,’ he thought. But as he set the sack down to look in it, the girl who was sitting inside called out,

I see what you’re up to!

I see what you’re up to!

           

            ‘Those are damn sharp eyes you’ve got!’ said the troll, who thought it was the girl in the mountain who was calling. He didn’t dare try looking inside any more, but carried it to her mother’s house as fast as he could, and when he got there he threw the sack in through the door, bawling out, ‘Here’s meat and drink from your daughter! She has everything she wants!’ 

            Well, the girl waited a while longer, and then she did the same thing with her other sister. She set her head back on her shoulders, smeared her with ointment and stuffed her into the sack along with as much gold and silver as would fit. Then she covered everything with a thin layer of food and asked the troll to take it to her mother. This time the sack was so heavy he could barely stagger along under it, so he put it down and was just going to untie the string and look in, when the girl inside shouted:

I see what you’re up to!

I see what you’re up to!

            ‘The deuce you do!’ said the troll. ‘I never knew anyone with such damn sharp eyes!’ and he dared not take another peep, but staggered along to the old woman’s house, threw the sack in through the door and roared, ‘More food from your daughter! You see – she wants for nothing!’

            A few days later when the troll was going out for the evening, the girl pretended to be poorly. ‘There’s no use you coming home any time before twelve midnight,’ she said. ‘I simply won’t be able to get supper ready till then, I’m feeling so sick and feeble.’ But when the troll had gone out, she stuffed some of her clothes with straw and stood this straw girl up in the corner by the hearth with a stirrer in her hand, so it looked as if she were standing there herself. After that she hurried off home and hired a hunter to come with her and stay with them in her mother’s cottage. 

            So when it was twelve midnight, the troll came home. ‘Bring me my food!’ he said to the straw maiden, but she didn’t move or answer. 

            ‘Bring me my food, I say!’ said the troll again, ‘I’m starving!’ Still she didn’t answer.

            ‘Bring the food!’ yelled the troll. ‘Listen to what I say and do what you’re told, or I’ll give you such a wake-up, that I will!’ But the girl just stood there. Then he flew into a terrible rage and gave her such a kick that the straw flew up to the ceiling, and he saw he had been tricked. He searched high and low until he came to the cellar and found both the girl’s sisters were gone. Now he understood what had happened and ran down to the cottage crying,  ‘I’ll pay her out for this!’ but when they saw him coming, the hunter fired. The shot banged out, and the troll mistook it for thunder. He turned in fright and ran for home as fast as his legs would carry him, but just as he reached his trap door, what do you think! – the sun rose, and he burst into pieces.  

Oh, there’s plenty of gold and silver down under that trap door still – if we only knew how to find it!

  Picture credits: Art by Theodor Kittelsen