Icelandic Folktales and Legends

Ludington Public | Jacqueline Simpson
Library
Icelandic
‘Folktales and
Legends
ICELANDIC FOLKTALES AND
LEGENDS
Edited by Jacqueline Simpson
Jon Arnason’s two volumes of Icelandic
folktales (Leipzig, 1862-64) represent one
of the great folktale collections of the world,
but English translations of them are rare
and long out of print. The present selection
is devoted to supernatural beings, ghosts,
and magic practices. The topics are chosen
as typical of Icelandic fol iefs, and as
offering interesting material for com-
parison with other cultures.
These tales rangewide w ely in tone: good-
humored or grimly ironic, grotesque or
eerie, tragic or pathetic, jocular or sinister.
They are firn ly located in the Icelandic
countryside, and reflect its contrasts: small
farms and grassy pastures set against harsh
crags and vast mountain solitudes; healthy
days of summer toil set against ne long,
threatening darkness of the winter nights.
The longings, fears, and hardships of a
brave but hapoversheð race emerge in ~
these tales of hidden treasures; of elves,
helpful or dangerous; of grotesque trells
and demons; of macabre ghosts, and the
sinister practices of malicious magic. But
the characteristic Icelandic humor is often
to be seen, and everywhere we find the
skillful art stemming from a long tradition
of oral story-telling.
ll notes are supplied for acl story,
g out parallels (especially in Scan-
n and British lore), and explaining
oms, and local or historical
ns. There is an Introduction, and
x following the international
classification systems for folktales” and
migratory legends. The translation hews
close to the originals, preserving the
directness and vigor of Icelandic story-
telling. 2
The balance of the volume is such that the —
collection offers equal appeal for both
scholars of folklore and readers with amore
general interest in the antics of trolls and
demons. ont
JACQUELINE Simpson has tates several
books on the sagas, the Northmen, and the
Vikings, including Everyday Lifein the Viking
Age and The Northmen Talk.
$7.50
LUDINGTON
_ PUBLIC LIBRARY & INFORMATION CENTER
{
BRYN MAWR & LANCASTER AVE.
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ICELANDIC FOLKTALES AND LEGENDS
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/icelandicfolktal0000simp
æg JACQUELINE SIMPSON
ICELANDIC FOLKTALES
AND LEGENDS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley and Los Angeles 1972
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
ISBN: 0-520-02116-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 71-172391
© Jacqueline Simpson 1972
Printed in Great Britain
The jacket design is based on the painting, ‘A nice bit of meat

running up the road’ by Halldór Pétersson, reproduced in Einar
Ob Sveinsson, Íslenzkar Þjoðsogurog Aevintyri (H. F. Leiftur,
Reykjavik, 1951).
LUDINGTON
ap p UBLIC LIBRAR
Y
19010
Preface
Introduction be=
1 The Hidden People

The Origin of Elves (1)
The Origin of Elves (IT)
The Elfin Fisherman
The Elfin Woman in Childbirth
Dr Skapti Sæmundsson
Playing ‘Blind Beggar
Lappa, the Elfin Cow
The Changeling who Stretched
‘Let Us Take Him!’
Making a Changeling
Father of Eighteen Elves
The Child and the Elf-Woman
The Church Builder at Reynir
The Girl at the Shieling
The Red-Headed Whale
Hild, Queen of the Elves
The Elves’ Dance on New Years Eve
The Sisters and the Elves
The Elves at the Crossroads
The Elves Move House
‘My Old Woman must be Paid’
2 Trolls
Blessing the Cliffs
The Ogress of Mjoafjord
vi CONTENTS
Some She-Trolls
The Shepherdess and the Trolls
The Old Man of the Cliff
Gilitrutt
How Kraka Lost her Lover
Trunt, Trunt, and the Trolls in the Fells
The Ballads of Andri and the Hymns of Hallgrim
The Night-Troll
The Origin of Drangey Island
Bergthor of Blafell
The Giantess's Staff
Gryla
3 Water-Dwellers
Then the Merman Laughed
The Sea-Cows
The Water Horse
The Water Horse Hears his Name
The Water Horse Made to Work
The Seal’s Skin
The Water-Snake of Lagarfljot
4 Ghosts
‘Mother Mine, Don't Weep, Weep’
Tsn't it Fun in the Dark!’
The Lovers
Murder Will Out
Jon Flak
Burning the Coffins
‘Give me my Bone, Gunna!
My Jawbones!’
The Dead Man’s Nightcap
The Bridegroom and the Dead Man
The Miserly Ghost
CONTENTS
The Boy who Knew no Fear

The Deacon of Myrka
The Ghost’s Son
The Girl who Turned in her Grave
The Woman in the Red Cap
Mori, the Ghost of Irafell
S Black Magic
How to Raise the Dead
The Vertebra
The Neckbone on the Knife
The Wizards of the Vestmanna Isles
The Priest and the Farmer
How Petur Got a Wall-Eye
The Black Death
Thorgeir’s Bull
Lappish Breeches
The Tide-Mouse
The Carrier
The Speaking Spirit
Sitting Out at Crossroads
Animal Plagues
The Witch’s Bridle
Thor’s Hammer
6 Buried Treasure
The Treasure of Fagriholl
The Chest of Gold
The Dreamer and the Treasure
7 God and the Devil

What Old Nick Got out of Man 189
Old Hornie Tried to Make a Man 190
. "iets 7 2 Hye vate
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See arp eget por ’ =
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7 5
&@ INTRODUCTION
The folk legends of Iceland are too little known outside

the borders of their own land, particularly in England.
This is equally true whether one compares their readership
with that of medieval Icelandic sagas and poetry, frequently
translated and much studied in Britain, or with that of the
folktales of other European countries, say Ireland or France
or even Norway—let alone those of Germany, now for
several generations adopted as part of the British heritage,
thanks to a constant flow of translations from the work of the
Brothers Grimm. In contrast, Jón Arnason’s two large
volumes of Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Aefintýri, (The Folktales
and Fairy Tales of Iceland’), 1862-4, one of the major
products of the great nineteenth-century period of folktale
collecting, have received only rare and partial renderings
into English; moreover, the selected translations by G. E. J.
Powell and Eiríkur Magnússon in 1864 and 1866, the only
ones that can claim to offer a representative range of
material, are stylistically most unsatisfactory, being full of
repetitiveness, circumlocutions, and pomposity.
The present work too is only a selection, taken chiefly
from Jén Arnason’s first three chapters, those on supernatural
beings, ghosts, and magic. I have thought it better to give
a fairly thorough coverage to a few topics rather than to
skim the surface of the whole work; among the subjects I
have left untouched are the cycle of legends about Master
Magicians, those about outlaws, those about seers and others
with psychic powers, numskull stories, and the Mdrchen,
i.e. fairy tales in the popular sense of the term. The topics
chosen here are all such as to provide opportunity not only
for the study of Icelandic folk-beliefs but also for comparison
with similar material in other cultures, including our own.
2 INTRODUCTION
Jon Arnason (1819-88) and his friend the Rev. Magnus

Grimsson (1825-60) were stimulated by their admiration for
the work of the Grimms and by the growth of folklore studies
in Europe to undertake the collecting of traditional tales,
beliefs, and verses in their own land. They were both too
poor to spare time or money roaming the countryside as
collectors; Jón Árnason was librarian of what later became
the National Library of Reykjavik, and eked out a meagre
salary with teaching and secretarial work; Magnús Grímsson
was a schoolmaster, later a clergyman, besides writing poetry,
plays, novels and translations. However, both men had
contacts all over Iceland, principally with their own former
pupils who had become teachers and clergymen, and it
was very largely in the form of written accounts by these
men that the material was gathered in.
When and how the collaboration between Jón Árnason
and Magnús Grímsson began is uncertain; as early as 1845
the latter was collecting directly from his young pupils
(tales marked in the notes as being ‘from a schoolboy/
schoolgirl from X, 1845’ belong to this early phase of the
work). In 1852 they published a few samples of their already
considerable material as a small book, Íslenzk Aefintyri.
But during the next few years their activity slackened,
since there seemed little hope of publishing more, until
in 1858 they were encouraged by the enthusiasm of a
visiting German scholar, Konrad Maurer, who toured
Iceland for six months gathering material for his Islindische
Volkssagen der Gegenwart (1860). He urged them to resume
their work, and suggested the possibility of publication in
Leipzig. By this stage, however, Magnús Grímsson was
taking less part in the task, and towards the end of 1860
he died. Jón Árnason continued alone; he wrote to all his
correspondents, urging them to send in whatever they had
found, and flung himself into the task of comparing,
selecting, and organizing the vast mass that had accumu-
lated. The book eventually appeared in two parts, being
INTRODUCTION 3
printed in Leipzig in 1862 and 1864; numerous manu-
scripts containing unused variants were later deposited in
the National Library at Reykjavik.
These tales (like those of other lands) can be roughly
classified into two major groups: the ‘folk legends’
(Icelandic Þjóðsagnir, German Sagen), which are believed
to be true by teller and hearers alike, and are generally
attached to real places and persons; and the “Wonder Tales’
or ‘Fairy Tales’ (Icelandic aefintyri, German Marchen), told
as entertaining fantasies. There are also other minor types,
such as pious tales and jocular tales. The stories in Jón
Arnason’s first volume belong to the first group, as do most
of those in the present selection. Of course, in practice
there are many gradations of belief: ghost stories are
normally taken very seriously indeed, but The Boy who
Knew no Fear’ is almost pure buffoonery; the she-troll is
often a figure of fun, as in ‘How Kraka Lost her Lover’,
but the murderous troll who severs fowlers’ ropes was still
dreaded on Grimsey in the middle of the nineteenth century
(see ‘Blessing the Cliffs’); the belief in changelings was firmly
rooted, but there is a lighter tone about ‘Father of Eighteen
Elves’ than about “The Changeling who Stretched’; parents
taught their children to fear the bugbear Gryla, but did not
believe in her themselves.
Owing to the number of sagas and other literary
works surviving from medieval Iceland, many of them
incorporating elements drawn from contemporary folktales
and beliefs, one can often trace the existence of various
stories, motifs and beliefs back to the twelfth, thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, or in some cases even to the poems
and myths of heathen times. This aspect of Icelandic folk-
tales has been systematically covered by Einar Ól. Sveinsson
in two books, Verzeichnis Islindischer Mdrchenwarienten,
Helsinki 1929, and Um Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur, Reykjavik 1940.
In my notes to individual tales, I have mentioned the
earliest known occurrences in Iceland of particular story-
B
4 INTRODUCTION
types, where these are significantly earlier than Jon
Arnason’s examples. But I have made no attempt to pursue
their later history by giving parallels from collections made
after Jón Arnason’s time; to do so would have taken too much
space, and would in any case have been premature, since
further collecting is at present in progress under the
auspices of the Manuscript Institute of Iceland.
As a glance at the Index of Tale Types (pp. 202-3) will
show, there are many affinities between these stories and
the general corpus of European folktales. This is true both
of Möirchen, numbered according to the international
classification of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson (indicated
by the letters AT), and of many local and historical Sagen,
called ‘Migratory Legends’ by the Norwegian scholar Reidar
Th. Christiansen, and here numbered according to his
system (indicated by the letters ML). The pursuit of inter-
national parallels could lead far afield; I have in the main
confined myself to the other Scandinavian lands, as having
the closest links with Iceland, and to a few instances of
comparable material from the British Isles.
Despite their foreign parallels, these Icelandic stories
are almost always very firmly localized. They often have
a strong aetiological element: this specified rock or island
is a giant turned to stone; that hollow in the ground, the
site of a sunken church; a church door-ring, a horse-block, a
vestment, or an altar-cloth, has some legend to account for
its existence, and is in turn regarded as proof of the legend.
Other types of story are explanatory in a broader sense,
‘explaining’ calamities, whether individual or communal:
lost children have been kidnapped by elves, sickly children
and mental defectives are changelings; the persistent illness
or bad luck of a family is the work of a ghost that ‘follows’
it from generation to generation; recurrent fatal accidents
on a particular cliff are due to a troll inside it.
Often one can see how personal experiences (usually
grim ones) are interpreted in terms of a pre-existent belief,
INTRODUCTION 5
which they then serve to reinforce. This is very clear in

some ghost stories, where nightmares and obsessional guilts
and fears loom large (e.g. ‘Mother Mine, Don't Weep’,
‘The Lovers’, or “Thorgeir’s Bull’). In a similar way, one can
see a sick woman's hallucination in “The Changeling who
Stretched’, and a child's dream or fantasy in “Dr Skapti
Seemundsson’ and ‘Making a Changeling’. The fear instilled
by mountain solitudes is reflected in some of the troll tales;
one may even wonder whether Trunt, Trunt and the Trolls
in the Fells’ can have been based on observation of some
half-crazed man who took to a solitary life in the wilds, and
there degenerated year by year.
More cheerful motifs are not lacking. Many reflect the
normal wishes and dreams of a hard-working and often
poverty-ridden community: wealth may be given by elves,
taken by force from ghosts, or found in a ‘money tussock’
or a haunted mound; marvellous cows may appear from the
sea or the elves’ herds; one may be given knowledge, medical
skill, or farming and fishing luck by elves, or simply a fine
helping of porridge by a good-natured troll. There is much
humour in the stories, too. Sometimes it flickers grimly
round macabre topics, as in How Petur Got his Wall-Eye’
and “The Priest and the Farmer’, but more often it is purely
comic: the frustrated she-troll in hot pursuit of her re-
luctant lover, brandishing the allegedly aphrodisiac shark;
the sardonic merman, proffering double-edged wisdom; the
stock ‘old man’ and ‘old woman’ whose stupidity, obstinacy
or shrewdness are the theme of many anecdotes. A strain of
gentle pathos runs through other tales, telling of tragic
love between elves and human girls, represented here by
‘The Girl at the Shieling’; several sixteenth-century poems
were written round such themes, and though their pathos
may come too close to sentimentality for modern tastes,
they were long popular, and have a charm of their own.
A comparison between the supernatural beings of
Icelandic and British lore presents many points of interest.
6 INTRODUCTION
The elves, more commonly called the “Hidden People’,
correspond to British fairies, and many of the same stories
are told of them. They differ, however, in being always
of full human size, and indeed only distinguishable from
human beings by some tiny detail—a ridge instead of a
groove in the upper lip, or the absence of any division
between the nostrils. Their social organization is visualized
in considerable detail as a reflection, sometimes idealized,
of human society; they live in communities in hillocks,
inside mountains, or in invisible farmsteads; they live by
farming and fishing (but do not have a specialized character-
istic activity, as the leprechaun does); they go to market,
hold religious services, and are sometimes said to have a
king.
The attitude towards them revealed in the tales and
beliefs is ambiguous. Sometimes they are dreaded as child-
stealers, as the bringers of sickness, as cruel, revengeful,
or wantonly malignant; sometimes, on the contrary, they
are said to reward goodness and courage, to punish only the
undeserving, and to help and protect their human friends.
In some stories they are heathen, fearing the name of God
or the Cross; in others, they have a religion of their own,
with priests, services, sacraments and hymns, all closely
modelled on Christianity. This last point is comparatively
rare, but not unknown, in British lore; but the other con-
flicting aspects are common here. It is also worth noting
that one common type of British fairy, the individual
Brownie who attaches himself to a house to help its owners
in their work, is not to be found in Iceland; interestingly,
the unpleasant Icelandic ‘family ghosts’ sometimes play
poltergeist tricks, as the less agreeable Brownies are said to
do, and sometimes have food and a bed set out for them
(see ‘Mori of Irafell’). As Brownies are sometimes said to be
ghosts, the resemblance is probably no accident.
The belief in elves can be traced back to pagan
Scandinavian mythology; some of the stories about them
INTRODUCTION 7
which later become common as folktales make their first
appearance in medieval sagas, usually in a truncated or
distorted form—for instance, that of a human being acting
as midwife to a fairy woman. Sixteenth-century writers
often show knowledge of elf-lore, and after about 1600 the
mention of elves becomes frequent; belief in their actual
existence was very strong, and even in the early nineteenth
century Olafur Sveinsson of Purkey collected stories of
men’s encounters with the Hidden People with as much
conviction as the Scottish minister Robert Kirk, who wrote
The Secret Common-wealth in 1691.
Icelandic trolls are in most ways the direct descendants
of the stupid, dangerous giants of Scandinavian myth, but
differ from them in being generally solitary creatures, and
in being so often associated with particular rocks and other
landmarks. In Iceland, the word ‘troll’ always denotes a
giant, never the little gnomes or elf-like creatures known by
that name in Denmark, the Faroes, and some regions of
Sweden. A few trolls are kindly, but most are bad; most hate
Christianity and have no religion of their own, though they
are true to their promises. They are quite often presented
in a ridiculous light; according Einar Ól. Sveinsson, the
serious belief in their existence was probably dead by 1600
(though among fowlers it may have lingered longer—see
‘Blessing the Cliffs’). Tales about them are often intended
to explain curious rock formations. Generally these are said
to be the troll himself, turned to stone; occasionally a rock
is said to have been thrown by a giant at a church, though
this is a less common motif in Iceland than in Norway.
Two widespread English notions, that rocks had been
thrown by giants at one another or dropped by one engaged
on some huge building task, do not appear in Iceland.
Probably such legends flourish best where isolated rocks
inexplicably crop up in the middle of level land, not where
the whole landscape is dominated by rocky masses.
From heathen times onwards, the belief in ghosts has
8 INTRODUCTION
been strongly held in Iceland, and is characterized by the

very markedly physical nature of the revenants described.
Indeed, the word ‘ghost’ is hardly a correct rendering of
draugur, the oldest and commonest term, since this normally
refers to an actual corpse emerging from its grave. As in
medieval sagas, so also in folktales, the draugur is often to
be overcome by wrestling, decapitation, or burning; other
methods, not mentioned in sagas but equally physical, are
piercing the feet with nails, driving a stake through the
grave, or covering it with a massive rock. But besides the
draugur there developed a belief in a more wraith-like type
of ghost, the svipa or vofa, here rendered ‘spectre’, and in
more spiritual or magical means of ghost-laying, such as
prayers and Christian rites, or poetic charms and incan-
tations. The type of ghost called a ‘Sending’, i.e. one called
up by a wizard and working at his command, is non-
material in its mode of action (e.g. it is often invisible,
or it takes on various shapes at will), but is held to originate
in a corpse, or at least a bone or other part of a body, whether
human or animal, into which the wizard has ‘put strength’.
There are some interesting similarities and differences
between the reasons given in Icelandic and in British lore
for the activities of ghosts. Both lands have ‘family ghosts’,
but where the British type is often quite harmless, the
fylgidraugur (who is often a hostile Sending) persecutes
those whom he ‘follows’ with illnesses and misfortunes for
many generations, and attacks people in the neighbourhood
as well. Both have vindictive ghosts, resenting wrongs suf-
fered in life, or disrespect to their bones in death, but
Icelandic ghosts do not often denounce ancient crimes
(although ghosts of infants do haunt their guilty mothers).
Both have misers’ ghosts, but whereas the British type is
restless and conscience-stricken, longing only to make
amends by revealing his hoard, the Icelandic fépúki
usually gloats grotesquely over his wealth, which can only
be got from him by trickery or force. Indeed, remorseful
INTRODUCTION 9
ghosts, so common elsewhere, are comparatively rare in

Iceland; even the international tale of “The Unforgiven
Dead’ is there handled more in terms of a feud between
two of the dead than as a matter of moral guilt and pardon
(see “The Woman in the Red Cap’).
Ghost-lore in Iceland is closely linked to magic lore, with
much stress on methods of raising and laying ghosts and
making use of them for one’s own purposes. For though
many walk for reasons of their own, many others are called
up by some necromancer who masters them and ‘sends’
them against his enemies. To some extent, this grim notion
is foreshadowed in early mythological texts alluding to the
necromantic arts of Odinn, but there the stress is on occult
wisdom and powers of prophecy, not on harmful sorcery;
the full series of beliefs concerning Sendings and the raising
of the dead only became really prominent in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, as part of a whole complex of
beliefs in sorcery and spells which swept over Icelandic
society at that period, causing deep fear and many
accusations of witchcraft.
This upsurge of magical beliefs was certainly in part a
reflexion of the witch-hunting mania that had reached its
peak in Europe somewhat earlier, and of the widespread
contemporary interest in occult lore among learned men.
In Iceland, as elsewhere, books of spells, magic symbols,
rituals, and so forth, circulated in considerable numbers,
in manuscript form. But the theories of the learned
Continental witch-hunters did not take root as deeply in
Icelandic folk-belief as elsewhere; for instance, the notion
of the Sabbath to which witches fly by night, of the pact
with Satan, and of devil-worship, are hardly ever found in
Icelandic folktales (cf. notes to “The Witch Bridle’ below),
nor are they prominent in actual trials there.
The black magic of Iceland often gives an ever more
archaic impression than the evidence of rural fears and
practices brought forward in British trials, let alone the
IO INTRODUCTION
bookish theories and the Continental ‘confessions’ based on

them—but that is not to say that Icelandic magic is less
gruesome, especially in its preoccupation with corpses and
bones. The milk-stealing ‘Carrier’, for example, made by the
witch herself from a human rib, seems a more primitive
notion than the familiar or imp given to the witch by the
devil in British lore, even though the ‘Carrier’ is first men-
tioned in the seventeenth century. Similarly, the idea of a
‘Sending’ in the form of a fly or a flayed bull appears first
at about the same period, but might well be much older; the
procedure by which a would-be seer captures a ‘Speaking
Spirit’ has a very archaic, shamanistic air; and the ritual of
‘sitting out’ is undoubtedly old, though its aim changed in
later centuries from obtaining occult knowledge to winning
elfin treasures.
It would be wrong to omit all mention of white magic
in Icelandic folk-belief, even though it plays less part than
sorcery in the stories chosen for inclusion here. From the
earliest times, Icelandic sagas take for granted the existence
of ‘natural’ psychic gifts in certain individuals, in particular
second sight (both precognition and the power to ‘see’
invisible beings and distant events), and the ability to read
omens and to ‘dream true’. Such powers are very often
credited to seers and white magicians in later folktales,
together with the authority and techniques required to lay
ghosts, counteract spells, rescue persons carried off by fairies,
kill vermin by the power of a verse, and so forth. Belief in
the magic force of a well-turned rhyme goes back to the
Middle Ages, and tales about a kraptaskdld, Poet of Might,
are common from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.
Priests in particular were very frequently thought to have
magical or other supernatural powers, and there are many
traditional tales told about such men who came to be
considered as “Master Magicians’, whether of white, grey
or black magic. Some of these legends (which form an
extensive and important cycle) can be found in Powell and
INTRODUCTION II
Magnusson’s Icelandic Legends and Craigie’s Scandinavian

Folklore, while the genre as a whole has been discussed by
B. S. Benedikz, ‘The Master Magician in Icelandic Folk
Legend’, Durham University Journal, 1964.
As has been already remarked, Jón Árnason's collection
was not taken verbatim from folk storytellers, but from
written versions sent in by teachers, priests, and other
educated men who acted as his collectors, and concerning
whose methods of field-work we know little. It is these
men whose names generally appear in the notes; attributions
to ‘a schoolboy from X’ or ‘an old woman from Y are less
frequent. Only occasionally does one catch what must be
the individual voice of one of the primary narrators (one
of the schoolgirls, for example, has a liking for the phrase
‘increase and multiply and fill the earth’, and uses it as
equivalent to ‘live happily ever after’). The possibility that
the texts have been touched up cannot be ruled out—indeed,
literal fidelity to the spoken tale was an ideal hardly en-
visaged by most nineteenth-century folklorists.
However, any editorial intervention there may have been
in Jon Arnason’s texts is by no means the stylistic calamity
which it would most likely have been in England in the
1860s. Iceland was more unified in class and culture than
other countries; a high proportion of the population was
literate, in spite of poverty and hardship; the language had
not greatly changed since the Middle Ages; and, above all,
the medieval sagas offered a widely known and admired
model for prose narrative style—a style which harmonizes
admirably with all that is most vigorous, direct and swift-
moving in oral story-telling. This harmony is no accident;
the sagas themselves, though literary works, sprang from a
culture where oral story-telling flourished, and were in-
fluenced by its techniques.
In later centuries these sagas were cherished as the pro-
ducts of the golden age of Iceland, and their style was
admired as an ideal of ‘classic’ prose; Jón Arnason’s band of
I2 INTRODUCTION
collectors, educated men, but reared in this tradition, would

have had a far readier appreciation of the oral styles they
were likely to encounter than their English contemporaries,
trained to admire Latinate diction and complex sentence
structures. From sagas, they would be familiar with such
features of oral style as abrupt shifts from past to present
tense or from reported to direct speech, simplicity in clause
and sentence structure, economy of adjectives and adverbs,
and a general preference for concision and even dryness
over elaboration and emotional explicitness. The gulf be-
tween what the primary narrator would consider a good
tale well told and what the collector-editor would think
acceptable in print was probably narrower in Iceland than
anywhere else in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, and con-
sequently any editorial intervention there may have been
remains very unobtrusive. In fact, Jón Árnason's own modifi-
cations are known to have been, in general, quite slight,
and always directed towards simplicity and ‘classical’
restraint. Often they consisted merely of noting variant
details taken from another version of the tale, and are then
signalled by some such phrase as ‘other people say—a
feature which is itself derived from saga style.
It is probable that knowledge of the sagas helped to form
the style of the folktale narrators themselves, though the full
extent of the influence could only be assessed by a detailed
study of field-recordings. But even among Jón Arnason’s texts
one can easily see that some tales show more elaboration
than others (particularly those that are more Mdrchen than
Sagen), and that in these cases it is often medieval sagas
that provide the model. Examples are ‘Bergthor of Blafell’,
with its typical saga opening, “There was a man named
Bergthor, who lived in a cave on Blafell’ (even though the
‘man’ in question is a troll), and its cross-references to
characters in actual sagas; the thumbnail character-sketches
at the beginning of The Boy who Knew no Fear and ‘Hild,
Queen of the Elves’; the slow pace and love of picturesque
INTRODUCTION 13
detail in the latter tale, which, though alien to the classic

saga style, was a feature of certain more romanticized sagas
highly popular in and after the fourteenth century.
One particularly well-loved work, the late thirteenth-
century Grettis saga, has left its mark on the actual content
of several tales: the hiring of the bold shepherd to work on
a haunted farm in “Hild, Queen of the Elves’, the wrestling
trick which (rather implausibly) floors the ghost in The Boy
who Knew no Fear’, and the eerie effect of moonlight and
scudding cloud at the climax of The Deacon of Myrka’,
are all derived from the most famous episode in that saga,
the fight between Grettir and the dead Glamr. This last
instance is perhaps a trifle suspect; it involves only two
sentences, and might therefore be a conscious ‘improvement’
by the collector, inspired by the reference to moonlight in
the verse which is undoubtedly an integral part of the tale.
The two others, however, are whole episodes, and occur in
stories where the saga influence is very pervasive; they must
reflect the story-teller's taste, not just the collector's. The
widespread knowledge of the older literature at all levels
of Icelandic society easily accounts for these and other
instances.
1 @ THE HIDDEN PEOPLE

Once, God Almighty came to Adam and Eve. They
welcomed Him gladly and showed Him everything they had
in their house, and they also showed Him their children,
who all seemed to Him to be very promising. He asked Eve
whether she had any other children besides the ones she
was just showing Him. She said ‘No’. But the truth of the
matter was that Eve had not yet got around to washing some
of her children, and so she was ashamed to let God see
them, and she had pushed them away somewhere out of
sight. God knew this, and said: “That which had to be
hidden from Me, shall also be hidden from men.’
So now these children became invisible to men, and lived
in woods and moorlands, knolls and rocks. From them the
elves are descended, but human beings are descended from
those of Eve’s children whom she did show to God. Human
beings can never see elves unless the latter wish it, but elves
can see men and enable men to see them. It is for this
reason that the elves are also called the Hidden People.
J.A. 1 5 (Huldumannagenesis); current in many parts of Iceland.

This tale, though international, is particularly relevant in Iceland,
where the commonest name for elves is huldufolk, ‘Hidden
People’ (singular, huldumaður, -kona, Hidden Man, Woman’).
These terms, first recorded in the fourteenth century, were
thought more polite, and hence safer, than álfur, ‘elf. The same
story about Eve's children was known elsewhere in Europe as an
explanation of social or ethnic differences (AT 758, “The Various
Children of Eve’). With regard to elves, the story implies that
despite differences they are akin to men; the kinship is very
clear in Iceland, where they are thought of as barely dis-
THE ORIGIN OF ELVES 15
tinguishable from human beings in appearance, and as having

homes, social relationships, and often a religion closely mirroring
the human pattern.

Once, there was a traveller who lost his way and did not
know where he was going. At last he came to a farm which
he did not recognize at all; there he knocked, and a mature
woman came to the door and asked him in, which he
accepted. All the furnishings of this farm were excellent.
The woman led him into the main room, where two pretty
young girls were sitting, but he saw no one else on the farm
except for this woman and the two girls. He was welcomed
courteously, given food and drink, and later shown to a
bed. The man asked if he might sleep with one of the girls,
and was told that he could. They lay down together and the
man wanted to turn towards her, but he could feel no body
where the girl was. He caught hold of her, but there was
nothing between his arms, though all the while she lay
quietly beside him and he could see her perfectly well. So
then he asks her the reason for this.
She says he need not be surprised at it, ‘for I am a spirit
with no body’, says she. Long ago, when the Devil raised a
revolt in Heaven, he and all who fought for him were driven
into outer darkness. But those who were neither for him nor
against him and would join neither army were driven down
to Earth, and it was decreed that they should live in knolls,
hills, and rocks, and they are called elves, or Hidden People.
They cannot live with other people, only on their own. They
can do both good and evil, and both in the highest degree.
They have no bodies such as you humans have, yet they can
show themselves to you when they wish. I am one of this
16 THE HIDDEN PEOPLE
band of fallen spirits, so it is not surprising that you cannot

get pleasure from me.’
The man had to rest content with that, and later he told
the story of what had happened to him.
JÁ. I 5-6, from Jóhannes Jónsson Lund (b. 1804). The theory
that elves are a morally intermediate type of spirit between
angels and devils is, like the preceeding theory, known in many
parts of Europe including the British Isles (Briggs 1967, 141, 143-
4, 147). That they should be incapable of sexual intercourse with
men is a piece of learned clerical theorizing, running quite
counter to the general trend of Icelandic beliefs (cf. pp. 35,
40-2).
The Elfin Fisherman
It is said that in the old days a farmer lived at Gotur in

Myrdal, and that in the fishing seasons he used to row out to
what were then and are now the usual fishing grounds for
that district, off Dyrhola Isle. One day, as so often, this
farmer was coming back from the shore; one has to cross
some boggy land, and there, in the half light, he comes
upon a man whose horse has fallen in the bog and who
cannot get it out unaided. The farmer does not recognize
the man, but all the same he helps him to pull the horse out.
When the job is done, the unknown man says: ‘Im a
close neighbour of yours, for I live inside Hvammsgil
Ravine, and I was just coming back from the sea, like you.
I'm too poor to pay you as well as I ought for giving me a
hand, but this much good I can do you, if you follow my
advice—you need never again make a useless journey down
to the sea, on the one condition that you never go down
before you see me go. Then it can’t fail; you'll always be
THE ELFIN FISHERMAN 17
able to row out every time you go down, if only you keep
this condition.’
The farmer thanks him for this advice. And so, while three
years went by, he never set out until after he had seen his
neighbour go past, and never made a useless journey, and
never failed to make a catch. But when three years had
passed, it happened one day that very early in the morning
the weather was perfect for fishing, and everyone went
straight down to the sea, but the farmer did not see his
neighbour go down, though he waited a long while. Finally
he could stand it no longer, and went, without his neighbour
having come. But when the farmer did reach the sea, all
the boats had rowed away. That day, all the boats were lost
in a storm, but this farmer was not harmed, as he had been
too late for any boat that morning.
But that night the farmer dreamed of his neighbour, who
spoke these words to him: ‘You can thank me for one good
thing at least, that you did not put out to sea today! But
because you set out without having seen me, you need
never wait here for me again, as I don’t mean to let you
see me again, now that you didn’t follow my advice.’
And indeed the farmer never set eyes on his neighbour
again.
J.A. I 6-7 (Sjómaðurinn á Götum); from Runófur Jónsson, from

a story current in Myrdalur. As fairies are often thought to make
their living by the same type of work as their human neighbours,
those of fishing districts (e.g. in the Isle of Man or the Faroes)
are naturally fishers too. Communication with elves through
dreams is common in Icelandic tales and beliefs.
The Elfin Woman in Childbirth
Away in the East Quarter—in Oddi, so it is said—a young

servant girl went out to the churchyard one evening to fetch
in the washing, and while she was busy collecting it, up came
a man whom she did not know. He takes her by the hand
and tells her to come with him, and says he will do her no
harm—‘But if you won't do it, says he, “you'll find your
luck has changed for the worse.’
The girl dared not disobey his orders, so she goes along
with him until they come to a farmhouse (or so it seemed to
her, but in fact it was a knoll). Then they go to the door of
this farm and he leads her in, and along a long passage, until
they come to the main room. The far end of the room
looked dim before her eyes, but at the nearer end there was
a light burning, and there she saw a woman lying on the
floor, and she was screaming, and could not give birth to her
child. She saw an old woman by her, who was very
distressed.
The man who had brought her there said: “Go to my wife
and help her, so that she can give birth to her child."
The girl went to where the woman lay, and the old woman
went away; then the girl ran her hands over the woman on
the floor in the way which she knew was needed, and she
very quickly was released from her trouble, so that the
child was born at once.
As soon as the child was born, the father came with a
glass bottle, and told her to put some stuff from it in the
child’s eyes, but to take care not to let it get into her own
eyes. She did indeed put some stuff from the bottle into the
child’s eyes, but when she had done so she rubbed her finger
over one of her own eyes. Then with this eye she saw that
there were many people at the far end of the room. The man
took the glass bottle back and went off with it; then he
returned, and thanked her for her help, and so did the
woman, and they told her she would become a very lucky
woman. He puts a roll of cloth in her apron, so fine that she
had never seen the like; then he takes her by the hand and
leads her till they come to the churchyard from which he
THE ELFIN WOMAN IN CHILDBIRTH 19
had fetched her, and then he goes away, and she sets off
home.
The very next winter the wife of the priest there died, and
this girl afterwards became his wife. She often said she
could see the Hidden People; also, whenever she saw them
building their hay-cocks she would have her own hay built
into cocks too, and sure enough it would shortly start
raining, even though the sky had been clear before.
One day she went to market with her husband the priest.
While she was in a trader’s booth she saw the elf-man she
had once met, buying goods from a merchant of the Hidden
People who was there too. Then she made a blunder, for
she went up to him and said: “Good luck go with you,
friend! I thank you for your kindness last time.’
But at this he walked up to her, put his finger in his
mouth and drew it across her eyes, and at once her power
of sight changed, so that from then on she never again saw
the Hidden People, nor any of their doings.
J.A. I 15-16, from the writings (c. 1830) of Olafur Sveinsson of

Purkey (1780-1845); he collected elf legends in the early nine-
teenth century, in order to prove the existence of elves, in which
he himself fully believed. This tale is a good example of ML 5070,
‘Midwife to the Fairies’, well known in Scandinavia, the British
Isles, and elsewhere. Jón Árnason gives four other versions
(I 16-20; for one of them, see the next story, and for another, see
Craigie 143-5). He also has two stories about persons who refused
to help, or who helped inefficiently, and were punished for it
(J.A. I 21-8). The motif first appears in Iceland in the fourteenth-
century Gongu-Hrólfs saga, and becomes common from the end
of the sixteenth century.
The woman’s greeting to the elf on seeing him in the market
is here motivated by good manners; ‘thank you for last time’ is
an essential phrase on re-encountering one’s former host or
hostess.
Dr Skapti Semundsson
There was a man called Skapti Sæmundsson; his mother
was called Gudrid, and at the time when this story took
place they were living at Bondholl in Myrar, and Skapti was
only a young boy. When the weather was fine in summer,
he used to act as shepherd, or do jobs of that sort. One
spring, when he was somewhere between seven and nine
years old, he used to be sent to see to the lambs in the pens;
it is the usual custom in that district to go out to the sheep-
folds early in the morning to milk the ewes and let the lambs
out of the pens. Skapti was a very early riser and would get
up first thing in the morning to do this, and then when he
came back his parents would let him lie on his bed again
while his mother got on with preparing a meal.
One morning, as so often, when he had come in from the
sheep-folds and his mother was busy, he lay down on his
bed fully dressed, but took his shoes off; it was past six, but
before nine. Shortly afterwards, his mother saw him go past
the dairy door and along the path; she thought he couldn't
get to sleep and had gone out for some reason, so she paid
no particular attention. After a curiously long time had
gone by, she sees him coming back to the main building,
and thinks he has been out longer than usual. But she
thought no more about it till later, when she goes into the
main room, and Skapti is sleeping now, and his shoes are
lying at the foot of the bed just as she would expect, but he
had put his right hand outside the bedclothes, and there is
a great smear of dry blood running obliquely across the
knuckles. But she does not worry over it, for she sees that
the blood is dry.
As soon as he wakes, she asks how there comes to be
blood on his hand, and whether he had hurt himself. He
said no, and that he knew nothing about it, but then he
noticed that there was dry blood all over the palm of his
DR SKAPTI SAEMUNDSSON 21
hand too. So, as Skapti was a wise lad even at an early age, he
said, when he had sat silent for a while: ‘Perhaps there is
some connexion between this blood and my dream earlier
today.’
Then he tells how he thought that an elderly woman
wearing a kerchief came to him in his sleep and asked him
to go with her. He said he did so, and when he and she
had gone a little way beyond the homefield at Bondholl,
there in front of them was a small farmhouse which he did
not know; the woman asked him to step inside, for she
wanted to ask him to help her daughter, who was lying in
labour.
Skapti went indoors with her, and into the main room;
at one end there were three beds, but at the other only one,
and in this one lay a girl, and she was screaming. As soon as
he comes in there, the lad says he knows nothing about such
matters, being just a child. The older woman says there was
not much he need do. Then she takes hold of Skapti’s right
hand and lays it on the girl’s lower belly, and she is released
from her trouble so rapidly that she gives birth to her child
at once.
Then the older woman sees Skapti out and thanks him
warmly for his help, but says she is too poor to reward him
as much as would be right— But this I do say, says she,
‘that you will always have good luck as a healer.’ After which,
she and her farm vanished.
People then realized how the blood got on the boy’s hand,
and that this must have been an elf-woman. Her words were
thought to have come true, for Skapti was always considered
a lucky healer when he grew up, and when he was called
to a woman in childbirth he never failed to find a way to
help her. When Skapti was twenty-four he moved to
Reykjavik, and stayed there till the day of his death.
J.A. I 19-20. Skapti Sæmundsson lived from 1768 to 1821, and it

was his own son Skapti Skaptason who was Jón Arnason’s in-
formant, he having heard the story from his grandmother when

he was a child. A similar instance of this legend being used to
bolster the prestige of a doctor is recorded in R. Grant Stewart,
Popular Superstitions of the Highlands, 1823; a doctor then
practising in Strathspey used to claim that skill in midwifery
was a gift bestowed on his family ever since his great-
grandmother helped a fairy woman in childbirth.
Playing ‘Blind Beggar’

It happened on a certain farm that some children had gone
out to play beside a knoll; there was one little girl, and two
boys older than her. They saw a hole in the knoll, and then
this girl who was the youngest among them took it into her
head to stick her hand right inside the hole, and to say as a
joke, as children often do:
The old man’s blind, the old man’s blind,
Lay a little something in the old man’s hand!
Then a large gilded button for her apron was laid in the
child’s hand.
As soon as the other children saw this, they were jealous.
Then the eldest stuck his hand right in and said the same
as the youngest had said, and he expected that this would
get him some trinket at least as fine as she had got. But it
did not work out like that, for this boy received nothing
at all; and, what’s more, when he took his hand out of the
hole it had withered, and so it remained all his life.
J.A. I 28-9 (‘Legg í lófa karls, karls’), from Olafur Sveinsson of

Purkey. The game mentioned here is much the same as English
children’s ‘Open your mouth and shut your eyes, And you will
have a nice surprise’, offering similar opportunities for niceness
—or nastiness. This story is a variant of AT 508. ‘The Gifts of
the Little People’. Supernatural beings are always quick to punish
greed and jealousy; moreover, Icelandic elves resent ill-mannered
PLAYING “BLIND BEGGAR’ 23
intrusions on their privacy (J.A. I 4). The first child acted in
innocence, not realizing that the knoll was an elfs home; the
others knew perfectly well what it was, and their motives were
in any case unworthy. The same point is made in a recently
collected English variant from Somerset (Briggs 1970, I 279-80).
Lappa, the Elfin Cow
On a farm in the west, the cowman went out one winter

day soon after waking, as he usually did, to see to the cows
before the milkmaid went to them. When he went in, there
were four cows standing in the middle of the floor; he
assumed that these were the cows that ought to be in the
stalls, and that they had all broken loose. The man was hot-
tempered by nature, and would never stop to think when
he grew angry. So now he grips one cow roughly by the
ear, meaning to get her into a stall, but she was unwilling,
and in his sudden rage he bites her so hard on the backbone
that blood gushed out. But at this moment the girl who was
to do the milking came into the cow-house with a light and
asked what was going on, for she could hear the cowman
cursing, and a great commotion in the cow-house.
As soon as the light came into the cow-house, the man saw
that the cows were in their stalls where they ought to be, and
there were no more of them inside the building than there
ought to be, except for the one he was struggling with, and
which he had bitten in his rage; she made one too many.
But the other three were gone.
The girl asked what it all meant. He said he did not
know, and told her what he had found when he first came
into the cow-house, how he had thought it was his own
cows standing in the middle, and that they had all broken
loose; how he had lost his temper with them and seized the
one he was still holding now, meaning to get her into a
24. THE HIDDEN PEOPLE
stall, but had not managed to do so; but into the stalls
themselves, said he, he had not gone.
‘You were wrong to act as you did,’ said the girl, ‘and Im
afraid no good will come to you from this.’
Then she goes indoors and tells the farmer, and he thought
what had happened was most unlucky, and so now he goes
out to the cow-house and scolds the cowman. He also wanted
to turn the cow out, but she would not go away, so after a
while she was put into an empty stall. This cow had her
udder full, and a big one it was; he told the girl to milk her,
but she could not get much out of her. Then the farmer's
wife tried, and the same thing happened, and the cow
turned savage; for two days this went on, and they could not
get much out of her.
Towards evening of the second day that the cow had
been there, the farmer’s wife was still in the cow-house after
the rest had gone in, and she had no light with her. When
she had been there a while, she heard someone come in at
the door and pass through the cow-house to the stall where
this cow was, and then come back and out again, but she
herself went back to the house. Later, at milking-time, the
housewife went to the cow-house herself, and when she
went to milk this newly-arrived cow, the cow behaved just
as she had done before.
Then the woman heard a voice at the cow-house window:
There, there, Lappa dear,
Your poor dugs are sore, I fear;
That's because the women here
Never stroke you, Lappa dear.
Then the woman began to stroke the cow and call her by
her own name as she heard her named in the rhyme spoken
by the elf-woman at the window. She could milk her then,
for she stood quiet, and she got a lot of milk from her. It is
not said that any harm came to her or her husband, but the
cowman had little luck. Many cows are descended from this
LAPPA, THE ELFIN COW 25
one, and it was commonly said of them that they were

‘of Lappa’s breed’.
J.A. I 38-9 (Ló, ló, min Lappa’), from Ólafur Sveinsson of Purkey.
A variant of this tale and its verse was included in a Latin
work by the Rev. Þorsteinn Björnsson (d. 1675); it has many
parallels in Norway (ML 6055, ‘The Fairy Cows’). The idea
that an elfin cow can be captured by drawing blood recurs in
a closely similar tale (J.A. I 87, tr. Craigie 156-7); mermen too
have fine cows, and these are to be captured by breaking a
bladder on their muzzles (see pp. 94-6). Fairy cattle, often
associated with water, are well known in British and Irish
traditions (Briggs 1967, 77-8).
The Changeling who Stretched

At one time two households shared the farm of Sogn in
Kjos, and one of these two men had a son who was thought
to be not quite right in the head. He never learnt to speak
or to use his hands properly or do anything active, but lay
in bed all day, though as regards food he was as greedy as
could be. People rather suspected that the lad was a
changeling, but for a long time it was not certain.
When this lad had reached the usual age of Confirmation,
it so happened one winter day that everyone had left the
house to see to the cattle, except for this boy, who was
lying on his bed as usual, and the mother of the other family,
who was lying ill in bed with a child at her side, and this was
all in the one room. After the others had gone out, the sick
woman heard how the boy was seized with such a fit of
yawning that she began to feel rather worried, and the
noises he was making gave her the shivers. Next, she hears
him begin to jerk about on his bed and stretch himself; then
all at once she realizes that he is standing up in bed and
stretching and stretching himself, till he is touching the

roof-beams. It was a room with raised floor-boards, and with
short cross-ties high up between the rafters.
Then his fit of yawning comes on him once more, and for
a while he stands leaning his face against one of the cross-
ties, and this tie-beam was right inside his open mouth as he
gaped and yawned, for he opened his jaws so wide that
the upper jaw rested on top of the beam and the lower
appeared below it. At the same time he grew so abominably
ugly and loathsome to look at that the woman was scared
to death and screamed with terror at seeing him, and at
realizing that she was alone in the room with him—and
indeed she remained easily frightened for a long while
after this unlucky sight.
But as soon as the woman screamed, he collapsed as if
he’d been shot, and flung himself back down into his bed
and turned back to what he had been before, before the
people came back indoors from the cattle-sheds. However,
after this everyone thought there was no doubt at all that
this boy was a changeling.
JÁ. I 41-2 (Umskiptingurinn í Sogni), from Ragnheid and

Ragnhild Einarsdætr (b. 1829). This tale shows well how the
concept of ‘changeling’ could become attached to a mental
defective, and the way in which a sick and easily frightened
woman's nightmare or feverish illusion could be taken for reality.
The form her ‘experience’ takes can be parallelled in legends
of some other Scandinavian and Slavonic areas, for instance in
Swedish tales of changelings who, thinking themselves alone,
leave their cradles, grow huge, and try to steal food or to rape
a girl (Hartmann, 80-1).
‘Let Us Take Him!’
Two elfin women once went to a farm to leave a changeling

there. They came to where the baby they wished to take
‘LET US TAKE HIM!’ 27
was; it was lying in a cradle, and there was nobody nearby
except for another child, which was two years old.
The younger and less cautious of the elf-women goes
straight up to the cradle and says:
Let us take him, take him, do!
Then the elder says:
We cant, for that would harm us too:
A Cross above, beneath, they drew;
And by him sits a child of two,
And he will speak of what we do.
At that they went off without doing anything, partly because
of the Cross marks which had been made over the cradle
and also beneath the baby before it was laid there, and
partly also because of the two-year-old child who was sitting
by the cradle, and who later told everyone what had
happened.
J.A. I 43-4; a tale common throughout Iceland. The protective

devices mentioned here, the crosses and the presence of an
older child, were commonly believed in and practised; a third
device was to lay in the cradle a Bible open at the Gospel of
St. John. Once a baby had cut its first tooth, it was usually
thought to be safe from being exchanged for a changeling (but
see p. 29), though elves might still try to lure it away (see
pp. 31-3).
Making a Changeling
Kristin Finnsdottir, who lived at Minni-Thvera around
1830-40, used to tell a story about her mother, who had
the second sight. The story was that she was once out in
the meadows with her own mother, Kristin’s grandmother,
and saw two women coming down from the fells and leading
between them an old man, who was carrying something.
When they got nearer they untied this bundle from the
old man’s back, and then she saw that it was a cradle with
a red cot-cover over it. After this, they seized the old man
and beat him, so that he began to get smaller and smaller,
and turned into a little boy. Then they took him again and
kneaded him, till he had become as small as a little baby.
Then they laid him in the cradle, carried it between them,
and so headed straight for the farm, with cradle and
changeling and all.
The girl told her mother what she had seen, and the
mother at once turned and ran home, and reached her baby’s
cradle (which she had left standing outside in front of the
house) before the women of the Hidden People got to it.
But as soon as the Hidden Women saw this, they took the
child they had with them out of its cradle, and smacked it
and slapped it and drove it away from them. At that, their
old man began to grow and grow again at a furious pace,
until he was just as he had been originally; and off he went
with them into the fells, and there they all disappeared.
JÁ. I 44-5 (Barnsvaggan á Minni-Þverá), from an account written

in 1848 by the Rev. Jón Jónsson Norðmann on information given
by Kristin Fornadóttir. As elves were thought of as the same
size as human adults, it is only logical that the wizened, toothless
old elves who were to be left as changelings should be reduced
in size by some means; this too is why changelings were thought
to need to stretch from time to time. The point about the red
coverlet is that red is a typical fairy colour in Iceland; so is blue.
This story, like the next, stresses the danger of leaving a small
child unattended even for a few moments; fairy beliefs could
often serve to reinforce good principles of mothercraft and
housekeeping (cf. Thomas, 612).
Father of Eighteen Elves

On a farm one summer it happened that everybody was out
in the fields except the mistress herself, who stayed at home
FATHER OF EIGHTEEN ELVES 29
to mind the house, with her son, who was three or four years
old. This boy had grown and thriven well up to this time;
he was talking already, was intelligent, and seemed a most
promising child. Now, as the woman had various chores to
do besides minding her child, she had to turn her back on
him for a little while and go down to a stream near the house
to wash some churns. She left him in the doorway, and there
is nothing to tell until she came back after a brief while. As
soon as she spoke to him, he shrieked and howled in a more
vicious and ugly way than she ever expected, for up till
then he had been a very placid child, affectionate and like-
able, but now all she got was squalling and shrieks.
This went on for some time; the child never spoke one word,
but was so terribly wilful and moody that the woman did not
know what to do about the change in him; moreover, he
stopped growing, and began to look quite like an imbecile.
The mother was very upset over it all, and she decides to
go and see a neighbour of hers who was thought to be a
wise woman and to know a great deal, and she tells her
her troubles. The neighbour questions her closely, asking
how long it is since the child began to be so unmanageable,
and how she thought the change had begun. The mother
tells her just what had happened.
When this wise neighbour had heard the whole story, she
says: “Don’t you think, my dear, that the child is a
changeling? It’s my opinion that he was exchanged while
you left him alone in the doorway.’
T don’t know, says the mother. “Can't you teach me some
way to get at the truth?’
‘So I can,’ says the other. “You must leave the child by
himself some time, and arrange for something really extra-
ordinary to happen in front of him, and then he will say
something when he sees there is no one near by. But you
must listen secretly to know what he says, and if the boy’s
words seem at all odd or suspicious, whip him unmercifully
until something happens.’
With this, they broke off their talk, and the mother thanked
her neighbour for her good advice, and went home.
As soon as she gets back, she sets down a tiny pot in the
middle of the kitchen floor; then she takes several broom
handles and ties them end to end until the top end is poking
right up the kitchen chimney, and to the bottom end she ties
the porridge stirring-stick, and this she sets upright in the
little pot. As soon as she had rigged up this contraption in
the kitchen, she fetched the child in and left him alone
there; then she left the room, but stood listening outside,
where she could peep in through the crack of the door.
She had not been long gone when she sees the child start
waddling round and round the pot with the porridge-stick in
it and studying it carefully; and in the end the child says:
‘Tm old enough now, as my whiskers show, and I’m a father
with eighteen children of my own in Elfland, and yet never
in my life have I seen so long a pole in so small a pot!’
At that, the woman runs back in with a good birch, seizes
the changeling, and beats him long and unmercifully, and
then he howls most horribly.
When she had been whipping him for some while, she sees
a woman who was a stranger to her coming into the kitchen
with a little boy in her arms, and a sweet pretty child he is.
This stranger gives the child a loving look, and says to
the mother: “We don't act fairly by one another; I cuddle
your child, but you beat my husband.’
Saying this, she puts down this child, the housewife’s
own son, and leaves him there; but she takes her old man off
with her, and the two of them disappear. But the boy grew
up with his own mother, and turned out a fine man.
J.A. I 42-3; a story common throughout Iceland. This is the wide-

spread European tale (ML 5085, “The Changeling’) of a
changeling startled into revealing his age by some grotesque
device (e.g. boiling water in eggshells or making a monstrous
sausage), and subsequently driven off by harsh treatment. The
FATHER OF EIGHTEEN ELVES 31
huge porridge-stirrer is a popular motif in Norwegian variants,

while the elf-woman's reproach is a standard feature in Denmark
— 1 have not been as brutal to your child as you to mine’, she
says to the human mother, as the latter roasts the changeling on
a hot stove. The changeling's age here is minimal when compared
with the long time-span calculated by the growth and decay of
forests in some versions, or by reincarnations in others; one
Danish changeling says, ‘I am so old that I have been suckled
by eighteen mothers. For general discussions, see Hartland
93-134, Hartmann 76-86, Briggs 1967, 115-19.
The Child and the Elf- Woman
At Heidarbot in the district of Thingey, it happened one

evening that while a woman was out in the cow-house one
of her children left the house, meaning to follow her there.
As soon as the child goes outside, he sees her standing in
the flagged courtyard; she beckons him in silence, tapping
her thigh to call him, and gently, very gently, she walks
away, tapping her thigh and beckoning him to follow. There
are some sharp crags above that farm, which are called
Stoplar, The Steeples’. Towards these crags the woman
goes, and lures the child to go with her; then she disappears
into the Steeples with him, for she was not the child's true
mother, but an elf.
Now the next thing to say is that the woman comes out
of the cow-house, finds her child is missing, and asks where
it is—but the people indoors said he was out in the cow-
house with his mother. The parents were horrified; men
gathered and went searching, but he was not to be found,
wherever they searched.
At Sand there lived a man named Arnor, who was believed
to be a magician. The mother went to him to ask advice, and
arrived late in the day. Arnor asked her to stay the night,
and she agreed; he asked her at what time the child had
disappeared, and she told him. So that evening, at about the

same hour, Arnor takes a knife and cuts three triangular
bits of board from the flooring of the main room. But as he
was cutting the last one, a loud crash was heard. Then he
put the pieces back in their places, and told the woman she
need not be afraid to sleep soundly that night, for her child
had come back.
Next day she went home, and her child had indeed come
back. Something which everyone thought strange was that
one of his cheeks was black and blue, and that afterwards
this bruise never faded away.
So now the child was asked where he had been, and he
told them about the woman he thought was his mother, and
how he had followed her, crying and calling ‘Mummy!’,
until she came to the foot of the Steeples, when she caught
him in her arms and carried him inside the Steeples, where
she tried to treat him kindly, but he could see now that it
was not his mother. He ate no food in her home, for to him
it all looked red. But on the evening when Arnor cut the
floorboards, three stones came crashing down from the
mountain, all three triangular. At the third one, the elf-
woman picked the child up; she was very angry, and she
ran all the way back to the farm with him, and at parting she
gave him a good slap on the cheek—and that was the loud
crash that had been heard after the third piece of board
was cut out. Because of this, one cheek of his was black and
blue.
The child’s name was Gudmund, and later he lived in
the North Quarter; he had a daughter called Elizabeth, who
married and raised a family in Eyjafjord.
JÁ. I 48-9; a story current in Eyjafjörður. There are many

Icelandic tales, of varying degrees of elaboration, about children
and young people taken away by elves and subsequently re-
covered (J.A. I 45-55), and such beliefs go back at least to the
sixteenth century (Sveinsson 1940, 77-9). Children lost and found
THE CHILD AND THE ELF-WOMAN 33
again in this way are often said to have been found in some
highly inacessible spot among the mountains. The taboo on
Otherworld food is a recurrent motif; so is the blow leaving an
indelible mark. Abducted adults sometimes return on their own,
but sometimes need to be rescued by someone with supernatural
powers. In one such tale a girl is summoned home by a bishop
and then held firmly in a strong man’s grip despite her pleas
and ravings (J.A. I 57-9, tr. Powell and Magnússon 46-9); in
another, a man begs a priest to call his daughter back, but
changes his mind when he sees in a vision that her face is now
blue (J.A. I 56-7, tr. Craigie 150-1). The girls carried off in this
way may later send for a human midwife, or for a priest to
baptize their half-elfin baby, or may be brought home for burial
after dying in childbirth (J.A. I 54, 73-7).
Similar abduction tales are common in Norwegian and Swedish
lore; the process is there called bergtagning, ‘taking into the
mountains’, and the victims are children, women soon after
childbirth, and marriageable young men and women whose work
takes them near the mountains, such as woodcutters, charcoal
burners, and dairymaids on the upland pastures. Those who
return often show physical or mental damage (Hartmann, 98 ff.).
The belief that children might be carried off for a few days by
benevolent fairies was still strong in the Faroes in the 1940s
(Williamson, 249).
The seer mentioned in the present tale is a real person,
Arnór or Arnþór Ólafsson, who lived in the seventeenth century.
Several other anecdotes tell how he tried to recover children from
the elves, how he acted as midwife to an elf-woman, how
another elf-woman advised and protected him, and how the
elves at last got his body (J.A. I 603-5); in one of these tales he
is said to have caused a rock-fall to punish elves who had
abducted a child. He is also said to have outwitted a ghost and
pinned it under a stake (J.A. I 299).
The Church Builder at Reynir
There once lived a certain farmer at Reynir in Myrdal. It

was his task to build a church there, but he had met with
delays in getting timber, and now haymaking time had come

but no carpenters had been found, so he began to fear that
the church would not be up before winter.
One day he was strolling gloomily through his meadow,
when a man came up and offered to build the church for
him; the farmer was to tell him what his name was before the
work was finished, or else the farmer was to hand over his
only son, who was six. They struck the bargain on these
terms.
The stranger set to work; he never concerned himself with
anything but the building, and was a man of very few words,
and indeed the work went ahead so remarkably fast that the
farmer saw it would be finished at the same time as the
haymaking. Then the farmer grew wretched, but there was
nothing he could do.
In autumn, when the church was almost complete, the
farmer wandered out beyond his meadow, and threw him-
self down on some knoll out there. Then, from inside the
knoll, he heard a verse which a mother was singing to her
child and this was it:
He's coming home from Reynir,
Finn, your own daddy;
He's bringing you a playmate,
A fine little laddy.
This verse was repeated over and over again.
The farmer now felt far more cheerful, and went back
to the church. There the builder was busy shaping the last
plank above the altar, and was about to nail it in place.
The farmer said: ‘You'll soon have finished, my friend
Finn!’
The builder was so taken aback by this remark that he
flung the plank down and disappeared, and he has never
been seen again since.
JÁ. 1 58, from the Rev. Skúli Gíslason (d. 1888), from a tale cur-
rent in southern and eastern Iceland. This is ML 7065, ‘Building
THE CHURCH BUILDER AT REYNIR 35
a Church: the Name of the Master Builder’. It is less common

in Iceland than in Norway and Sweden, where the villain is
usually an ogre who demands the sun and moon and/or the
hero’s eyes or life; in Norway the hero often is St Olav (Craigie
390-2, Christiansen 1964, 5-7). The earliest instance of the central
motif in Scandinavia is the myth in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda
(c. 1220) about a giant who offered to build Asgard in return for
the sun and moon and the goddess Freyja, but was foiled when
Loki lured away his horse, which dragged the stones for him.
A challenge to name-guessing (Motif H 521) is also the leading
feature of the international wonder-tale AT 500, ‘Tom Tit Tot’
or ‘Rumpelstiltskin’.
The Girl at the Shieling

There was once a priest in the North Quarter who had
brought up a little girl as his own. The summer pastures
belonging to his farm were high up in the fells, and he
always sent his sheep and cattle there in the summer with
the herdsmen, and with a woman to keep house for them.
When his foster-daughter grew up, she became the house-
keeper at this shieling, and was as good at this as at
everything—for she was a skilful girl, and beautiful, and
had many accomplishments. Many well-to-do men asked for
her hand, for she was thought the best match in the North
Quarter, but she refused all offers. One day the priest spoke
seriously to his adopted daughter and urged her to marry,
saying he would not always be there to look after her, for
he was an old man. She took it very badly, and said she had
no fancy for such things, and was very happy as she was,
and that there was no luck in marriage. So they said no more
about it, for the time being.
As that winter wore on, people thought the girl was
getting rather plump below the belt, and the plumpness
grew more and more marked as time went on. In spring
D
her foster-father spoke to her again, and urged her to tell
him how things were with her, and said she must surely be
with child, and should not go up to the shieling that summer.
She strongly denied that she was pregnant, and said there
was nothing the matter with her, and that she would see to
her housekeeping that summer just as before. When the
pastor saw he was getting nowhere, he let her have her
way, but he told the men who were to be in the shieling
never to go out at any time leaving her quite alone, and this
they promised faithfully. So then they all moved up to
the shieling, and the girl was as merry as could be.
So time passed, and nothing noteworthy happened. The
men at the shieling kept strict watch on their housekeeper
and never left her alone. One evening it happened that a
shepherd found that all the sheep and cows were missing,
and so every living soul left:the shieling except the house-
keeper, who stayed behind alone. The search-party searched
very late and did not find the beasts till almost morning, for
it was very misty. When they came home, the housekeeper
was up and about, and she was brisker in her movements and
lighter on her feet than she had usually been. The men
also saw, as time went by, that her plumpness had lessened,
though they could not tell how, and so they thought that it
must have been some other kind of swelling, and not
pregnancy.
So home they went from the shieling in autumn, the whole
company of men and beasts. The priest saw then that the
housekeeper was far slimmer in the waist than she had been
the previous winter, so then he went to the men who had
been at the shieling and asked whether they had disobeyed
his orders and left the girl quite alone. They told him the
truth, that they had once all left her to go out searching
for their beasts, as these had all gone missing. The pastor
grew angry, and wished bad luck on all who had disregarded
his orders, for he said he had suspected as much as soon as
the girl went off to the shieling in spring.
THE GIRL AT THE SHIELING 37
Next winter a man came to ask the hand of the priest’s

foster-daughter, and she was not at all pleased about it, but
the priest told her she would not avoid marrying him, for
he was a fine man and everyone spoke well of him. He had
inherited his father’s farm that spring, and his mother ran
the house for him. So this marriage was settled, whether the
girl liked or not, and their wedding was held next spring at
the priest’s house.
But before the woman put her bridal dress on, she said
to her betrothed: “Before you go ahead and marry me against
my wishes, I lay down one condition—that you never take
strangers in to lodge for the winter, without first telling me,
or else things will go wrong for you.’ And this the man
promised.
So the wedding feast was held, and she went home with
her husband and took over the running of his home, but her
heart was not in it, for she was never cheerful or happy-
looking, though her husband pampered her and would not
have her working her fingers to the bone.
Every summer she used to stay at home when the others
were out haymaking, and her mother-in-law would stay to
keep her company and to see to the housekeeping with her.
Between whiles they would sit knitting or spinning, and the
older woman would tell her stories to amuse her. One day
when the old woman had ended a story, she told her
daughter-in-law that she ought to tell a story now. But she
said that she did not know any. The other pressed her hard,
and so she promised to tell her the only one she knew, and
so she began her tale:
‘There was once a girl on a farm who was housekeeper
at the shieling. Not far from the shieling there were great
rocky scarps, and she often went walking near them. There
was a man of the Hidden Folk who lived inside these
scarps, and they soon got acquainted and grew to love one
another dearly. He was so good and kind to the girl that he
would refuse her nothing, and would follow her wishes
in everything. But the upshot was that when some time had
gone by the girl became pregnant; the head of her house-
hold accused her of it when she was about to go to the
shieling the following summer, but the girl denied it, and
went to the shieling as usual. But he ordered the others who
were to be at the shieling never to go off and leave her alone,
and they promised. They did all leave her, however, to
search for their cattle, and then the pangs of childbirth
came on her. The man who had been her lover came then,
and sat beside her, and he cut the cord and washed the baby
and swaddled it. Then, before he went off with the child,
he gave her a drink from a flask, and it was the sweetest
drink which I ever— at that moment the ball of knitting
wool slipped from her hand, so she bent down for it, and
corrected herself — which she had ever tasted, that’s what I
meant to say, and so she was well again in a moment, after
all her pains. From that hour they never saw one another
again, she and the man of the Hidden Folk; but she was
married off to another man, much against her will, for she
pined bitterly for her first lover, and from that time she
never knew one happy day. And so ends this story.’
The mother-in-law thanked her for the story, and took
good care to remember it. And so things went on for some
time, and nothing notable happened, and the woman went
on being sad, in her usual way, but was good to her husband
all the same.
One summer when the mowing was almost done, two
men came up to the farmer; one was tall, the other short,
and both wore broad-brimmed hats so that one could hardly
see their faces. The taller one spoke up, asking the farmer
to take them in for the winter. He said he never took anyone
in without his wife knowing, and that he would go and
speak to her before promising them lodgings. The tall one
said this was a ridiculous thing to say, that such a fine,
masterful man was so henpecked that he couldn’t make up
his mind on a little matter like giving two men bed and board
THE GIRL AT THE SHIELING 39
for one winter. So they settled the matter, and the farmer
promised these men their winter quarters without asking
his wife’s leave.
That evening the strangers arrive at the farmer’s house,
and he assigns them their quarters in a building on the
outskirts of the farm, and tells them to stay there. Then he
goes to his wife, and tells her how matters stand. She took it
very badly, saying that this had been the first favour she had
ever asked him, and it would probably be the last, and that
as he had taken them in on his own, he could see to every-
thing they might need all winter on his own; and so the
conversation ended.
Now all was quiet until one day that autumn, when the
farmer and his wife were meaning to go to Holy
Communion. It was the custom in those days, as it long was
in some parts of Iceland, that those who mean to go to
Communion should go to all the people in the house, kiss
them and beg their forgiveness if they had offended them.
Up till then, the mistress of the house had always avoided the
lodgers and not let them see her, and so on this occasion
likewise she did not go to greet them.
She and her husband set out, but as soon as they were
beyond the fence, he said to her: ‘You did of course greet
our lodgers, didn’t you?
She said no.
He told her not to commit such a sin as to go off without
greeting them.
‘You show me in many ways that you care nothing for
me, said she. ‘First by the fact that you took these men in
without my leave, and now again when you want to force
me to kiss them. All the same, I will obey; but youll be
sorry for it, for my life is at stake, and yours too, very
likely.’
Now she turns back homewards, and is a very long time
gone. Now the farmer too goes back home, and goes to
where he expects the lodgers to be, and there he finds them,
in their own quarters. He sees the taller lodger and the

mistress of the house both lying on the floor dead, in one
another’s arms, and they had died of grief. The other was
standing by them, weeping, when the farmer came in, but he
soon disappeared, and nobody knew where he went.
From the story which the wife had told her mother-in-law,
people felt sure that the tall stranger must have been the
elf she had made love with in the shieling, and the small
one who disappeared, her son and his.
JA. I 64-7, from Helga Benediktsdóttir (d. 1855). Two variants

of this tale are in J.A. I 67-70 and 70-2, the latter tr. in Powell and
Magnússon 58-65. It also appears in Óláfs saga Þórhallasonar
(c. 1788), by Eiríkur Laxdal. Pathetic love between a girl and
an elf is the subject of the sixteenth-century poem Kötludraumur
and lullaby Ljúflingsmál; the latter is said to have been taught
by an elf to a human girl who had borne his child but could
not hush its weeping. Ljúflingur is a synonym for ‘elf’, and is
related to ljúfur, ‘beloved’, ‘darling’. That elves should try to
trick girls on lonely mountain pastures into marrying them is a
common theme in Norwegian and Swedish tales, but there the
attempt is almost always foiled (ML 6005, “The Interrupted
Fairy Wedding’). The tender pathos of the Icelandic tales, with
their stress on the girl’s enduring love for the elf and her
conflicting loyalties, gives them a highly individual tone. The
nearest English equivalents are tales like ‘Cherry of Zennor’, in
which a human servant girl loves her fairy master, and pines
when he dismisses her (Briggs 1971, I 199-202, 234, 244-7).
The Red-Headed Whale
One day some men from Sudurnes rowed out to the Geirfugla
Skerry to trap auks there, but when they were wanting to
set off for home once more, one man was missing. They
hunted all over the skerry for him, but he was not to be
THE RED-HEADED WHALE 41
found, so his companions went home leaving matters as

they stood.
A year later, the men from Sudurnes went again to the
skerry to trap birds, and then they found the man; he was
walking to and fro on the skerry, as cheerful as could be.
Some elves had lured the man to them by magic and kept
him among them for a year, and had treated him well;
they had wanted him to stay longer, but he had not wished
to. Now the fact of the matter was that an elf-woman was
with child by him, and that he had got permission to
leave the skerry and go home on the condition that he
promised to arrange for the child to be baptized as soon as
it was brought to a church. The woman said she would bring
it to Hvalsnes Church, for that was the man's parish church.
So now he sailed back to the mainland with those men from
Sudurnes, and everyone was glad to see him again.
So now time passed, and nothing worth mentioning hap-
pened. Then one Sunday when people came to Hvalsnes for
the service, there was a cradle standing outside the church
door, and a small baby in it. Over the cradle lay a coverlet,
very beautiful and delicately worked, and woven of some
unknown cloth; and at the foot of the cradle was a slip of
paper with these words written on it: He who is the father
of this child will see to it that it is baptized.
The people were all astonished at this event, but no one
would acknowledge that he was the father or claim the
child as his. The priest had his suspicions about the man who
had been missing for a whole year, for he thought the
present affair was no stranger than the idea that a man
could stay alive out on the skerry, and so he thought that
this man be the child's father, or, at the least, must know
something about it. But the man replied gruffly that he was
not the child’s father, and did not care in the least what
became of it.
While they were still arguing, up came a tall, stately
woman. She was extremely angry, and snatching the coverlet
from the cradle she flung it in through the church door,

saying: ‘The church must not lose its dues!’ By this act
she gave the coverlet to the church, and it has been used
ever since as an altar-cloth for Hvalsnes Church, where it
is regarded as a very precious treasure.
Then she turned to the man and said: “This do I say
and this curse do I lay: you shall turn into the most vicious
whale in the sea, and shall destroy many ships!’
After which the woman disappeared, and so did the
cradle with the baby in it, and nobody ever found out any
more about them, but it was the general opinion that this
must have been the elf-woman from Geirfugla Skerry, and
that the man’s own story showed that it was so.
But soon after the woman vanished, the man she had
cursed went mad and went rushing off. He ran down to the
sea and jumped over the cliff called Stakksgnypa, which is
between Keflavik and Leira. Then all at once he turned into
the most vicious whale, and was known as Red-Head from
then on. He was very evil and destructive. He drowned
nineteen boatloads of men between Akranes and
Seltjarnarnes, where he was always lurking out in the open
sea. Among others, Red-Head drowned the son of the priest
of Saurbce on Hvalfjardarstrand and the second son of the
priest of Saurbæ on Kjalarnes. These two priests joined forces,
for they took the loss of their sons very much to heart, and
their chants drew Red-Head all the way up the fjord which
separates the two Saurbæs, which ever since then has been
called Hvalfjord, “Whale Fjord’, and drew him right up into
the lake up on Botnsheidi, which ever since then has been
called Hvalvatn, “Whale Lake’. Then there came a great
earthquake all round that district, because of which the
moors round Hvalvatn are called the Quaking Moors. People
have thought there was proof that all this really did
happen in the fact that at one time one could see a whale’s
bones beside this lake, and pretty big ones too. But nobody
was ever injured by Red-Head after this.
THE RED-HEADED WHALE 43
J.A. I 83-4 (Rauðhöfði); a story current round Sudurness. For
two close variants, see J.A. I 84-9; one is tr. in Powell and
Magnusson 65-72. These and two other related tales (J.A. I 89-
93) centre upon an elf-woman’s wish that her half-human child
be baptized, and her anger against its father; in each case, a fine
cope or altar-cloth in the local church is cited as evidence for
the tale. Stories of this type were known to Arngrímur Jónsson
the Learned (d. 1648), though he refused to credit them. A
single parallel is known from Norway, and a few from Scotland
(Christiansen 1959, 20-1). Tales in which an abducted human girl
sends for a priest to baptize her half-elfin baby (J.A. 1 54-5) show a
similar preocupation with the relationship of elves to Christian-
ity and their prospects of salvation; the theme is reflected in
several international story-patterns (cf. ML 5050, “The Fairies’
Prospect of Salvation’, and 5055, ‘Fairies and the Christian Faith’).
The Geirfugla (‘Great Auk’) Skerries are off the south-west of
Iceland; heavy and almost continuous surf surrounds them, so
that people seeking sea-birds or their eggs could only rarely
land there, and might have to leave at short notice; to be
marooned there meant certain death.
The curse uttered by the elf-woman, an álög, is far commoner
in Icelandic tales than in the rest of Scandinavia; it is almost
certainly a motif borrowed from Ireland (for it has always been
frequent in Celtic tales), and is popular in Icelandic sagas from
the fourteenth century on. Monster whales play a great part in
Icelandic lore (J.A. I 628-32); they were said to be consciously
malevolent, and huge enough to take a whole ship in their
jaws. The powers of certain persons, particularly priests and
poets, to kill, summon or expel various noxious creatures, is a
very common subject in Icelandic lore (cf. pp. 178-9).
Hild, Queen of the Elves

Once, there was a farmer living on a certain homestead up
among the mountains, but what his name was, or the name
of the farm, the story does not tell. He was unmarried, but
he had a housekeeper called Hild, and nobody knew any-

thing about her family. She had complete charge of all
household matters there, and everything she tackled turned
out well. She was well liked by all the farmhands, and by
the farmer himself too, though as it happens they never
fell in love; she was a placid woman, rather reserved, but
pleasant to deal with all the same.
The farmer’s affairs flourished except as regards one point,
which was that he found it hard to get shepherds, though he
was good at rearing sheep and thought his farm was crippled
if it had no shepherd. It was not that the farmer was harsh
to his shepherds, nor yet that the housekeeper failed to
provide what she should for them; the root of the trouble
was that they never lived to be old, but were always found
dead in bed on Christmas morning.
In those days it was the custom of the country to have
a Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and to go to church
for this was just as much part of observing the festival as
going on Christmas Day itself. But out on the hill farms
which were far from a church it was no easy matter to go to
this service and be there in good time unless one set out
from home before the shepherds on such farms could get
in from their work. However, on this farm the shepherds
did not have to guard the house, although it was always
customary for someone to do so on Christmas Eve and New
Years Eve while the rest were at church, because ever since
Hild came to the farm she had always offered to do this her-
self, and at the same time she would see about everything
needed for the festival, food and all; she would stay up so
far into the night working at all this, that often the people
would have come back from their church service and have
gone to bed and to sleep before she went to her bed.
After this had been going on for some years, with the
farmer’s shepherds all coming to a sudden end on Christmas
Eve, it gave rise to so much gossip in the district that the
farmer had great difficulty in hiring anyone for the work,
HILD, QUEEN OF THE ELVES 45
and the more men died, the worse it got. However, neither
he nor his servants were under any suspicion of having
caused the shepherds’ deaths, for they had all died without
a wound. Finally the farmer said he would no longer burden
his conscience by hiring shepherds for certain death, and
as for what became of his stock of sheep, he would have to
leave that to fate.
One day, after he had come to this decision and had
quite made up his mind to take no one else into his house-
hold, there came a bold, tough-looking man who offered to
take service with him.
The farmer said: ‘I don't need your services, so I don't
want to take you on.’
The stranger said: ‘Have you hired a shepherd for your
farm next winter?’
The farmer said he had not, and had no intention of
ever doing so again—You must have heard what fearful fate
all my shepherds have met with up to now.’
Tve heard about that,’ said the stranger, but their doom
won't stop me looking after your sheep, if youll take me
on.
So, as he insisted, the farmer gave in to him and hired him
as shepherd. So then time went by, and the farmer and the
shepherd got on well with one another, and the others all
liked him too, for he was a pleasant fellow to deal with,
though he was harsh and fierce enough if there was need
for it.
Nothing worth mentioning happened now till Christmas,
when, as usual, the farmer and all his people went to church
on Christmas Eve, except for the housekeeper, who stayed
indoors alone, and the shepherd, who was out with the
sheep; the farmer went off leaving her and him behind, each
busy in his own way. So the evening wore on till the
shepherd came home as usual; he ate his evening meal, and
then went to his bed and lay down. It struck him that it
would be wiser to stay awake than to sleep, in case some-
thing should happen, though he was not in the least afraid,
and so he lay awake. When the night was far gone, he heard
the others come home from church, take a bite to eat, and
go to sleep. He was still none the wiser; but when they were
all asleep, as he supposed, he felt his own strength beginning
to drain away, as one might well expect in a man tired by
his day’s work. He thought he would find himself in trouble
if sleep overcame him now, so he fought with all his strength
to keep alert.
A little time passed, and then he heard someone come
up to his bed, and he thought he could make out that it was
Hild the housekeeper who was up and about. He pretended
to be fast asleep, and felt that she was busy fixing something
in his mouth; he realized that it was a magic bridle, but he
let her put it on him. As soon as she had bridled him she led
him out by the easiest way, got on his back, and rode as
hard as she could till she reached a place which looked to
him like some sort of deep pit or cleft in the earth. There she
dismounted beside a rock and slackened the reins, and
having done so disappeared from his view into the cleft.
He thought it would be a great pity, and very stupid too, to
lose sight of Hild without finding out what became of her.
However, he found he could not get far with the bridle on,
there was such witchcraft in it, so he hit on the trick of
rubbing his head against the rock till he got the bridle off,
and leaving it there, and then he leapt down the cleft in
which Hild had disappeared.
Before he had gone far down the cleft, he found he could
see Hild going ahead; she had reached a beautiful smooth
plain, and was crossing it at a rapid pace. All this made
him feel sure that there was more to Hild than met the eye,
and that there were more tricks up her sleeve than one
might suppose in the human world up above. Also, he
realized that she would see him at once if he followed her
across the plain, so then he took a stone of invisibility which
he used to carry about with him, and held it in his left palm;
then he put his best foot forward, and ran after her as fast
as he could.
When he had gone a long way across this plain, he saw a
large and gorgeous hall, and Hild was heading straight up
the path towards it. He also saw a crowd of people come
out to meet her. Among them was one man who went ahead
of the others; he was by far the most richly dressed, and it
seemed to the shepherd that as Hild came up this man
greeted her as his wife and bade her welcome, while those
who were with him hailed her as their queen. With this
lordly man there were two children, already well grown,
and they welcomed her with great rejoicing as their mother.
When the whole company had greeted the queen, they
led her and the king into the hall, where she was welcomed
with great honour, dressed in royal robes, and her hands
loaded with gold rings. The shepherd followed the crowd
into the hall, always keeping as much out of everyone’s
way as he could, but managing to see all that went on.
In this hall he saw the most splendid and costly adornments
he had ever set eyes on; there were tables laid and food
served, and he was quite amazed at the whole display.
After a little, he saw Hild coming into the hall, and she was
dressed in the robes described already. The people went
to their appointed seats, and Hild took her place on the
highseat beside the king, while the rest of the court sat
on either hand, and so men feasted for some while. Then the
tables were cleared away and the lords and ladies began
to dance, those who wished, while others chose whatever
pleasures they preferred; but the king and queen talked
together, and the shepherd thought their talk seemed full
of both love and grief.
While they were talking, three children came up to them,
younger than the two who were mentioned earlier, and
these too greeted their mother. Queen Hild answered, and
lovingly too; she picked the youngest up and sat him on
her knee and looked tenderly at him, but he was restless
and pestered her with questions. So then the queen set him
down again, pulled a ring from her finger, and gave it to
him to play with; the child kept quiet then and played with
the ring for a while, but lost it on the floor in the end. The
shepherd was standing near by; he made a quick move,
seized the ring as it fell to the floor, slipped it on and kept it
carefully; nobody noticed him, but when the ring was
searched for, they all thought it odd that it could not be
found.
When the night was far gone, Queen Hild went to get
ready to leave; they all begged her to stay longer, and
were very sad when they saw her with her travelling clothes
on. The shepherd had noticed that in one corner of the
hall there sat an old woman, rather evil-looking; of all those
present, she was the only one who neither greeted Queen
Hild when she arrived nor bade her farewell.
When the king saw Hild in her travelling clothes, and
saw she would not stay for all his pleading and the pleading
of the rest, he went up to this old woman and said: “Take
back your curse, mother! Listen to my plea, so that my
queen need no longer live so far off, nor I have such few
short moments of joy with her as we have now.’
The old woman answered angrily: ‘My whole curse
stands. There is no chance that I will take it back.’
The king fell silent and returned sadly to the queen, put
his arms round her neck and kissed her and again asked
her tenderly not to go. The queen said she could not help
going, because of his mother’s curse; she also said that
they might very likely never see one another again, because
of the fearful fate that dogged her and the deaths that came
to pass through her, these deaths being now so many that
the secret would soon be out and she would have to pay the
penalty for these crimes, though she had been driven to
commit them against her own will.
While she was bewailing her unhappy lot, the shepherd,
seeing how matters stood, slipped out of the hall, made his
way back across the plain by the shortest route to the cleft,
and climbed straight up it. He put the stone of invisibility
back in his pocket, put on the bridle, and waited for Queen
Hild to come. Shortly afterwards she arrived, and very
downcast she was; she seated herself on his back once
more, and rode home. When she got there, she gently laid the
shepherd on his bed and took the bridle off him, then went to
her own bed and lay down to sleep. Although the shepherd
had been wide awake all the time, he pretended to be asleep,
so that Hild did not realize that he was not. But once she was
in bed, he had no need to be on guard, so he fell sound asleep
and slept as usual until day.
Next morning the farmer was the first man up, for he was
anxious for news of the shepherd; he was preparing himself,
not for Christmas joy, but for the grief of finding him dead
in bed like his predecessors. So the farmer dressed, roused
the others of the house, went to the shepherd’s bed, and ran
his hands over him. He found then that this shepherd was
alive; he rejoiced with his whole heart and thanked God for
His mercy. The shepherd woke up, hale and hearty, and
dressed; while he was doing so, the farmer asked him
whether anything noteworthy had happened to him during
the night.
‘No,’ said the shepherd, ‘but I dreamed a very curious
dream.’
“What was the dream?’ said the farmer.
The shepherd began his story at the point when Hild
came to his bed and put the bridle on him, and so went
over the whole affair point by point, as well as he could.
When he had ended the tale, all were silent except Hild;
she said: ‘Everything you have said is a lie, unless you can
prove by some good token that it all happened as you said
it did.
The shepherd was not at all put out; he held out the
ring which he had found that night on the floor of the hall
in Elfland, and said: “Though I don’t hold that Tm bound
to prove my dreams true by tokens, I’m quite willing to

do so, for I have pretty clear evidence that I was with the
elves last night. Isn't this gold ring yours, Queen Hild?’
‘It is indeed, said she, ‘and you are a very bold and
lucky man, for you have freed me from the bondage that
my mother-in-law had laid on me; I had been driven against
my will to commit all the crimes she had cursed me with.’
And then Queen Hild told her story, saying: ‘I was an elf-
girl of low birth, but he who is now King of Elfland fell
in love with me, and though it was much against his mother’s
wishes, he married me. My mother-in-law was so furious that
she swore to her son that his time of joy with me would
be short, though we might see one another now and then.
She laid a curse on me that I was to become a servant in
the human world, and added the doom that I would bring
death to one man each Christmas by laying my bridle on
him as he slept and riding him down the path along which
I took this shepherd last night, so as to meet the king. This
was to go on until this crime was proved against me and I
was put to death, unless I came upon a man so bold and
resolute that he would dare follow me to Elfland, and after-
wards could prove that he had been there and seen how
people live there. Now you can see how all the former
shepherds, ever since I came here, met their deaths through
me, but I trust I shall not be charged with things done
against my own will. Until now, nobody has succeeded in
exploring the Lower Road and seeing the elves’ homes,
except for this valiant man who has set me free from my
bondage and the curse. I shall certainly reward him, but
later. Now I will stay here no longer, and I thank you for
having been good to me. I long now for my own home and
my family.
Having said this, Queen Hild vanished, and she has
never been seen again in the world of men.
As for the shepherd, they say he married and built himself
a house next spring; the farmer treated him generously
when he left, so he had plenty with which to set up house.

He became the most prosperous farmer in the district, and
people always turned to him for advice and help; indeed,
his popularity and credit were hardly credible, and his
beasts throve and multiplied, and he himself said he had
to thank Queen Hild for all his prosperity.
J.A. I 110-14. An exclusively Icelandic tale, without exact paral-

lels elsewhere. Three variants are given by Jón Árnason: that
about Una (I 105-7, tr. Powell and Magnússon 80-4), about Ulf-
hildur (I 107-10), and about Snotra (I 115-6). The latter heroine
is more actively evil, as she challenges each farm bailiff, on pain of
death, to discover where she goes. There are also three manu-
script variants (Sveinsson 1929). They can all be classified as
a sub-type of the international wonder-tale AT 306 “The Danced-
Out Shoes’, the hero of which wins a human princess by invisibly
following her on her nightly visits to the Otherworld, where,
it is often stated or implied, she has a non-human lover; proof
of her escapade breaks the spell, and she marries the human
hero. (AT 507A “The Monster's Bride’ has a similar but more
elaborate plot.) The group of Icelandic tales differs radically from
the basic prototype in that the heroine belongs by rights to the
Otherworld, from which she is exiled by an dlég-type curse, and
the happy ending consists in her permanent return there; the
character of her Otherworld husband is correspondingly modi-
fied. A similar plot can already be found in the sixteenth-century
poem Snjáskvæði.
AT 806 and 507A both have plots which readily attract motifs
based on witchcraft beliefs (see the Icelandic examples classified
in Sveinsson 1929 as 806 I, and the discussion of AT 507A by
Sven Liljeblad, Die Tobiasgeschichte, Lund 1927). In the present
instance, Hild uses the typical witch’s device of the gand-
reidarbeizli, for which see pp. 180-1; the heroines of the
parallel tales merely use a magic cloth or magic gloves.
The farmer’s problems over hiring a shepherd at the beginning
of the present tale have parallels in episodes concerning haunted
farms in the Family Sagas; the hiring of Glamr in Grettis
E
saga is the best-known instance, and may have been the model
here.
The Elves’ Dance on New Year’s Eve
Two brothers once argued over whether the Hidden People

existed, one firmly maintaining that they did, while the
other obstinately denied it. This went on for some time,
till the one who denied the existence of the Hidden People
grew angry and said he would leave home and never come
back till he was certain whether the Hidden People existed
or not. After which, he went his way over hill and dale,
mountain and waste land, and was none the wiser.
There is nothing worth telling about his travels until he
came, one New Year’s Eve, to a farm where all the people
were very gloomy. The traveller was curious, and asked
what it was that was stopping them from making merry. He
was told the reason, which was that nobody dared stay
behind and guard the farm while the people there went to
the midnight service; since for a long time now anyone who
kept guard there on New Year’s Eve had vanished, and
therefore no one dared stay to guard the farm, for they all
thought it would be the death of whoever did so. The
newcomer told the men of the household not to let such idle
superstitions trouble them, and offered to guard the house
himself. At that, their hearts grew lighter, though they were
rather afraid of what might happen to him:
As soon as the people of the farm had gone off to church,
he set to work and took a plank out of the panelling by
the first bed-closet in the main room, and then slipped in
there between the panelling and the wall, and then pushed
the panelling back into place as much as possible, but left a
little crack at the join so that he could see all round the
room. But the dog he had with him lay on the floor.
THE ELVES’ DANCE ON NEW YEAR’S EVE 53
When he had only just finished hiding himself in this
way, he heard voices and steps outside, and soon afterwards
he hears people coming into the room, and many men come
in. He sees his dog picked up and flung down so hard that
every bone in its body is broken; next, he hears the strangers
saying to one another that there is a smell of human being
in the farm, but others say that there is nothing strange in
that, since the men of the house had only just set out to
church. When the visitors had satisfied their minds on this
point, the watcher saw how they set up a table in the room
and spread over it a cloth with gold embroidery, a most
precious thing, and how everything they laid on the table
was made to match—bowls and dishes, goblets and knives,
all were of silver. Then they sat down to their meal, where
everything was done in the most polished way. These visitors
had set a boy to keep watch at the door and see when dawn
would break, and he was popping in and out all the time.
The human man noticed how each time this lad came in he
was asked how time was getting on, but he always replied
that there was plenty of time before the day. After this, the
watcher began little by little to pull the frame of the door
loose, so that he could get away quickly between the panel-
ling and the wall, if need be.
Now when these people had finished eating, he saw a man
and woman led forward, and then a third person go up to
them who looked to him as if he must be a priest. Some
singing began, and the same psalms were sung as always are
sung at a marriage service, and everything was done in the
same way as among good Christians. As soon as the marriage
service was over, dancing began, and this merriment went
on for a while.
When the dancing had been going on for some time, the
boy who was guarding the door for the Hidden People came
in again, and he was asked as before how much of the night
was left, and he said there was still one watch.
But at this the human watcher, who had secretly slipped
out through the framework of the door and was standing
behind the doorkeeper, yelled out, saying: You're a liar!
There’s daylight all over the sky already!’
At this the Hidden People, who were in the middle of
their dancing, were so upset that they killed their door-
keeper, and meanwhile the watcher had slipped back be-
tween panelling and wall. As soon as the Hidden People
had killed their doorkeeper, they rushed out pell-mell like
lambs from a fold, and left all their possessions behind. As
soon as the human watcher saw this, he chased them a long
way, and the last he saw of them was how they flung them-
selves into a lake a stone’s throw from the farm. Then he
turned home, and gathered up everything they had left
behind, and left-over food and the valuable dishes.
Soon after, the men came back from church, greeted the
watchman, and asked whether he had noticed anything;
he said there had been a certain amount to see, and told them
the whole story. The people of the household felt sure that
previous watchers had let themselves be seen, and that that
had cost them their lives, just like the dog this time. They
thanked the watcher heartily for his action, and gave him
everything the Hidden People had left behind, as much as
he could carry.
After this he went back home and met his brother; he told
him the whole story, and said also that from now on he
would never deny that the Hidden People did exist. Later
he inherited his parents’ farm, married, and was a prosperous
man all his life. And as for the farm where he had kept
watch, it is said that no man ever disappeared from there
again on New Years Eve.
J.A. I 123-4. This is ML 6015, ‘The Christmas Visitors’, a tale that

is particularly popular in Norway (Christiansen 1946, 70-87; for
an example of the Norwegian versions, see Christiansen 1964, 123-
4). It often blends into the international type AT 1161 ‘The Bear
and his Trainer’, where a tame bear plays the leading role; the
THE ELVES’ DANCE ON NEW YEAR’S EVE 55
luckless dog in the present version may owe its presence to a
confused recollection of that bear. A second Icelandic variant
(J.A. I 118-9, tr. Powell and Magnússon 95-9) is closer to the
standard plot of ML 6015 in that the Otherworld intruders, there
called ‘Sea-Folk’, infest the farm on Christmas Eve; a third variant
(Maurer 26-7) has the reputed sorcerer Þorleifur Þórðarson (d.
1647) as its hero. The present version elaborates the basic pattern
by the framework concerning the two brothers, and by the inset
episode of the elfin wedding (another example of interest in the
elves’ religion).
The Sisters and the Elves
There were once two young sisters who lived with their
parents, who made the life of one of them a misery, but
spoilt the other. One winter night it so happened that
everyone on the farm wanted to go to Evensong, and among
the rest the girl who was always ill-used very much longed
to go, but since someone had to stay behind at home, she
was left there, much against her will. And when every-
body had gone off, she set to work and cleaned the house
from top to bottom and set lamps everywhere, and when she
had finished the work she invited the Hidden People into the
house with the customary formula: “Let them come who
wish to come, and let them go who wish to go, and do no
harm to me or mine.’
After this, she went up into the half-loft and settled down
to read her Bible, and never looked up from it till day broke.
But as soon as she had sat down, there came into the house
a crowd of elves, all dressed in rich clothes and hung
about with gold. They laid all kinds of treasures on the
floor and offered them to the farmer’s daughter; they also
started dancing and invited her to join in, but she took no
notice, and the elves went on and on like this till dawn.
But when dawn broke, the girl looked up at the skylight
and said: ‘God be praised, dawn has come!’ And when
the elves heard God’s name spoken, they rushed away and
left all their treasures behind.
When the people came home, and the girl's sister saw
the treasures she had won for herself, she envied her, and
said that next year her sister was not to stay at home, for she
would stay in herself. So now New Year's Eve comes round
again, and the favourite daughter sits at home; she is de-
lighted that the Elfin Folk should come, invites them in, and
lights the house up. Then in came the Hidden Folk, just
as finely dressed as before, laid their treasures on the floor,
began to dance, and invited her to join the dance—and she
accepted. But the outcome was that she broke her leg in
dancing, and also went out of her mind; but the Hidden
People went off, taking all their fine riches with them.
J.A. I. 124-5; a story current in the West Fjords. For two other
tales of girls left alone in the house on Christmas Eve, see J.A. I
119-20, 120-3. It was long believed in Iceland that elves invaded
human homes on both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve to
feast and dance there; on the latter date they might also roam
the countryside, as they moved house then. It was therefore the
custom to burn lights all over the farm-house and outbuildings,
to leave all doors open, and to sweep the place well; a woman,
preferably the mistress of the house, should go round repeating
the formula used by the girl in this story; sometimes food was
set out for the elves (J.A. I 105, II 569). These customs are
mentioned by Jón Óláfsson of Grunnavík in the first part of the
eighteenth century, but are certainly older. Legends attached
to these dates stress the risk of being killed or driven mad by the
elves, and also often allude to elvish treasures.
The Elves at the Crossroads
It was once generally believed in Iceland that the Hidden

Folk moved house on New Year's Eve, and so one should
THE ELVES AT THE CROSSROADS 57
choose that night to sit at a crossroads and see them go

by. They cannot then get past the man at the crossroads, and
offer him many treasures, gold and jewels, choice ornaments
and delicate foods of every kind. Sometimes elf-women
come in the likeness of his mother or sister and urge him to
go with them, and all kinds of tricks are tried. If the man
stays silent throughout and accepts nothing from them,
the jewels and delicacies are left lying near him, and then
he can have them, if he holds out till day; but if the man
answers or accepts the elves’ offers, he is bespelled and loses
his wits, and is never in his right mind again.
Some say the right crossroads are those on the fells and
moors from which one can see four churches. The oldest
belief is that one ought to keep vigil there on Christmas
Eve, for that is the real beginning of the new year, so that
to this day Icelanders reckon their age by Christmases, so
that, for instance, a boy is said to be fifteen when he has
lived through the nights of fifteen Christmas Eves. Later,
men changed the date of the beginning of the new year to
the night of 31 December.
There was once a man who sat out at the crossroads one
New Year's Eve; some call him Jon, some Fusi, and some do
not say what his name was. He sat there all night facing the
elves, and no one knew how things were with him until
next morning, when he came home and told of what had
happened to him. As soon as night fell on the last day of the
Old Year, said he, the Hidden Folk began to file past him
and offer him gold and silver, fine clothes and costly
dishes; for a long while he had spurned all this and remained
silent, whatever the offer might be. So the first had gone
away, but others had come and done just the same, and they
all left behind them whatever they had offered him. This had
gone on all night till nearly dawn.
Then, last of all, there came a woman with hot dripping in
a ladle (or some say, meat and dripping); but hot dripping
was the food Jon liked best of all. And then, so he said,
what happened to him was that he looked up and said: ‘I
don’t often say no to dripping.’ Through this he lost all the
treasures and delicacies that had been offered him and were
lying beside him. After this he stood up, and day dawned.
From that time on, he lost his mind and wandered in his
wits, but still he had the gift of being able to foretell the
future from then on, especially because he had already
spent whole nights sitting out; it is said he used to prefer
to choose the Christmas season for this, for instance
Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Epiphany Eve, but also,
occasionally, Midwinter Eve and Midsummer Eve. Some
say that this Jon was later nicknamed Krukk because of the
crossroads, and is the man whose name is so well known in
Iceland because of the prophecies attributed to him in
manuscripts and oral traditions, known as Krukksspd.
A blending of information from J.A. I 125 and 487. For the very
similar belief in divination by summoning the dead at cross-
roads, see pp. 176-8. The Jén Krukkur mentioned here is a
legendary seer alleged to have lived in the early sixteenth
century; the ‘prophetic’ poem Krukksspá was attributed to him,
although it was in fact written c. 1640 by Jón Guðmundsson the
Learned. For a Norwegian tale embodying the belief that fairies
can be seen riding by at crossroads on any of the three nights
before Christmas Eve, see Christiansen 1964, 77-8.
The Elves Move House
In the first years of the eighteenth century, a farmer named

Jon lived at Hvamm in Myrdal. When this story took place,
he had many children and was old, and he was living with
one of his sons, and his wife with him. To the north of
Hvamm there is a ravine, long and deep, which is called
Hvammsgil; and east of Hvamm there are two farmsteads
THE ELVES MOVE HOUSE 59
called Gotur, and above them a spur of rock which is

generally known as Gatnabrun.
One day in autumn when the weather was fine, it so
happened that this Jon was standing in the doorway while
the people of the house were preparing to go to bed. His
wife came up to him and told him to come to bed; he took
no notice, but remained staring fixedly towards Gotur, or
in that general direction, and while all the rest of the house-
hold went to bed, he stood rooted to the spot far into the
night.
In the morning he told his wife that just as he had been
thinking of coming to bed he happened to look east towards
Gotur, and then he saw two men coming down Gatnabrun,
and they looked as if they were carrying something very like
a lantern between them. They turned into Hvammsgil. Then
he saw more and more people coming in groups, men and
women too. Some were leading children, others carrying
packs, large or small; in short, he saw the moving of all
sorts of household goods and, at the end, all sorts of
livestock too. The whole company followed the same route
as the first two, and it looked very much as if some were
carrying torches or lamps in their hands, in the same way
as the first. The farmer thought this strange, and so he
waited until most of them, if not all, had gone by.
Now the winter that followed that autumn was a terrible
one for hard frosts, storms and sleet, mostly coming from
the south-west. Households moving house like this one were
seen on several other occasions that autumn, but never so
many on the move at once. And in the same way next spring,
this same farmer, and other men too, saw similar companies
moving back again up the same track; and some people were
of opinion that the beings who were seen knew beforehand
how bad the winter was going to be, and so were moving
down into Hvammsgil, possibly from Reynisfjall, to find
shelter there. At any rate, one thing is sure—that this did
take place, though nobody can say for certain what the
explanation may be.
J.A. I 127-8 (Flutningurinn), from a story current in Myrdalur.

For another story on this theme, see J.A. I 126-7, (tr. Craigie
160). Normally, elves were believed to move house at the New
Year, unlike human beings, whose moving days were in May;
the earliest allusion to a supernatural ‘flitting’ in Iceland is in
Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls, when a seer sees all the ‘hill-dwellers’
moving out, in anticipation of the arrival of Christianity. The
‘flitting’ of fairies on quarterdays is a fairly common feature in
Scottish folklore. The matter-of-fact details given in the present
story are typical of the numerous alleged eye-witness accounts of
sightings of the Hidden Folk in Iceland.
‘My Old Woman must be Paid’

There was once an old man who lived with his wife in a
small cottage; they were so poverty-stricken that they
owned nothing of any value at all, except one ball of gold
to weight the old woman’s spindle. The old man used to go
fishing every day to get them something to live on. Not far
from their cottage was a large knoll; people believed that
this was the home of an elf named Kidhus who was, so they
thought, rather light-fingered with other people’s belongings.
One day, as so often, the old man had gone out fishing
and his wife stayed at home as usual. As it was a fine day
she sat down out of doors with her spindle, and spun her
thread for a while. Now it so happened that the gold weight
dropped from the spindle and rolled away, so that she lost
sight of it; she was extremely annoyed, and hunted high and
low, but all in vain—she could not find her spindle-whorl
anywhere.
‘MY OLD WOMAN MUST BE PAID’ 61
Afterwards, the old man came home, and she told him all
about her misfortune. He said that Kidhus must have taken
it, and that this was just like him, and at this he gets ready
to go out again, telling the old woman that he means to go
to find Kidhus and demand to have it back, or else get
something as a fair price for it. At this, the old woman cheers
up a little.
So now off goes the old man along the path leading to
Kidhus’ knoll, and batters it long and hard with his cudgel.
At length Kidhus answers:
Who gave my house such a thwack?
The old man says:
Kidhus, it’s your neighbour back;
My old woman must be paid
For that weight which she mislaid.
Kidhus asked what he wanted to have in payment for the
spindle-whorl, and the old man asked for a cow which
would give enough milk at each milking to fill a twenty-
eight-pound vat, and Kidhus granted his wish. So the old
man went home to his wife with this cow.
Next day, when she had milked the cow night and
morning and filled all her pots with milk, it occurred to her
that she would make porridge, only then she remembered
that she had no oats for the porridge. Then she goes to her
husband, and tells him to go and find Kidhus and ask him for
porridge-oats.
The old man goes to Kidhus, and batters the knoll, as
before. Then says Kidhus:
The old man says:
Kidhus asks him what he wants, and the old man asks him
to hand out a pot of oats, because he and his wife want
to cook themselves some porridge. Kidhus gave the old man
a whole barrel of oats. So the old man went home with the
barrel, and the old woman makes the porridge.
When the porridge was boiled they sat down to it, the
old man and his wife, and ate as much as they possibly
could; but when they had eaten till they could eat no more,
there was still a lot left in the pot. They began wondering
what they could do with the left-overs, and they thought the
most profitable plan would be to take them to the Virgin
Mary. However, they soon saw it would be rather difficult
to jump right up as high as where she was, so they agreed to
ask Kidhus for a ladder which would reach up to Heaven,
and decided this would not be too much to make up for the
spindle-whorl.
The old man goes and batters the knoll where Kidhus
lives, and Kidhus asks as before:
The old man answers again:
At that, Kidhus gets a bit annoyed, and says: Won't
anything ever make up for that damned spindle-whorl?
The old man begged and prayed, saying he wanted to
take his left-over porridge to the Virgin Mary in a pail.
Kidhus let himself be talked into it, gave him the ladder,
and set it upright for him. Then the old man was very glad,
and went home to his wife.
They got ready for the journey, taking the pail of porridge
with them. But when they had gone a good long way up the
ladder their heads began to swim, and this upset them
so much that they both came tumbling down and cracked
their skulls open. Splashes of brains and lumps of porridge
went flying all over the place. Wherever the bits of their
brains touched the rocks they turned into white lichen, and
the lumps of porridge into yellow lichen, and both of these
can be seen on rocks to this day.
‘MY OLD WOMAN MUST BE PAID’ 63
J.A. IL 508-9 (‘Kerling vill hafa nokkuð fyrir snúð sin’), from
Sigurður Guðmundsson (d. 1874). A variant of AT 555, "The
Fisherman and his Wife’, but one in which the initial motive-
force is no longer a supernatural being’s gratitude but a human
being’s demand for compensation for an injury—a concept very
familiar from the sagas. Moreover, a stupid old man and wife
are stock figures in Icelandic numskull tales; their wish to give
a present to the Virgin is parallelled in an Icelandic variant of
AT 1485* (Rittershaus 359), and their fall from the ladder in the
Slavonic AT 804A, “The Beanstalk to Heaven’. Beating an elf’s
knoll is also mentioned in some Danish tales as a method of
obtaining magic gifts from him.
2 @ TROLLS
Blessing the Cliffs

Until the latter part of the nineteenth century there was an
evil spirit in a cave on Grimsey Island. Whenever the men
there used to let themselves down over the edge of the
cliff to catch sea-birds, a shaggy grey hand would come out
of the cliff and cut the rope, and so kill the men who hung
from it. In the end Parson Pall Tomasson blessed the cliff
—or so say the people of Grimsey. This priest Pall had
noticed that there were sharp ridges jutting from the cliff,
against which ropes would fray; so he got the men of
Grimsey to tie a rope round him and went down the cliff-
face, but before he went down he had stuck a hammer in
his jacket without the local people seeing it. And he gave
them the task of singing psalms as loud as they could all the
while he was down the cliff-face, and never to let there
be a moment’s silence until he gave them the signal to draw
him up. As a result of this device the inhabitants of the island
thought that their priest Pall had blessed the cliff, whereas he
had made them sing so that they would hear nothing while
he used his hammer to chip away the sharp ridges from the
cliff; and since then no men have been killed on the ropes
at that spot.
Stories about blessing cliffs were very common in the past,
and were ascribed to the days of Bishop Thorlak the Saint,
who died in 1193, and of Bishop Gudmund the Good, who
died in 1237. Bishop Thorlak is supposed to have blessed
several cliffs where sea-birds nest, and to have driven evil
spirits out of them. When he blessed Latrabjarg in the west
country, he heard a voice say from the cliff, in words which
have since become a proverb, The wicked do have to have
BLESSING THE CLIFFS 65
somewhere to live’. Then the bishop left a small area of the
cliff unblessed, and no one ever dared go down a rope there.
Even so, one fool of a man did do so, once; then there came a
grey hand out of the cliff, and it cut the rope, and that man
met with a sudden death.
Others say that it was Bishop Gudmund who blessed
Latrabjarg when he was wandering homeless round the
west, and that when he had gone a great way in blessing it,
somebody inside the cliff said: ‘I beg you to go no further,
Bishop, for in the face of your prayers and ceremonies
we are forced to flee, yet the wicked do have to have some-
where to live.’ It is said that the bishop did stop, and that
afterwards it was his custom when blessing such cliffs to
leave some part of them unblessed.
Those parts of nesting-cliffs which are said never to have
been blessed are commonly called “Heathen Cliff’, and this
name is found in many places; it is thought dangerous to go
down them, and nobody ever does. In some cases it is
elves, not trolls, that are thought to live there.
J.A. I 143-4; cf. Maurer 40-1. A legend partially resembling this

one is to be found in a collection of miracles attributed to
Bishop Guðmundr Arason the Good, compiled early in the four-
teenth century. A certain Eirfkr Arnason went gathering birds’
eggs on a cliff which was reputed dangerous before mid-morning
and after mid-evening; he lingered there too late, and as he began
to climb back up the cliff-face, a hand came out of the rock and
began cutting through his rope; eight strands parted, but the
ninth, which had been blessed by Bishop Guðmundr, held firm
and saved his life (Byskupa sögur, ed. G. Jónsson, 1948, II 484).
In a later local legend, the Bishop himself is said to have been
in peril of his life when, as he hung on a rope against a cliff-face
to bless it, a huge grey paw in a red sleeve emerged and began
to cut through the rope; two strands parted, but the third held,
having been particularly well blessed, and so the troll desisted,
and merely begged the Bishop to leave him space to live, in
the traditional words (J.A. I 144-6). Jón Árnason names several
66 TROLLS
cliffs known as ‘heathen cliffs’ and shunned by fowlers; some are
held to have been homes of elves or ‘spirits of the land’ rather
than of trolls (J.A. I 144).
The Rev. Pall Témasson, resourceful hero of the first part of
this story, died in 1881; he was a colourful personality, about
whom several anecdotes have been preserved.
The Ogress of Mjoafjord

Out beyond the farm called Fjord in Mjoafjord, there is a
ravine known as Mjoafjord Ghyll. At one time an ogress
lived there, and she was in the habit of putting a spell on
the priests at Fjord and so drawing them to her in the
ravine. This was how she did it: she would go up to the
church as soon as the priest had gone into the pulpit and
would hold up her hand outside the window nearest the
pulpit, and then the priests would go mad and say:
You can pluck out my guts and groin,
To the Ghyll I long to go;
You can pluck out my spleen and loin,
But to Mjoafjord Ghyll I go.
Having said this, they would rush out of church and off to
the Ghyll, and that was the last anyone ever heard of them.
One day a traveller was passing through the ravine and
saw the ogress high up above him, sitting on a jutting rock of
the cliff, and holding something in her hand.
He called out to her, and said: “What are you holding
there, old woman?’
‘Tm just gnawing the last bits off the skull of that Parson
Snjoki, said the ogress.
The man spread the news, and it was not thought good
news.
Many priests there went the same way, one after another,
and this became rather a problem, because priests grew
THE OGRESS OF MJOAFJORD 67
unwilling to go to Fjord when they learnt what a deadly
monster there was in the ravine. In the end there came a
time when no one would go there at all, but then a certain
priest offered to go there himself, though he knew quite well
what a fearful creature there was in the ravine. Before he said
Mass at Fjord for the first time, he took the precaution of
telling his parishioners what they must do if they saw
anything wild come over him in the pulpit; he ordered that
six men should rush at him and hold him down, another
six run to the church bells and ring them, and ten run to
the door. He chose the men to do this, and said what each
must do.
As soon as the priest had gone up into the pulpit, the
hand appeared at the window and waved about outside;
then the priest went mad and said:
You can pluck out my guts and groin,
To the Ghyll I long to go;
You can pluck out my spleen and loin,
But to Mjoafjord Ghyll I go.
The priest then tried to go out, but the six men who had
been told to do so sprang on him, and the other six rang the
bells, and the ten ran to the door. As soon as the ogress
heard the bells she took to her heels; she jumped onto the
churchyard wall, and a great gap opened up in it under her
feet, and at that she said: May you never stand again!’ The
ogress ran off into the ravine, and that was the last any-
one has ever seen of her. But as for the gap where the
ogress trod the wall down, however well one builds it
up again, it never holds together.
J.A. I 152-8, from Þórarinn Jónsson (d. 1865). For two other
tales of cannibalistic she-trolls, see J.A. I 153-6 (tr. Powell and
Magnússon 122-4, 124-31; Craigie 48-50); yet another, who tried
to carry off Bishop Brynjólfur of Skalholt (d. 1675), was converted
by him, and thereafter stole only horses for her Christmas meal
(J.A. I 159-60). The horror evil giants feel at the sound of
F
68 TROLLS
church bells is a common feature in troll-tales; sometimes they

even turn to stone at the sound. Common, too, is the unfillable
gap in a churchyard wall which the legend attempts to explain;
often it is ascribed to a giantess’s curse (J.A. I 156, 188, 191, 195),
or sometimes to the kick of a Water-Horse (J.A. I xix, 137, 518; cf.
p. 100). One of the owners of the farm to which the present tale
is attached, who died about 1830, remembered seeing an iron
trug used there for carrying refuse, which was believed to have
been the ogress’ shoe, fallen off when she kicked the wall.
Some She-Trolls
It is said that at one time the Eskifjord Dales began to be

haunted by trolls, and this grew worse and worse, and so
much damage was done that no one thought it safe to move
about except in large groups, and in broad daylight. It
happened once that six men were travelling home from
market together up Eskifjord, following the road through the
valley, and it was almost dusk. They saw pitch-black clouds
gathering over the mountain called Skagafell north of the
valley, and these clouds towered up higher and higher till
in the end they seemed to take on human shape, and then
they heard a frightful voice calling out so loud that it
boomed among the mountains on every side, and it said:
“Hey there, hey, sister!’
Then they heard a second call from behind them,
answering: ‘Oh hey there, sister, hey!’
At this they looked round, and saw a second monstrous
shape on the other side of the valley, standing on the
mountain known as Slenjudalsfjall.
They heard the first speak again: What's up, sister?"
Then the second answered: “The shieling has been given
to someone.’
“Who to?’ says the first.
SOME SHE-TROLLS 69
The second answers: “To that mouldy-headed Jon of
Vallaness!’
Then the first says: “Let's fly then, sister, fly!’
"Where to?’ answers the second.
‘To Blaskogar, says the other.
After that they disappeared from the sight of the travellers,
and from that time the hauntings also decreased, because
the shieling up on Tunga had been given to Parson Jon
who was priest at Vallaness, and he had been asked to drive
the evil creatures away, and people thought they had been
uprooted pretty quick.
Now that the haunting had stopped in the Eskifjord
Dales, people began to notice that there were trolls about in
Blaskogar, in the south; men did not dare pass that way, and
so that road fell into disuse, though it had been much used
before. When this had been going on for two or three years,
it so happened that the men of Thingey lost count of the
date, and did not know when Christmas Day would fall.
So they decided to send a man south to Skalholt to get a
ruling from the Bishop to clear up this problem.
The man chosen to make the journey was called Olaf, and
he was a bold and resourceful man. He went up into the
mountains from Bardardal, and so south by way of
Spreingisand, and reached Blaskogar late in the day. He
did not want to loiter there, so he pressed on, and when it
was almost dusk he saw a fearsome great she-troll standing
on the mountain called Blafell, which is very near the road.
This she-troll called out in a rumbling voice, saying:
You going south,
Olaf Big-Mouth?
Twisted-Gob, I tell you plain
You'd better go straight home again!
Wipe your snotty little face,
And snuffle off to your own place!
70 TROLLS
Then he said:
Hail to you! I wish you well,
Lady Hallgerd of Blafell!
Then she roared back:
Such kind words I seldom hear;
Fare you well, my darling dear!
There’s nothing more to tell about his journey till he came to
Skalholt, where he got the solution to his problem, and
having fulfilled his errand he set off home again by the same
road. As soon as he came to Blaskogar, the she-troll was there
to meet him, and it seemed to him that she was not so
horrible-looking as he remembered. She handed him what
has since been known as the She-Troll’s Calendar, and
said: ‘If Christ the son of Mary had done as much for us
trolls as you say He has done for you men, we would not
have forgotten the date of His birthday.’
When she had said this, they parted, and after that there
were no more hauntings in Blaskogar. Olaf went back north,
and men thought he had behaved cleverly, but from then
on he was known as Olaf Big-Mouth.
J.A. I 156-8 (Gellivör, final sections), from Sæbjörn Egilsson (b.

1836). For other examples of conversations between mountain
trolls, see the next tale and its note. The story of Olafur Big-
Mouth and the she-troll, with its associated verse, is given in two
more versions (J.A. I 158-9); in the first they part friends, as here,
but in the second he tricks her into looking at the sunrise, so that
she is turned to stone. These versions do not include the detail
that Olafur was wanting to learn when Christmas Day was due—
a motif known in Norway, with reference to people isolated by
the Black Death (ML 6030, ‘The Message of the Fairies’; for an
example, see Christiansen 1964, 127-8).
THE SHEPHERDESS AND THE TROLLS 71
The Shepherdess and the Trolls

It happened in the west of Iceland, in Dalasysla, that a
young shepherdess went to church to Communion. As soon
as she got back from church she went straight out to her
sheep, without giving herself time to sit down and eat.
As she was going along past certain crags, she hears a
voice coming from one of them: “Hey, Ragnhild of the Red
Rocks!’
From another crag came the answer: What do you want,
Ogre of the Three Rocks?
Then says he: Here's a nice bit of meat running up the
road. Let’s take her, let’s take her!’
Then from the other crags the answer came: ‘No, let her
go by, shame on her! Her mouth is all smeared with coal!’
The girl went on her way, and heard no more talk from
this troll and his wife.
J.A. I 160 (Smalastúlkan), from a schoolgirl in Western Iceland,

1845. A very similar story is told about a certain Gissur: one day,
returning from taking Communion, he heard one she-troll shout
to another: ‘Sister, lend me a pot.—Better not. To do what?’—
‘To boil a man.—‘Who’s the one? — Gissur of Botn, Gissur of
Leekjarbotn.—You won't get him, he’s grubby round the jaws.’
(Já. I 163-4). The rhymed and rhythmic part of the dialogue
occurs also in a variant without the Communion motif (J.A. I
161-2), and has close parallels in the Norwegian ML 5000,
‘Trolls Resent a Disturbance’ (see Christiansen 1964, 81-2, 148).
The Old Man of the Cliff
Once when King Olaf Tryggvason was on board a ship at

the foot of a certain cliff, and his men with him, it happened
that an old man appeared on the cliff and hailed the king and
72 TROLLS
his men. The king asked him where his home might be, to
which the old man replied that his dwelling was inside this
very cliff. Then the king asked him how many men he had
at his command, whereupon the old man answered in these
words:
Twelve boats have I off shore;
In every boat there are twelve men;
And every man, he kills twelve seals;
Into twelve strips each seal is flayed;
Into twelve lengths each strip is cut;
Two men sit down to share each piece—
Work it out yourself, O king!
While the king was reckoning it all up, the old man’s
wizardry was drawing the ship backwards into the inside
of the cliff, during the time the king was kept busy reckoning
up how large a household the old man kept.
Seeing that they were in this desperate plight, a certain
Thorgeir, who was one of the king’s men on board, snatched
up the sailyard and set one end of it against the cliff and
the other against his own chest. The trollish magic of the
old man was drawing the ship in, but Thorgeir stood firm
against it. He taxed his strength so severely that at last his
breastbone and his lower ribs snapped, but at that very
moment the ship shot away from the cliff and out to sea, for
it was freed from the spell. From this exploit of his, Thorgeir
got his nickname ‘Punt-Pole-Head’.
J.A. I 164-5 (Saga af Þorgeiri stjakarhöfða), from a written

account by Arni Magnusson (d. 1780), who had heard the tale
told by his uncle Vigfúss Jónsson (d. 1728). Óláfr Tryggvason
ruled Norway from 995 to 1000, and already in the earliest saga
about him (a Latin work by Oddr Snorrason, c. 1190) several
episodes concerned his encounters with heathen gods in human
guise, or with malevolent trolls. The present tale follows a pattern
already visible in two of Oddr’s episodes, in that it shows the
king put off guard by a riddle just as, in the early work, he was
THE OLD MAN OF THE CLIFF 73
beguiled by Óðinn's tales of ancient heroes and by the jokes of

Þórr.
Gilitrutt
Once there was a young farmer living out in the east, at

the foot of Eyjafjoll; he was a most energetic, hard-working
man. There was good grazing round where he lived, and
he had many sheep. He had recently married at the time
when this story takes place. His wife was young, but lazy
and good-for-nothing; she had no liking for work of any
kind, and took little part in running the farm. Her husband
was very annoyed about it, but there was nothing he could
do.
One autumn he brought her a lot of wool, and told her
to make it up into cloth in the course of the winter, but she
was in no hurry to set about it. So the winter wore on and
the young woman never touched the wool, though the
farmer often made a point of mentioning it.
One day some old woman, rather massively built, comes
to the farmer's wife and asks her to give her a little help.
‘Could you do some work for me in return? says the wife.
Very good,’ says the old woman, ‘and what am I to work
at?“
“Make some wool up into cloth, says she.
‘Give it me, then,’ says the old woman.
The farmer’s wife picks up a huge great sack of wool and
gives it to her.
The old woman takes hold of the sack, slings it over her
shoulder, and says: ‘Ill come back with the cloth on the
first day of summer.’
“What payment will you want? says the wife.
‘Nothing much, says the old woman. ‘You must tell
me my name in three guesses, and then we'll be quits.’
74 TROLLS
She agreed, and now the old woman goes off.
Now the winter wears on, and the farmer often asks her
where the wool is, but she tells him not to worry over that,
and that he'll get it on the first day of summer. The farmer
showed that he was none too pleased, and so time went by
and winter was drawing to a close. Then the farmer’s wife
starts wondering about the old woman’s name, but she can't
see any way to discover it, and she grew very anxious and
miserable about it. The farmer sees how she has changed,
and asks her to tell him what was the matter with her. She
then told him the whole story. Then the farmer grew
frightened, and says that she has done wrong, for this
must be a troll which meant to carry her off.
One day after this, the farmer had to go up into the
mountains, and came upon a large cave. He was thinking
of his troubles, and hardly knew where he was. Then he
hears the sound of heavy blows inside the cave; he goes
nearer to listen, comes upon a peep-hole, and there he sees
a woman of massive size sitting weaving. She has the web
between her legs and is thumping it heartily.
She muttered between her teeth: ‘Ha ha, ho ho! The
housewife doesn’t know what my name is, ha ha and ho ho!
My name’s Gilitrutt, ha ha and ho ho! My name’s Gilitrutt,
ha ha and ho ho!’
She went on and on like this, and thumped the web
vigorously. The farmer was glad, and felt sure that this
must be the old woman who had visited his wife in the
autumn. So then he goes home and writes down a note of
the name Gilitrutt, but does not tell his wife about it.
Now 24 April, the last day of winter, had come; the house-
wife was wretched, and would not even dress that day. Then
the farmer comes to her and asks whether she knows the
name of the woman working for her. She said no, and that
she thought her heart would break. The farmer said there
was no need for that, handed her the paper with the name
on it, and told her the whole story. She took the paper,
GILITRUTT 75
shaking with terror, she was so afraid the name might be
wrong. She asks her husband to be with her when the old
woman comes, but he says: No, you acted on your own
when you gave her the wool, so you had better settle the
payment alone.’ Then off he goes.
Now the first day of summer comes, and the housewife
was lying alone in her bed, and there was nobody else in
the house. She then hears a great din and a rumbling noise,
and in comes the old woman, and she looks far from pleasant
now. She flings a huge roll of cloth across the floor, and
says: ‘Now then, what's my name? What's my name?
The wife, more dead than alive with fright, says: ‘Signy?’
"That's my name, is it? That's my name, is it? Guess again,
mistress!’ says the old woman.
Asa? says she.
“That's my name, is it? That's my name, is it? Guess again,
mistress!’
‘IT don't suppose, says she then, ‘that your name is
Gilitrutt?
The old woman was so startled that she fell flat on her
bum on the floor, and a mighty crash that was! Then she
got up and went off, and was never seen again. The farmer's
wife was happier than I can say that she was lucky enough
to give this monster the slip, and from now on she was quite a
different person; she became hard-working, ran her house
properly, and from then on always wove her own wool.
J.A. I 181-2, from an old woman in Rángárþing. A variant of the

international AT 500, “The Name of the Helper’, ‘Rumplestiltskin’
or ‘Tom Tit Tot’, though lacking the normal opening. Another
version, further from the prototype and showing French in-
fluence, is in J.A. II 20-22; there are also two loosely related
unpublished versions (Sveinsson 1929, 59-60), one of which is
much closer to the ‘Church-Builder’ legend (see pp. 33-5, above).
76 TROLLS
How Kraka Lost her Lover
In the old days a giantess whose name was Kraka had her
home in Blahvamm by Blafjall; she lived in a cave which
is still to be seen, and it is so high among the crags that it
is impossible for any human being to reach it. Kraka was a
most pernicious creature; she took a heavy toll of the cattle
of the Myvatn men and did them great harm by carrying
cattle off and killing people. Kraka was also man-mad, and
could not bear to live alone; it was by no means unusual for
her to carry men off from their homes and keep them with
her, but there were few who would agree to make love to
her rather than run away or kill themselves.
It happened once that Kraka got hold of a shepherd from
the farm Baldursheim, whose name was Jon. She took him
home to her cave and wantedto make a very fine feast for
him, but he proved hard to please and refused to touch
anything Kraka set before him; she tried every trick she
knew to find something which would take his fancy, but
there was nothing doing. Finally, the shepherd said that he
would get his appetite back if he could have a twelve-year-
old shark to eat. Now Kraka knew, through her magic
powers, that there was nowhere one could catch a twelve-
year-old shark except off Siglunes, and though it was a
terrible long way from Blahvamm, she wants all the same to
try and see if she can catch this shark.
So she sets out, leaving the shepherd behind, but when
she has gone only a little way it strikes her that it would
be wiser to see whether the shepherd hasn't tricked her and
run off while her back was turned. Then she runs back home
to her cave, and the shepherd is quite quiet. So off she
goes again, and gets rather further than the first time; then
she is gripped by the same fear as before that the shepherd
will not prove faithful to her, and so Kraka runs back home
to her cave, but the shepherd is quiet, just as before.
HOW KRAKA LOST HER LOVER 77
Therefore she sets out once again, thinking that there is no

need now to distrust the shepherd, and she makes a beeline
for Siglunes, wading straight out across Eyjafjord north of
Hrisey Isle. There is no more to say about her journey,
except that she was lucky enough to catch the shark, and
took the same road home again.
As for the shepherd, as soon as he thinks Kraka must have
gone right away, he takes to his heels and runs; but before he
had been long gone, back comes Kraka, and very soon
realizes that her shepherd has disappeared. She sets out at
full speed in pursuit, and when the shepherd is almost
home again in Baldursheim he hears a great crashing and
banging behind him, and knows what it must be—it must
be Kraka coming. And when she is near enough for him to
hear her voice, she calls out: “Here’s the shark, Jon! It’s a
twelve-year-old—thirteen, in fact!’
But he takes no notice; and as he reaches the farm, the
farmer is working in his smithy. The shepherd runs into the
smithy, straight up to the farmer, and at that very moment
Kraka reaches the smithy door. The farmer snatches a mass
of red-hot iron from the hearth and runs towards Kraka,
saying he will ram it into her if she doesn’t turn back, and
also promise never to bother him or his men again. Kraka
saw she had no choice but to turn back, and so she did. It
is said that she never molested the farmer of Baldursheim
after this.
J.A. I 186-7 (Kráka tröllskessa), from Jón Sigurðsson á Gautlön-

dum, Member of the Alpingi (d. 1889). Jón Árnason gives several
more anecdotes about Kráka (I 188-9), two of which concern
other unsuccessful attempts at amorous abduction; there follow
four other similar stories about other giantesses (I 189-95; one tr.
Powell and Magnússon 135-8, another in Craigie 54-6), and there
is another in Maurer, p. 47. It is sometimes made clear that the
abducted man would slowly turn into a troll himself if he stayed
with the giantess and ate her food; one tale describes how two
78 TROLLS
ogresses rub their captive with ointment, stretch him, and bellow
into his ear, in an attempt to make a troll of him. Flight from
an amorous supernatural being is also the theme of certain
Norwegian tales (ML 5095, ‘Fairy Woman Pursues Man’); there
the hero, having almost been seduced by an elf-woman when
alone in the mountains, realizes what she is and flees, stealing
her own skis to do so, and hotly pursued by her (cf. Christiansen
1964, 128-9).
In the Icelandic tales, the amorous she-troll is normally foiled
by the ringing of church bells; the part played here (and in
Maurer’s version) by the farmer at his smithy recalls the myth of
bérr slaying a giant by hurling a mass of glowing iron at him.
Kraka’s journey from near Myvatn to Siglunes is over seventy
miles as the crow flies, crossing mountains and wading through
Eyjafjörður at almost its broadest point.
Trunt, Trunt, and the Trolls in the Fells
There were once two men who went up into the mountains
to gather edible moss. One night they were sharing a tent,
and one was asleep but the other awake. The one who was
awake saw the one who was asleep go creeping out; he got
up and followed him, but however hard he ran he could
not catch up with him. The sleeping man was heading
straight up the mountain towards the glaciers, and the
other saw where a huge giantess was sitting up there on a
spur of the glacier. What she was doing was this: she
would stretch out her arms with her hands crossed and
then draw them in again to her breast, and in this way she
was magically drawing the man towards her. The man ran
straight into her arms, and she then ran off with him.
A year later, some people from this man’s district were
gathering moss at the same place; he came there to meet
them, and he was so short-spoken and surely that one could
hardly get a word out of him. They asked him who he
TRUNT, TRUNT AND THE TROLLS IN THE FELLS 79
believed in, and he said he believed in God. The following

year he came to the moss-gatherers again, and by then he
looked so like a troll that he struck terror into them. How-
ever, he was again asked who he believed in, but he made no
reply. This time he stayed a shorter time with them than
before. The third year, he came again; by then he had turned
into an absolute troll, and a very ugly-looking one too. Yet
someone plucked up courage to ask him who he believed in,
but he said he believed in “Trunt, Trunt, and the trolls in the
fells—and then he disappeared. After this he was never
seen again, but for some years afterwards men did not dare
go looking for moss in that place.
J.A. I 193, from the Rev. Skúli Gíslason (d. 1888), from a story
current in Northern Iceland. Here the amorous ogress is a more
sinister figure, and the progressive degeneration of her victim is
taken more seriously. Comparable tales were current in Sweden
about the skogsrd, a forest spirit who was much dreaded for
her power to lure men to her, seduce them, and sometimes drive
them mad (von Sydow 1931, 123-4).
The word “Trunt is nonsensical, unless perhaps it is a cor-
ruption of ‘Trond’, the name of the king of the trolls in some
Norwegian versions of ML 6015, “The Christmas Visitors’.
The Ballads of Andri and the Hymns of Hallgrim

Some fishermen from northern Iceland were once travelling
overland to the south, and were caught in a very bad storm
among the mountains, so that they lost their way and had
no idea where they were going. In the end they came on a
cleft in the rock opening into a cave, and went far enough
in to be out of reach of the wind and the driving rain. There
they stayed for shelter, struck a light, and made a fire with
moss which they stripped from the rocks, and so began to
warm up and get their strength back.
80 TROLLS
Now these men began to discuss what they could do to

pass the time enjoyably; some wanted to recite the “Ballads
of Andri', but others to sing Parson Hallgrim’s ‘Passion
Hymns’. Deeper in from where they were they saw a
shadowy cleft, as if a new twist in the cave led off from
there. Then they heard a voice in there in the darkness,
saying:
The Andri Ballads I like best,
The Hallgrim Ballads I detest.
So then they started reciting the “Ballads of Andri’ as long
and as loud as they could; the one who recited best was
called Bjorn. This went on far into the evening.
Then the voice in there in the darkness said: ‘Now I
enjoyed that, but my wife didn’t; she wants to hear
Hallgrim’s Ballads.’
Then the men started singing the hymns, but soon got to the
end of all the verses they knew.
Then the voice said: ‘Now my wife enjoyed that, but I
didn’t.’ And then it said: You, Bjorn the Reciter, would you
like to lick the inside of my ladle as your reward?”
He said he would, so then a large tub fixed to a handle
was thrust out, with porridge in it, and all of them together
could hardly cope with this ladle. The porridge was good
and pleasant to eat; three of them ate some, and it did them
no harm, but one of them did not dare. Then they lay down
to sleep, and slept long and soundly.
Next day they went to take a look at the weather, and
it was clear and bright. Now they wanted to be on their way
again, but the man who had not dared eat the night before
was so fast asleep that he could not be woken.
Then one said: ‘It’s better to kill a comrade than to leave
him like this, in the hands of trolls.’
With that, he punched him on the nose so that blood
gushed out all over him, and at that he woke up and so
escaped with his companions, and after this they reached
human dwellings safe and sound. People maintain that this
THE BALLADS OF ANDRI AND THE HYMNS OF HALLGRIM 81
troll must have enticed some woman of the district to him

by magic, and that the fishermen owed their lives to her.
J.A. I 196, from the Rev. Skúli Gíslason, from a story current in
Northern Iceland. A variant, attached to an islet in Reiðarfjörður,
tells how fishermen who sang hymns in honour of the Virgin
Mary got porridge, while others who sang the Andrarimur got
hot mutton and dripping (J.A. I 196-7, tr. Powell and Magnússon
138-40; see also J.A. I 162-3 for a simpler variant, omitting the
troll’s wife and having the secular song only). The choice between
the Andrarimur and ‘Hallgrim’s Hymns’ is roughly equivalent
to one between, say, the Robin Hood ballads and the hymns
of Charles Wesley. The former tells of the highly entertaining
and fantastic adventures of a certain Earl Andri, himself half a
troll; the latter, the ‘Passion Hymns’ by the Rev. Hallgrimur
Pétursson (d. 1674), are among the best loved Icelandic hymns.
By calling them “Hallgrim's Ballads’ the troll is revealing his
barbarous heathen prejudice.
Despite the common folktale taboo on eating food from super-
natural beings, there are also examples of the opposite idea that
to refuse it is rude and dangerous; cf. ML 5080, ‘Food from the
Fairies’, in which a boy who takes it grows strong, but another
who will not do so falls ill. For disenchantment by drawing
blood by a blow on the nose, cf. the stories about catching elfin
cows and sea-cows (pp. 23-5, 94-6), and also the widespread
belief that a witch’s power will leave her if she is scratched
‘above the breath’.
The Night-Troll
On a certain farm, whoever stayed at home to mind the
house on Christmas Eve while the others were at Evensong
used to be found next morning either dead or out of his mind.
The servants there thought this very bad, and few wanted to
be the one to stay at home on Christmas Eve. On one
82 TROLLS
occasion a young girl offered to mind the farm; the others

were delighted, and went off. The girl sat in the main room,
and sang to a child which she held in her arms.
During the course of the night someone comes to the
window, and says:
Fair seems your hand to me,
Hard and rough mine must be,
Dilly-dilly-do.
Then says she:
Dirt did it never sweep,
Sleep, little Kari, sleep,
Lully-lully-lo.
Then the voice at the window says:
Fair seem your eyes to me,
Dilly-dilly-do.
Then says she:
Evil they never saw,
Sleep, Kari, sleep once more,
Lully-lully-lo.
Fair seem your feet to me,
Dilly-dilly-do.
Then says she:
Dirt did they never crush,
Hush, little Kari, hush,
Lully-lully-lo.
Day in the east I see,
Dilly-dilly-do.
Then says she:
Stand there and turn to stone,
So youll do harm to none,
Lully-lully-lo.
THE NIGHT-TROLL 83
Then the uncanny creature vanished from the window.
But in the morning when the people came home, a huge
stone had appeared in the path between the farm buildings,
and it has stood there ever since. Then the girl spoke of what
she had heard—but she had seen nothing, for she never
once looked round—and it must have been a Night-Troll
which had come to the window.
_ JÁ. I 208-9, from an old woman in Rangarping. Night trolls’ are

a particular type of troll who cannot bear daylight, for it turns
them to stone. They are often associated with particular rocks,
either as having been turned into them, or as living in them, or
as buried under them; some are said to be malevolent, others
harmless (J.A. I 207-8). Many tales of encounters with ghosts and
devils stress the need for skill in impromptu versifying, and the
vital necessity of getting the last word; those who cannot cap
the evil creature’s verse by another in the same metre will go
mad or be carried off, but those who can will put it to flight
(J.A. I 463-5; cf. Briggs 1971, I 534-5, 567). The present story
gives yet another example of an uncanny visitant haunting a
farmstead on Christmas Eve.
The Origin of Drangey Island

In the old days there were two Night-Trolls living on
Hegranes, an old man and his wife; there is nothing much
to say about them until one day when it happened that
their cow was in heat, and then (whether because they had
no one to send, or because they thought that if you want
something well done you had best do it yourself) they set off
to lead the cow to a bull themselves, so that she should
not miss her time. The old man led the cow by a rope, and
the old woman drove her from behind, as the custom is.
So along they went with the cow, out over Hegranes
and a good way out into the waters of Skagafjord; but when
G
84 TROLLS
they still had quite a distance to go before they were half
way across, they saw the first gleam of day on the east side
of the fjord, shining on the rock slopes and over the crests
of the fells. And since it is sudden death to Night-Trolls if
dawn catches them, this daylight cost them their lives, and
they each turned into a stack of rock; these are the stacks
which stand there now, one on the seaward side of Drangey,
which is the old man, and one on the landward side, which
is the old woman. These rock stacks take their names
from this, and are called The Old Man and The Old Woman
to this day. And as for the cow, she was turned into the
island itself, and though history does not relate whether she
had occasion to be got with calf in the course of her travels
with the trolls, she certainly proved fertile land for the men
of Skagafjord.
J.A. I 210; a tale current round Skagafjörður and Húnavatn. For

other tales about off-shore rocks being trolls turned to stone,
see J.A. I 209-11. There are Scottish and Faroese parallels, for
instance about two huge rock-stacks called Risin and Kellingin
(Giant? and ‘Old Woman’) to the north of Streymoy (Williamson,
261). Inland rock-formations may be explained by similar legends
(J.A. I 214-7).
Jón Árnason adds that in his own time there was a custom that
every man sailing out to Drangey for the first time in the year
must greet the island itself and its two rock stacks, saying to
each: “Hail and good luck to you, and to all your spirits!’ It
was largely kept up as a joke, but must have originated in the
ancient belief, well exemplified in medieval sagas and laws, that
every part of the land had its guardian nature-spirits.
Bergthor of Blafell
There was man named Bergthor who lived in a cave on
Blafell; his wife’s name was Hrefna. His father was Thorolf
BERGTHOR OF BLAFELL 85
of Thorolfsfell, who was also known as Kalfstindar, and
his mother was called Hladgerd, and she lived in Hlodkufell.
The land was still heathen in the days when all this took
place, and it was in the days of the she-troll Hit, after whom
Hitardal takes its name. Bergthor was one of her guests when
she invited all the trolls in the country to a feast in
Hundahellir Cave; after the meal Hit asked the trolls to
find some way of enjoying themselves, and what they chose
was tests of strength, and Bergthor was always judged the
strongest. Bergthor would not harm human beings, provided
nothing was done to annoy him, and he was believed to
have the gift of foresight, and great wisdom.
After the country became Christian, Hrefna thought
Blafell an unpleasant place, since from there she looked out
over Christian farmlands. These new ways were so little to
her liking that she wanted to move house with her husband,
northwards to the other side of Hvita River; but Bergthor
said his countrymen’s change of religion did not bother him,
and he meant to stay quietly in his cave. Hrefna stuck to
her own opinion, and moved house north across the river;
there she built herself a hall at the foot of the mountain,
and the spot has been called Hrefna’s Booth ever since.
After this, she and Bergthor only met when they were both
fishing for trout in Hvita Lake.
Bergthor would often go down to Eyrarbakki to buy meal,
especially in winter when the lake was frozen over, and he
always carried back two full barrels of meal. Once Bergthor
was going home through the cultivated regions with his load,
and as he comes up to the homefield of Bergstadir Farm,
he meets the farmer and asks him to give him a drink.
Bergthor says he'll wait while the farmer goes back to the
house to fetch the drink, so he sets his load down at the foot
of the mountain from which the farm takes its name, and
chips out a hollow in the rock with the iron spike of his staff.
The farmer comes back with the drink and gives it to
Bergthor, who drinks his fill, thanks him, and tells him that
86 TROLLS
he must use the hollow he has chipped in the rock as a vat to

keep sour whey in; he says that no water will ever mix with
the whey in that vat, nor will the whey freeze in it in
winter—but that if the farmer refused to use it, innumerable
misfortunes would come upon his household. Having said
all this, Bergthor bade the farmer farewell, and went on his
way.
Bergthor once came to talk with a farmer in Haukadal
when he had grown very old. He says he wants to choose
himself a place for his grave, somewhere from which one
can hear church bells and prayers, and so he asks this man
to fetch his dead body down to Haukadal, and tells him that
for his trouble he can take what there will be in a cauldron
by his bed, and that as soon as he is dead there will be a
token for the farmer, namely that his staff will be outside
the farm door. The farmer promises to do this, and so they
part.
Time passes and passes, and there is no news of Bergthor,
up until one morning when the people of Haukadal come
downstairs and there, in front of the farm door, is a huge
great walking-staff. The men bring word of this to the
farmer; he says little, but goes out, and sees that it is indeed
Bergthor’s staff. He gives orders for a large coffin to be made
at once, and sets out northwards for Blafell with several men.
There is nothing to tell about their journey until they
reach Bergthor’s cave away in the north; there they see
Bergthor dead in his bed, lay him in the coffin, and think
that he is remarkably light for his size. Now the farmer sees
a large cauldron by the bed; he looks to see what there is in
it and sees nothing but leaves inside, so he thinks Bergthor
must have been mocking him, and never gives it a second
thought. But one of his companions fills both his gloves with
the leaves. After this they set off down the mountain with
Bergthor's body. But as soon as they reach level ground this
man goes and peers inside his gloves, and they are now full
of coins. The farmer and his men turn back at once, wanting
BERGTHOR OF BLAFELL 87
to fetch the cauldron, but they cannot find the cave any-
where, and no one has ever found it since. So they had to
leave it at that and turn for home, and they carried
Bergthor’s body down to Haukadal, and the farmer had it
buried there on the north side of the church; the place has
been called Bergthor’s Grave ever since. It is said that the ring
from Bergthor’s staff is on the church door in Haukadal, and
its iron spike is said to have been long used as the church
crowbar. And this is the end of the story of Bergthor of
Blafell.
J.A. I 213-14; from Egill Pálsson (d. 1881), from oral traditions
current in Biskupstúngar. This is one of the comparatively few
tales of a friendly giant, well disposed towards his human
neighbours and even towards Christianity—the kind of being
alluded to in the proverbial saying tryggr sem tröll, “as trusty as a
troll’. It has been suggested that these amiable trolls are des-
cended, not from the evil giants of heathen myth, but from the
benevolent ‘land-spirits’, which did sometimes appear as of
more than human size (Sveinsson 1940, 148, 147). The giants
referred to in the opening sentences are characters in the four-
teenth-century Bárðarsaga chs. 9 and 13, and in the seventeenth-
century Armannssaga ch. 10.
Another tale of promised wealth which, when found, seems
to be mere leaves, is told of the hoard allegedly hidden in a
cave by Flosi, the slayer of Njáll (J.A. II 92-8).
The Giantess’s Staff
The various supernatural beings which lived inside the rocks

and mountains of Iceland were extremely displeased when
Christianity began to spread through the land, and even
more so when churches were built. It is said that soon after
the church at Thingeyrar was erected, a Night-Troll who
88 TROLLS
lived in the mountain above Vatnsdal got in a huff, and

thought herself deeply injured because a church had been
built there. This Night-Troll was a giantess. One night she
set out, meaning to take her revenge for this annoyance.
She went north to the outermost spur of Vatnsdal Mountain,
or at any rate to the spot called The Shoulder, and since she
had nothing better to hand than her own staff, she took a
grip on it and threw it, meaning to smash Thingeyrar Church
with it.
As soon as she had flung this staff, she looked round to see
how time was getting on, but by then dawn was already
breaking in the east. This affected her as it does all Night-
Trolls, so that she crashed headlong down over the west side
of the mountain, which is a sheer bluff, and came to rest on a
ledge, a mere stone’s throw from the foot of the bluff, and
there she turned into a pillar of stone. And there she still
stands to this day, and is known as the Old Woman, up by
the farm which takes its name from The Shoulder where she
stood when she threw the staff, being called Oxl.
As for the staff, it broke in two as it hurtled through the
air, and the first piece did come down pretty close to
Thingeyrar Church, for it landed right on the paved path
that runs past the south side of the church, where it has
been used as a horse-block ever since; it must be nearly
three ells long, and there is no more than forty yards between
the spot where it lay until 1832 and the church itself. But the
other piece of the staff came down to the south of the
homefield of Thingeyrar Farm, and this one is a bit shorter;
it can be seen built into the corner of the homefield fence,
on the right-hand side as one rides up to Thingeyrar.
J.A. I 216 (Kerlingin í Vatnsdalsfjalli), from an old woman in

Húnavatnssýsla. He also gives two other legends of trolls flinging
rocks at churches (I 216-17), one being very similar to this; the
theme, however, is less frequent in Iceland than in Continental
THE GIANTESS’S STAFF 89
Scandinavia, where it forms part of the group ML 5020, “Trolls
Build a Causeway’.
Gryla
Stories about the ogress called Gryla and her husband
Leppa-Ludi can be traced back to medieval times, parti-
cularly in her case, and there are many rhymes and jingles
about them, especially about Gryla. They were both thought
of as trolls, and indeed ‘Gryla’ appears in a list of she-trolls’
names in Snorris Edda; they were man-eaters, like other
trolls, attacking children in particular, but also full-grown
men. But once people began to give up deliberately ter-
rifying growing children, the belief in Gryla was largely
abandoned, since the threat of Gryla had been much used
to frighten children out of naughtiness and silly actions,
which is why the word grýla was used in the thirteenth
century for a she-troll or a terrifying bogy, and the word
grýlur for threats.
Early in her history, Gryla was already represented as
a monster, for a passage in Sturlunga saga mentions that she
has fifteen tails; the same thing is mentioned in a rhyme
about her:
Gryla rode into the yard;
Fifteen tails had she,
And on each tail a hundred bags,
And twenty children in each bag.
Again, another rhyme goes:
Gryla rode into the yard;
Hoofs she had to walk upon,
From her brow the long tufts hung;
A bag she bore against her thigh—
The children are in there, thought I.
The longer poems about Gryla do not show her as a beauty
go TROLLS
either, when they say she has three hundred heads, and
three eyes in each head that she spies out children with,
and then she and Leppa-Ludi stick them in a big grey bag;
or again, where it says that she has deformed nails on every
finger, eyes as black as Hell in the back of her neck, goat's
horns, and ears which hang down on her shoulders behind
and brush against her nose in front. She also had a beard, but
it never grew any thicker than tangled yarn, with tufts of
matted hair hanging from it; her teeth were like burnt and
blackened stones.
As has been mentioned already, Gryla’s husband was
called Leppa-Ludi; he was very like her, but perhaps not
quite so hideous. One rhyme gives the names of twenty
children of theirs, and they also had thirteen sons known as
the ‘Christmas Lads’, unless, as some say, these were Gryla’s
sons by some unknown man before she married Leppa-Ludi.
The reason that there are thirteen of them is that the first
comes thirteen days before Christmas, and then one more
each day, and the last on Christmas Eve. On Christmas
Day the first leaves, and so on, one by one, and the last on
the last day of Christmas. These Christmas Lads were used
for frightening children, like their parents, especially at
Christmas time; they come down from the mountains to
human dwellings to do various jobs for which each was
trained and which most of their names indicate, but they
were all only too willing to carry off any children who
cried too much or were in any way unruly.
Then, Leppa-Ludi had a bastard son called Skroggur, who
was no great improvement on his father; his wife was an
elf's daughter, and was named Skjoda. There are long rhymes
telling of the exploits of all these persons.
J.A. I 218-21 (shortened); the description of Gryla in the third

paragraph is based on a poem by the Rev. Gudmundur
Erlendsson (d. 1670). The various þulur, i.e. long jingling verses,
which deal with Grýla and her family can be found in Jón
GRYLA gI
Árnason and Olafur Davíðsson, Íslenzkar Gátur etc., 1887-1903.
Similar bugbears and hobgoblins are known in many parts of
Europe, associated with St Nicholas’ Day, Christmas, or some
other festival, and used in the same way to frighten children into
good behaviour.
A rhyme very like the Icelandic one was current in the
Faroes in the 1940s, though there gryla is a generic name for a
type of monster ‘with a sheep’s body, but walking upright like a
man’, which appears on the first Monday in Lent (a children’s
festival there, and in Iceland and Denmark too):
Down comes a gryla from the hills
With forty tails,
Staff in hand, (or: Sword in hand,|
Coming to fetch the children
[or: Coming to cut out the stomachs
of the children]
Who cry for meat in Lent.
See Williamson, 247-8, for this and the associated house-to-house
begging custom.
3 @WATER-DWELLERS
Then the Merman Laughed

A merman is a dwarf that lives in the sea. There is an old
saying in Iceland which many people use as a proverb:
‘Then the merman laughed’. As for how it arose, it is said
that a certain farmer drew up in his fishing-net a sea-dwarf
who called himself a merman, with a big head and broad
hands, but shaped like a seal below the Raval He would
not teach any of his magic lore to the farmer, so the latter
took him ashore, much against his will.
The farmer’s wife, a young and lusty woman, came down
to the shore and greeted her husband, kissing and fondling
him. The farmer was pleased and praised her, but drove his
dog away with a blow when it came up with the wife to greet
him. Then, when he saw that, the merman laughed. The
farmer asks why he laughed, and the merman says: “At
stupidity.’
As the farmer was making his way home from the sea,
he stumbled and tripped over a tussock. He cursed the
tussock heartily, asking why it had ever been sent by fate
to stand on his land. Then the merman laughed (for he
was being carried along, against his will), and said: “This
farmer has no sense.’
The farmer kept the merman in his house for three days.
Some travelling merchants came there, with wares to sell.
Now the farmer had never been able to get boots with soles
as thick and strong as he wanted, but these merchants
thought they had boots of the best quality. The farmer could
take his pick among a hundred pairs, and still he said they
were all too thin and would be in holes in no time. Then the
THEN THE MERMAN LAUGHED 93
merman laughed and said: ‘It’s clever men that make the
biggest fools,’
The farmer could not get any further words of wisdom out
of the merman by fair means or foul, except on condition
that he took him out to sea again, right back to the very
fishing-bank where he had been caught, and then he would
squat on the blade of the farmer’s oar and answer all his
questions, but not otherwise. So, after three days, the
farmer did this. And when the dwarf was on the oar-blade,
the farmer asked what gear fisherman ought to use if they
wanted good catches.
The merman answered: “Chewed and trodden iron must
be used for the hooks, and the forging must be done where
one can hear both river and wave, and the hooks must be
tempered in the foam and sweat of tired horses. Use a fishing-
line made from a grey bull’s sinews, and cord from raw
horse-hide. For bait, use birds’ gizzards and flounders, but
human flesh on the middle bight, and then if you get no
catch youre surely fey. The barb of a fishhook must point
outwards.’ $
Then the farmer asked him what was the stupidity he
had laughed at when he praised his wife and struck his dog.
The merman answered: “Your own stupidity, farmer.
Your dog loves you as dearly as his own life, but your wife
wishes you were dead, and she is a whore. The tussock you
cursed covers a treasure destined for you, and there’s money
in plenty under it; that was why you had no sense, farmer,
and why I laughed. And the black boots will last you all
your life, for you haven’t many days to live—three. days,
they'll last you three days!’
And with this he plunged off the oar-blade, and so they
parted. But everything the merman said proved to be true.
JA. I 182-3, from Tidsfordrif (1644) by Jón Guðmundsson the

Learned (1574-1658). Another version, with an associated verse,
is given by Jón Árnason (I 133-4, tr. Powell and Magnússon
94 WATER-DWELLERS
103-6), and there are also four manuscript versions (Sveinsson
1929, 1138-4). An early literary treatment is the fourteenth-century
Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka, ch. 7. Sveinsson gives this tale a
classification number of its own, 803*, but its Irish and Norwegian
analogues are classified as a sub-type of AT 670 “The Animal
Languages’ (Christiansen and O’Suillibhean, 1963). In Norway
and Ireland the central figure is usually a merman, but in Ireland
it may also be a leprechaun (cf. O’Sullivan 1966, 179-83). The
story could also be regarded as a variant of ML 4060 “The
Mermaid’s Message’, in which a mermaid, captured and then
released, offers warning or advice, but also sometimes mocks her
captor for asking only foolish questions.
Similar mockery appears here (but not in the other Icelandic
versions) in the merman’s sarcastic advice on fishing: to chew
and tread iron instead of welding it is impossible, and a barb
that points outward will never hold a fish. Nevertheless, the
advice seems related to actual superstitions. The same bait, plus
a mouse, is said to have been used by Porbjorn kólki, one of
the first settlers in Iceland, later reputed a wizard (J.A. II 130);
and a fishing line was thought useless unless a grey bull or grey
stallion had been led over it (J.A. II 554). Cf. the elaborate
fishing charm, containing several of the same lines, in Eiríkur
Laxdal’s Ólafs saga Þórhallasonar, c. 1788 (Sveinsson 1940, 109).
For the belief that one among the innumerable tussocks in an
Icelandic field may conceal treasure, cf. p. 186. The present
version implies that the farmer was unable to identify the tussock
again, and so lost his chance of wealth, but other variants say
that he did find the gold, and so believed the remarks about his
wife and dog.
The Sea-Cows
Some fishermen from Hofdi once rowed out to the fishing-

banks off Latrastrand, and there caught a mermaid on their
THE SEA-COWS 95
hook; they brought her home with them to Hofdi. She spoke
very seldom; she said her home was in the sea, and that she
had been cleaning her mother’s kitchen chimney when they
caught her. Time and again she would beg them to take her
back out to sea and throw her in again at the same fishing-
bank where they had caught her, but they would not, as
they would rather that she should get used to life on land,
for she was beautiful, and had all sorts of skills. She stayed
at Hofdi for a year, during which time she embroidered the
vestments which have been used ever since in Laufas
Church.
When the year was up she was taken out to sea again,
for people saw she would never be happy on land. She
promised them beforehand that she would send some cows
up on land; she said that as soon as the cows came ashore
men must be ready to catch hold of them and burst the
bladder they had between their nostrils, for otherwise they
would at once run back into the sea. Then the girl was
allowed to slip back into the water over the fishing-bank
where she had been caught.
Not long after, twelve cows came up out of the sea and
made straight for Hofdi; they were as grey as the sea itself.
The place where they came ashore is now called Kvigudalir,
“Cow Dales’. Six of these cows were caught and tamed—and
excellent beasts they proved to be—but the other six
escaped.
J.A. I 184-5 (Kvigudalir á Látraströnd), from the Rev. Arnljótur

Olafsson (d. 1904). Another story tells how a man intercepted a
herd of sea-cows being driven down to the water by “a little
lad’, but could catch only one calf; in another, a man finds
eighteen cows in his byre, and catches nine before the rest
plunge into a lake (J.A. 1 135). Bursting the bladder is mentioned
in both, and also in Jón Arnason’s second version of “Then the
Merman Laughed’, where the merman sends seven cows ashore
96 WATER-DWELLERS
in gratitude for his release, but the farmer can secure only one.
The owners of sea-cows were often supposed to be, not mermen,
but the ‘Sea People’, i.e. underwater elves (cf. the stories of
elfin cows disenchanted by drawing blood, pp. 23-25 above).
The belief in the existence of sea-cows goes back to the sixteenth
century, for on a map of Iceland printed in 1595 some are
shown at the foot of Eyjafjöll (Sveinsson 1940, 77). Fairy cattle
from underwater are common in Irish, Welsh and Scottish lore;
for an Irish tale of a mermaid captured and released, see “The
Child from the Sea’, O’Sullivan 1966, 188; Briggs 1971, I 319.
The Water Horse
The Water Horse is named either Nykur or Nennir, and

lives in rivers or lakes or even the open sea. He looks just like
a horse, usually a grey but sometimes a black one, but all his
hoofs are turned back to front and the tufts on his pasterns
point backwards. However, he is in no way limited to this
form; it is characteristic of him to change suddenly into
various shapes, just as he chooses. In winter when cracks
appear in the ice and cause loud booming noises, men say
that the Nykur is neighing. He begets foals like other stal-
lions do, but always in the water, though it has sometimes
happened that he has got an ordinary mare with foal. It is
characteristic of all horses descended from a Nykur that
they lie down whenever they are ridden or led through
water that reaches to their bellies, and this is a trait they
inherit from the Nykur. A Nykur will often appear on land
near rivers or lakes that are difficult to cross; he seems quiet
enough at such times, and tempts people to ride across
on him, but as soon as they are up on his back he rushes
wildly into the water, lies down flat in it, and drags his
rider down too. The Nykur cannot bear to hear his own name,
THE WATER HORSE 97
or any word that sounds at all like it, and if he does he shies
violently and gallops into the water.
All over Iceland people believed in the Nykur, so in almost
every district there are stories of one living in this or that
river or lake, especially those with strong currents. In the
island of Grimsey, off the north coast, people believed that a
Nykur lived in the sea and neighed whenever he knew that
the islanders had gone to fetch a cow from the mainland; the
cows went mad at his neighing, flung themselves in the sea,
and so were drowned. Not before the middle of the nine-
teenth century did the men of Grimsey dare keep a cow on
their island.
J.A. I 185-6. The belief in the water horse is old in Iceland; it is

already mentioned in Landnamabók chs. 56-7. The name nykur
is cognate with the general Scandinavian word for a water-spirit,
whether in animal or human shape. Unlike the Scottish kelpie,
the nykur does not take on human shape (except in the ballad
Elenarljóð, where he appears as a young man to woo the heroine,
with the intention of drowning her). He can, however, appear
as a cow with backward-turning hooves; unlike the excellent
sea-cows, this beast is savage and unmilkable.
There is also a vaguer type of water-monster, the skrimsli,
variously described as like a whale, like two horses joined at
the rump, or as half human and half animal (J.A. I 138-4], tr.
Powell and Magnusson 108-10). Rivers and lakes may also be
said to be infested by monstrous skates, or by water-serpents,
for which see below, pp. 102-4.
The Water Horse Hears his Name
Once, a shepherd girl was searching for her sheep; she had
walked a long way and was very tired. Then she sees a grey
horse, and is very pleased; she puts her garter on him as a
93 WATER-DWELLERS
bridle, lays her apron across his back, leads him to a tussock,
and prepares to mount him. But just as she is about to
mount, she says: ‘I don’t think I fancy getting on his back!
Aren't I a ninny!’ Then the horse shied violently, dashed
into a lake nearby, and vanished. Then the girl saw what
kind of a creature it had been—it was a Water Horse. It is
characteristic of a Water Horse that he must never hear his
own name, or he returns into the water where he lives; he
has two names, Nykur and Nennir, and so he went off
as soon as the girl said ‘ninny’. The same thing happens if a
Nykur hears the word ‘Devil’ spoken.
Once, three or four children were playing. Not far from
their farm was a broad lake with smooth gravel banks, and
the children were on the banks by the water. There they
saw a grey horse, and went to have a look at it. Then one of
the children climbs onto its back, and the others too, one
after the other, till only the eldest was left. They urged him
to come too, saying this old pack-horse had plenty room
enough on his long back, even if they all got on at once.
But the child refused to get on, and the others called him
a ninny. Then the horse shied, and hurtled out into the lake
with all the other children on his back. The one who had
stayed behind went home and told the tale, and people
knew that this must have been the Nykur; he was never seen
again, nor the children either.
J.A. I 137-8 (Nennir), from widespread tales attached to many

lakes. In order to convey the pun, I have added the word
‘ninny’ to the crucial remarks; the original turns on the verb
nenna ‘to feel like doing something’—eg nenni ekki á bak, ‘I don't
feel like getting on its back’. The heroine of the Elenarljóð is
saved by the lucky use of the same word. A Scottish kelpie
too will occasionally flee at the threat that its name will be
uttered aloud, though whether this means a secret personal name
or the generic term kelpie is not clear (cf. the story of the kelpie
of Orbost, Swire 1961, 146).
THE WATER HORSE HEARS HIS NAME 99
The numerous Danish parallels to the second part of this

story turn on the water horse’s fear of the name of God; he rushes
off when the last child exclaims: ‘By the Lord Jesus’ Cross! I’ve
never seen a longer horse!’ The nykur too sometimes dreads
the name of God (Jón Þorkelsson, Þjóðsögur og munnmæli,
1899, 445).
The Water Horse Made to Work

It happened once that the farmers of the parish of Bard
(or some say Holt) in the district of Fljot had to build a wall
round their churchyard. Early one morning they had all
gathered for the work except one old man; this man was
thought to be pretty spiteful, and was generally disliked.
Time wore on towards midday, and he still had not come,
and the rest thought he was taking a long time over it. Just
on the stroke of noon they saw him coming, leading a grey
horse behind him. As soon as he arrives he is met by angry
words from those who had got there early, for coming late
for his share of the work. The old fellow keeps his temper,
and asks what work he is to do. He was sent to join the group
whose job it was to carry turf and other building materials
for the wall, and he says he likes this job well enough.
His grey horse was very rough and vicious towards the
other horses carrying turf; he tore himself free from the
horse in front, and he bit them and kicked them until none
of the rest would stand up to him. The men thought this a
great nuisance, and agreed to lay heavier loads on him, but
it was no use—even with loads twice as heavy he moved
just as briskly and never stopped his tricks until he had
driven all the other horses away, and then there was only
him left. Then the old man takes this pack-horse of his and
piles as large a load onto his back as had been loaded onto
100 WATER-DWELLERS
all the other horses put together for a single trip, and led
him off, and then he was quiet enough. In this way, using the
grey horse, the man shifted all the building materials down to
the churchyard.
But when it was all finished, he takes the bridle off the
horse close beside the churchyard wall, just where it was
freshly built, and lashes the horse across the loins with the
bridle as he lets him go. The grey horse does not like this; he
ups with his hind quarters and drives both heels against
the church wall which they had been building all day,
and knocks a great hole in it—and no wall has ever stood
firm on that spot, however often it was rebuilt, till in the
end people came to use this as the gateway for the church.
And the last thing anybody saw of that packhorse was that
he galloped off as soon as he was free, and never stopped
till he plunged into Holt Lake, and then they all felt certain
that this must have been the Nykur.
J.A. I 136-7, from Sigurður Guðmundsson (d. 1874). The same

story was told of the master-magician Halfdan of Fell by Olafur
the Old in the late seventeenth century (J.A. I xix). Similar tales
are found in Scotland, the Faroes, and many parts of Scandinavia;
among the means mentioned for mastering the horse are a magic
bridle, a cow’s halter, and the Sign of the Cross. The motif of
the ruined wall is common also in troll stories (see above, p. 67).
The Seal’s Skin
There was once some man from Myrdal in Eastern Iceland

who went walking among the rocks by the sea one morning
before anyone else was up. He came to the mouth of a cave,
and inside the cave he could hear merriment and dancing,
but outside it he saw a great many sealskins. He took one
THE SEAL’S SKIN IOI
skin away with him, carried it home, and locked it away in

a chest. Later in the day he went back to the mouth of
the cave; there was a young and lovely woman sitting there,
and she was stark naked, and weeping bitterly. This was the
seal whose skin it was that the man had taken. He gave
the girl some clothes, comforted her, and took her home with
him. She grew very fond of him, but did not get on so well
with other people. Often she would sit alone and stare out
to sea.
After some while the man married her, and they got on
well together, and had several children. As for the skin, the
man always kept it locked up in the chest, and kept the key
on him wherever he went. But after many years, he went
fishing one day and forgot it under his pillow at home.
Other people say that he went to church one Christmas
with the rest of his household, but that his wife was ill and
stayed at home; he had forgotten to take the key out of the
pocket of his everyday clothes when he changed. Be that as
it may, when he came home again the chest was open, and
both wife and skin were gone. She had taken the key and
examined the chest, and there she had found the skin; she
had been unable to resist the temptation, but had said fare-
well to her children, put the skin on, and flung herself into
the sea.
Before the woman flung herself into the sea, it is said
that she spoke these words:
Woe is me! Ah, woe is me!
I have seven bairns on land,
And seven in the sea.
It is said that the man was broken-hearted about this. When-
ever he rowed out fishing afterwards, a seal would often swim
round and round his boat, and it looked as if tears were
running from its eyes. From that time on, he had excellent
luck in his fishing, and various valuable things were washed
ashore on his beach. People often noticed, too, that when
102 WATER-DWELLERS
the children he had had by this woman went walking

along the seashore, a seal would show itself near the edge of
the water and keep level with them as they walked along
the shore, and would toss them jellyfish and pretty shells.
But never did their mother come back to land again.
J.A. I 632-3, from the Rev. Skúli Gíslason (d. 1888). A fine example
of ML 4080, ‘The Seal Woman’, also classifiable as a sub-type
of AT 400, ‘The Man on a Quest for his Lost Wife’. Six other
versions are known from Iceland, the earliest being from a work
by Jón Guðmundsson the Learned, 1641 (J.A. I xiii, Maurer 178,
and four in manuscript). Seals were said to be descended from
Pharaoh’s soldiers, drowned in the Red Sea, and to lay aside their
skins and resume human form once a year, on Midsummer Eve,
or on the twelfth day of Christmas; the term “Sea People’ was
sometimes applied to them. Similar tales are common in Scotland,
Ireland, the Orkneys and Faroes, and in Norway; for the
Scottish and Irish tales and beliefs, see Thomson, 1965.
The Water-Snake of Lagarfljot

It happened once, long ago, that there was a woman living
on a farm in the district near Lake Lagarfljot. She had a
grown-up daughter, and she gave this daughter a gold ring.
Then the girl says: “How can I make the most of this gold,
mother?’
‘Lay it under a Heath Snake,’ says the woman.
So then the girl catches a Heath Snake, puts the gold
underneath it, and lays it in her trinket box. There the
serpent lies for some days. But when the girl goes to take a
look inside the box, the snake has grown so big that the
panels of the box have begun to split open. Then the girl
grows frightened, snatches up the box, and hurls it out into
the lake, with everything that’s in it.
THE WATER-SNAKE OF LAGARFLJOT 103
Now a long time passes by, and then people begin to

become aware of the serpent in the lake. He began to attack
men and animals that were crossing the lake; sometimes,
too, he would crawl up onto the banks and snort out poison,
most horribly. All this was beginning to cause a great deal
of trouble, but nobody knew of any way to cure it.
Then two Lapps were sent for; they were to kill the
snake, and take the gold. They dived down into the lake,
but they soon came up again. These Lapps said they had met
their match, and more, down there, and that it would not be
easy to kill the snake or to take the gold. They said there was
a second snake under the gold, and this one was far more
evil than the first. So then they had tied the snake down
with two fetters; one they had placed just behind the
fins, the other near the tail.
Therefore the snake cannot harm anyone now, man or
beast, but sometimes it happens that he thrusts a hump of his
back up above the surface, and whenever that is seen it is
always thought a sign of dire events to come, for instance
bad seasons, or a great shortage of grass. Those who do not
believe in this serpent say that it is only a trail of floating
foam, and they repeat stories about how some priest, not
long ago, rowed right across the spot where it looked as if
the serpent was, so as to prove his statement that there was
nothing there at all.
J.A. I 638-9, from a schoolgirl in Múlasýsla in 1845. This monster

is first mentioned in the Icelandic Annals for 1345 (Skálholts
Annáll), and many more sightings have since been alleged; for
accounts of repeated sightings in 1749-50 and again in 1819, see
J.A. I 640-1. The creature is sometimes described as like a huge
snake with humps and/or spikes on it, sometimes as like a
monstrous horse. There are several other rivers and lakes which
have water-snakes in them.
The ‘Heath Snake’ mentioned here, the lyngorm, was a mythi-
104 WATER-DWELLERS
cal creature which, like the dragon, had a particular affinity for
gold; a piece of gold laid under it would multiply, and the
serpent would grow at the same rate, so that it soon would be-
come a menacing monster. The motif makes its first appearance
in Iceland in the fourteenth century, in Ragnars saga loðbrókar,
where it serves as introduction to a ‘Dragon Slayer’ tale. In
later Icelandic lore such serpents are often identified with lake-
haunting monsters, as here; there is also said to be one in the
depths of the cave Surtshellir. There is a strong general similarity
between these legends and those of the dragon-like lindorm
elsewhere in Scandinavia, the monster-snakes of Scottish lochs,
and the Lambton Worm in England (Briggs 1970, I 373).
Lapps, Finnar, have been regarded as particularly powerful
magicians ever since medieval times; they are mentioned as such
in many sagas. In ML 3060, ‘Banning the Snakes’, common in
Norway, a Finn is hired to rid a district of snakes but in so
doing is himself killed by a lindorm (cf. Christiansen 1964, 41-2).
4 @ GHOSTS
‘Mother Mine, Don’t Weep, Weep’

There was once a girl who was a servant on a farm. She
had become pregnant, had given birth to her child, and
had put it in the open to die, as was not uncommon in
Iceland, even though harsh penalties of outlawry or death
were imposed for such crimes. Some time after, it so hap-
pened that there was to be one of those parties with dancing
and mumming which were once so common in Iceland and
were called vikivaki dances, and this same girl was invited
to the vikivaki. But she did not possess any showy and
expensive dresses good enough for such a merry gathering as
a vikivaki used to be in the old days, and as she was a girl
who was fond of finery, she was very upset to think that she
would have to stay at home and miss the dancing.
One day, at the time when the dance was being held,
this servant girl was busy with some other women milking
ewes in the sheep-fold, and began telling another milkmaid
how she had no clothes to go to the vikivaki in. As soon as
she has finished speaking, they both hear this verse, spoken
by a voice from under the wall of the sheep-fold:
Mother mine, don’t weep, weep,
As you milk the sheep, sheep;
I can lend my rags to you,
So youll go a-dancing too,
You'll go a-dancing too.
The girl who had put her child out to die thought she had
had a message from it, and this verse impressed her so
deeply that for the rest of her life she was never in her
right mind.
106 GHOSTS
JÁ. I 225 (Móðir min í kví, ktí); a tale current throughout
Iceland. Babies exposed at birth and secretly buried in un-
hallowed ground are known as útburðir (a term used in medieval
times for any child which, dying unbaptized, had to be buried
outside the churchyard). They are said to make particularly
vicious ghosts, wailing and screaming near their place of burial,
or crawling about on one knee and elbow, with their feet and
hands crossed; they wear only the ragged cloth their mothers
wrapped them in to bury them. They try to lead men astray
in fog or in the dark, and if they can make three circles round
anyone, he will go mad (J.A. I 224-5). Similar beliefs are common
throughout Scandinavia; cf. ML 4025 ‘Infants Killed Before
Baptism Haunt Mother’, and see J. Pentikáinen 1968.
Repeated words or lines in a verse, as here, are a sign that it
is spoken by a ghost or other supernatural being (cf. pp. 100, 195);
the effect is felt as sinister.
A vikivaki was a prolonged: party held at major festivals such
as Christmas and New Year; besides feasting, there were songs
and dances—particularly a type of individual dance for one man
and one woman, each singing alternate verses, often amorous or
bawdy. This dance was also itself called vikivaki; texts of the
songs are in Árnason and Davidsson 1887-1903, III. The enter-
tainment also included mumming dancers, with hobby-horses,
men-women, or mummers dressed as rams or stags (Dag Ström-
back, ‘Cult Remnants in Icelandic Dramatic Dances’, Arv IV,
1948, 132-5). The oldest full account of a vikivaki party is of
the early seventeenth century, but Bishop Jon Ogmundarson (d.
1121) already denounced a type of singing dance exactly like the
vikivaki dance.
‘Isn’t it Fun in the Dark!’
In the old days, and right into the nineteenth century, it

was customary for someone to keep watch beside a corpse,
and this was generally done with a light burning, unless the
night was very bright. Once, a certain magician died; his
‘ISN'T IT FUN IN THE DARK!’ 107
mind had been full of the old heathen ways, and he had been
an unpleasant person to deal with, so there were not many
people willing to come and keep watch by his body. How-
ever, One man was found to do the job; he was a very
strong man, with a fearless heart. His vigil went well.
On the last night before the body was to be put in its
coffin, the light went out a little before dawn broke.
Then the body sat up and said: ‘Isn’t it fun in the dark!’
The watcher replied: You won't gain much out of it!’
and then recited this verse:
All the earth is shining now,
Night has fled away;
The candle’s out, but dust art thou—
Be silent for today!
Then he flung himself on the corpse and forced it down on
its back, and it stayed quiet for the rest of the night.
J.A. I 226-7, from the Rev. Skúli Gíslason (d. 1888). Stories of
the dead speaking or moving before burial must have been
common at all periods; there are instances in Eyrbyggja saga
ch. 51 and The Saga of Eirik the Red ch. 4. Mastering a ghost
by wrestling is the commonest Icelandic method, both in sagas
and folktales.
A similar tale (J.A. I 226, 601) tells of a woman sewing a
sorcerer’s corpse into its shroud. When she had almost finished,
he spoke: ‘You still have to bite the thread from the needle.’ ‘I
mean to break, not bite it, curse you!’ said she, snapped the
needle in two, and stuck the bits into his feet (to stop him walk-
ing, cf. p. 141). Thus she avoided the fate of her predecessors,
who, less resourceful, had been killed or driven mad.
The Lovers
Once a lad and a girl lived on the same farm; they were
engaged, and loved each other very much. He had to go to
108 GHOSTS
sea that year, but before he left they talked together and
he promised the girl that he would write to her regularly and
at length. Then he went, and so time passed till Christmas.
Around Christmas time, the girl began to dream frequently
of her lover, and the dreaming grew so insistent that she
could hardly get a few hours’ quiet rest. He would start
telling her all sorts of things, about himself and about other
people too.
On that farm there was an old woman who was rather
wise about such matters; the girl went to her and told her
about her dreams, and that she could not sleep in peace.
The old woman did not seem much perturbed, but said
to the girl: This evening you shall sleep, but I will see to
the door of the building you sleep in."
That evening the girl went to sleep; she dreamed that her
lover came to the window and said: ‘It was wrong of you
to lock the door against me. As things are, I will never be
able to come to you again; but had they been otherwise, I
would have wanted to be your Dream Guide.’
Then he recited this verse:
Our bodies sleep beneath the sea,
Where no harm comes nigh us;
Yet in Heaven's peace are we,
Praising God the Highest.
Then he went away, but the girl woke up, and she was so
crazed that she ran out, meaning to kill herself, but there
were people there who had not yet gone to bed, and they
managed to catch her. She recovered completely, and the
dead man never visited her again.
J.A. I 281; a tale from Skarðsströnd in Western Iceland. There are

several such stories (J.A. I 228-82) of ghosts appearing in dreams to
tell where their bodies, lost at sea or in the wild uplands, might
be found: they often speak a verse, but without any sinister
repetition, for their purpose is harmless. A ‘Dream Man’ is a
ghost regularly visiting the dreams of someone gifted with second
THE LOVERS 109
sight to act as his guide and informant; see for example, the
traditions about Jón Danielsson (d. 1855), who was reputed to
have two such guides (J.A. I 426-7).
Murder Will Out
Once a grave was being dug in some churchyard, and in

the course of the digging a skull came to light, and there
was a knitting needle driven right through it. The priest kept
the skull till Mass on the next Holy Day. He waited till
everyone was inside the church, and then hung the skull
up over the church door. After the service, the priest went
out first with his altar-servers, and watched the people as
they came out. They noticed nothing, so they went to check
whether anyone had stayed inside, and there was one very
old woman cowering up against the back wall, and they
had to use force before she would go out. Then three drops
of blood dripped from the skull onto the old woman’s
kerchief, and she said: “Murder will out at last.’
Then she confessed that she had killed her first husband
by driving a knitting needle into his head; she had been
young at the time, and had been married to him against her
will, and they had not lived together long. The woman had
prepared his body for burial herself, and no one else had
thought anything about it. Later she had married someone
else, but he too was dead by now. It is said that this old
woman was executed by drowning, as women were if they
had killed their children.
JÁ. I 282-8 (Upp koma svik um sidir’), from the Rev. Skúli
Gislason; a story current in Vatnsdalur. The theme of murder
revealed is rare in Iceland, probably because open slaying is so
much more common than secret murder in her history, sagas,
and traditions.
IIO GHOSTS
Jon Flak
There was a man called Jon and nicknamed Jon Flak. He

was an odd sort of man, and was not much liked by his
neighbours; he was inclined to provoke people over petty
matters, and very few managed to get their own back on
him. When Jon died, the gravediggers played a trick on him
by making the grave lie north and south. Jon was buried at
the back of the choir in Muli churchyard, but every night
afterwards he haunted the gravediggers, and repeated this
verse:
Cold the earth at choir-back;
All alone there lies Jon Flak.
All the rest lie east and west,
Everyone but Jon Flak,
Everyone but Jon Flak.
Others say that the verse was heard coming out of Jon’s
grave. Be that as it may, he never stopped this nagging
until he was dug up again and laid east and west like other
men.
J.A. I 233, from an old woman of Borgarfjörður, and a schoolgirl

from Northern Iceland in 1845. This tale was already known to
Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík (1705-79). Its numerous variants differ
in the reason they give for Jón Flak’s unorthodox burial; some say
he was suspected of suicide, others that his spiteful wife arranged
it so as to pay off old scores, others that the burial was too hasty
because of stormy weather. The hero’s nickname is sometimes
Hrak; the verse varies only slightly. J.A. I 234-41 contains eleven
other stories of ghosts complaining of or revenging themselves
for disrespectful treatment; some are included here; for others,
see Powell and Magnússon 159-60, Craigie 289-90.
BURNING THE COFFINS Ii!
Burning the Coffins

In the north of Iceland there was a priest named Ketill
Jonsson, who lived at Husavik in the 1530s. He once
ordered some coffins to be dug up from his churchyard,
and said he was doing so because there was so little space
left, and that these coffins took up space but served no
useful purpose, since the bodies were quite rotted away.
One day it so happened that three old women were at
work in his kitchen, busy burning these coffins, when a
spark jumped from the fire and landed on one of them; it
quickly set her clothes on fire, and those of the other two
also, for they were all very close to one another. The fire was
so fierce that they were all dead before anyone could come
to put it out.
That night the priest dreamed that a man came to him
and said: “You'll never succeed in making clear space in the
churchyard, however much you dig our coffins up. I’ve just
killed your three old women for you, in revenge for what
you did to us, and they'll take up some room in the church-
yard. And [ll kill plenty more, if you don't stop these ways
of yours.’
And so the man went off; but the priest woke up, and he
never dug up coffins from the churchyard again.
JÁ. I 237 (Ketill prestur í Húsavík), from a story current in

Skarðsströnd. Ketill Jónsson was priest at Húsavík c. 1537.
‘Give me my Bone, Gunna!’

One winter, a servant girl named Gudrun, who was a dairy-
maid on a farm that had a church attached to it, had lost or
broken the small, shallow, open oil-lamp generally used in
the cow-house; she hit on the idea of taking a broken bit of
1I2 GHOSTS
a human skull that had been dug up in the churchyard and

using this instead of the cow-house lamp, with oil burning
in it.
In spite of this, nothing happened until Christmas was
past and gone. But on New Year's Eve, just as this girl was
about to carry a light out to the cow-house, and was, as
usual, using the broken skull as a lamp, a voice called to
her through the window and said: “Give me my bone,
Gunna!
Gudrun was not at all dismayed; she picked up the skull
just as it was, with the light burning in it, flung it on the
floor, trod on it, and said: ‘Come and get it then, curse you!’
Other people say Gudrun simply flung the bit of skull
in the direction from which she heard the voice coming,
but did not tread on it. But whichever way it was, no harm
came to the girl.
J.A. I 237-8, from Sigurdur Gudmundsson (d. 1874). This tale and
the next are variants of AT 366 “The Man from the Gallows’.
It has English parallels; some are serious, such as the tale of the
old woman who picked up a set of teeth in Perranzabuloe
churchyard (R. Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England,
1865, 452-3); others are nursery tales told as gruesome jokes (‘The
Bone’, “Teeny-Tiny’, Briggs 1970 II 512, 561-2).
‘Gunna’ is a common diminutive of ‘Gudrun’, but the ghost
probably uses it to avoid pronouncing Guð ‘God’ (cf. below, pp.
132-6, “The Deacon of Myrka’).
‘My Jawbones!’
There was once a parish priest who was in the habit of
ordering that all old buried bones unearthed in his church-
yard should be brought into his house and burnt. It
happened one day, as it often did, that when a corpse was
‘MY JAWBONES !’ 113
being buried in his churchyard some old bones were un-
earthed, and these were gathered by the cook, on the priest’s
orders. But because the bones had got wet when they were
dug up, either through rain or snow, the cook could not
burn them straight away, and had to lay them near the fire
and even on the hearthstone to dry them.
While they were drying, the cook heard, as she was busy
cooking in the twilight, a faint voice from somewhere near
the hearth, saying: My jawbones, my jawbones!’
She heard the same words repeated a second time. So then
she began to look about among the human bones which
lay all round the hearth near her, to see what the cause of
this could be; but she found no human jawbones there.
Then she hears the voice for the third time, saying even
more piteously than before: “Oh, my jawbones, my
jawbones!’
So then she sets to and searches still more thoroughly, and
finds the two jawbones of a child, linked together; they had
fallen from their place on the hearthstone into a corner of the
hearth, and were almost beginning to burn. Now she under-
stands that the spirit of the child whose bones these were
must be unwilling that they should be burned, so she takes
and wraps them in a linen cloth, and puts them into the
next grave that was dug in the churchyard. After that, there
were no more strange happenings.
J.A. I 238-9, from Markús Gíslason, a schoolboy, in Mýrasýsla.

A more distant variant of AT 366.
The Dead Man’s Nightcap

On a farm beside a church there lived, among others, a
young boy and a girl. The boy made a habit of scaring the
girl, but she had got so used to it that she was never
114 GHOSTS
frightened of anything, for if she did see something she
thought it was the boy trying to scare her.
One day it so happened that the washing had been done,
and that among the things there were many white nightcaps,
such as were in fashion then. In the evening the girl was
told to fetch in the washing, which was out in the church-
yard. She runs out, and begins to pick up the washing.
When she has almost finished, she sees a white spectre sitting
on one of the graves. She thinks to herself that the lad is
planning to scare her, so she runs up and snatches the
spectre’s cap off (for she thought the boy had taken one of the
nightcaps) and says: ‘Now don't you start trying to scare me
this time!’
So she went indoors with the washing; the boy had been
indoors the whole time. They started sorting out the
washing; there was one nightcap too many now, and it
was earthy on the inside. Then the girl was scared.
Next morning the spectre was still sitting on the grave,
and people did not know what to do about it, as nobody
dared take the cap back, and so they sent word all round
the district, asking for advice. There was one old man in the
district who declared that it would be impossible to stop
something bad coming of it, unless the girl herself took the
cap back to the spectre and placed it on its head in silence,
and that there ought to be many people there to watch.
The girl was forced to go with the cap and place it on the
spectre’s head, and so she went, though her heart was not
much in it, and she placed the cap on the head of the
spectre, and when she had done so she said: “Are you
satisfied now?
But at this the dead man started to his feet, struck her, and
said: “Yes! And you, are you satisfied?’
And with these words he plunged down into his grave.
The girl fell down at the blow, and when men ran to pick
her up, she was already dead. The boy was punished because
he used to scare her, for it was considered that the whole
THE DEAD MAN’S NIGHTCAP 115
unfortunate affair had been his fault, and he gave up scaring
people. And that is the end of this tale.
JÁ. I 239, from Jón Bjarnarson of Breiðuvík. This fine tale does
not fit any of the Types in the AT index, for in the humorous AT
1676 group no real ghost is involved; but cf. the present-day
English story of two men in a haunted house—one plays a trick
on the other, but is dismayed at his friend’s terror, and says ‘It’s
only me, you ass!’ ‘I know it’s you, you ass,’ answers the friend,
‘but who's that behind you?’ There are also English tales in which
a trickster is justly punished by the arrival of a real devil or
ghost, but in these the intended victim of the hoax is unharmed
(Briggs 1971, I 23-4, 38, 541, 594-5). The girl in the present story
would presumably have been safe if she had not been rude to
the ghost and broken the rule of silence.
The Bridegroom and the Dead Man

Once, there were four men digging a grave for some corpse
or other; some people say it was in the churchyard at
Reykholar. They were all cheerful fellows, and one of them,
a lively young man, was the greatest joker of the lot. When
the grave began to be fairly deep, many bones came up in
the digging, and among them there was one most remark-
ably big thigh-bone from a man’s leg. The digger who was so
fond of a joke picked up this bone, weighed it in his hand,
and measured it against himself, and they do say that when
this thigh-bone had one end resting on level ground the other
end came up to his hip—and yet he was a full-grown man, of
average height.
Now as he was doing this, this young man says, as a joke:
‘Unless I'm much mistaken, this fellow must have been a
good wrestler; it would be fun to have him at one’s wedding
feast in due course.’
The others took up the idea, but they talked rather less
I
116 GHOSTS
about it than he did. After which, the man puts the thigh-
bone aside with the other bones that had been dug up.
There is nothing more to tell of until five years later,
when this same young man is about to get married, and the
banns have been read out twice. Then the girl he is en-
gaged to has a dream, three nights running, in which she
thinks she sees a terrifyingly big man come to her in her
sleep and ask her whether her fiancé remembers now how
he jeered at him once, a few years ago; and on the third
night he adds that they won't be able to avoid having him
as a guest at the wedding. The girl took no notice, but she
began to feel oppressed in her sleep, especially as the man
was so very big.
She had said nothing to her fiancé about this dream until
she had dreamt of the same man three times, but then, next
morning, she says to her sweetheart: ‘Who are you meaning
to ask to our wedding, dear heart?”
‘I don’t know yet, my dear,’ says he. ‘I haven’t started
thinking about it yet; I meant to get the calling of the banns
over first.’
“Then you haven't asked anyone already? says she.
The man says he can’t remember doing so, and begins to
rack his brains—and he thought it strange that she should
be so persistent in questioning him about this. After some
thought, he says that the long and the short of it is that he
has not actually asked anybody yet, but that, true enough,
a few years before he had once said as a joke, about a thigh-
bone that had come up out of a grave, that it would be fun
to have such a tall man at one’s wedding feast in due course;
but he could not recall asking anyone else, apart from that.
At this, his fiancée looked rather grave and said that that
was not the sort of joke one ought to make, least of all
about the bones of the dead—‘and now I had better tell you,’
says she, ‘that the man you jeered at like that has quite
made up his mind to come to our wedding feast.’
Then she told him about all her dreams, and what words
THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE DEAD MAN WEG
the big man had spoken the night before. Her sweetheart
was rather alarmed, and says that she had certainly spoken
a true word in saying that jokes of that sort were best left
unsaid.
Then he goes off to sleep as usual that evening, but during
the night he thinks he sees coming towards him a terrifyingly
huge man, like a giant, all frowning and scowling, who, he
thinks, asks him whether he means to keep his promise,
given five years before, and have him as a guest at his
wedding. The man was shaking with fear, but he said that
so it must be. The other answered that he could not get out
of it, like it or not, and that he need never have sneered
at his bones, and that he was going to suffer for it now. After
that, the ghost goes off, and the man sleeps on till morning,
when he tells his fiancée about his dream, and begs her to
give him some advice.
She said that he must get hold of some timber and a
builder, and have him quickly build an outhouse which
would match this man’s size, by what they had seen of it in
both their dreams, so that he would be able to stand up-
right in it; and the inside must be as long and as broad
as its height to the level of the cross-beam. Also, he must have
this outhouse decked out with hangings, just as it is the
custom to deck a bridal hall, and there he must lay a table
for this guest on his own, with a white tablecloth on it, and
set before him some churchyard mould in a dish and some
water in a flask (for he would take no other food), and set a
chair by the table, and have a bed in the outhouse too in
case the man wished to rest, and he must have three candles
on the table beside him. The bridegroom must escort him
to this place, but must take great care not to walk ahead of
him, nor to stand under the same roof with him. Nor should
he agree to any request or offer of his, whatever he might
suggest, and he should talk to him as little as possible, but
lock the shed and leave him as soon as he had offered him
what was set on the table. So now the bridegroom has every-
118 GHOSTS
thing done as the bride had stipulated—an outhouse built,

standing on its own and of a suitable size, and everything
set out in it, just as has been said.
Now time wears on to the day of the wedding feast, and
the marriage service is held in the usual way. Next, every-
body sat down for the feasting, and in the same way they
all got up from the table later on, when it had got quite
dark, and still nothing had happened. After this, people
were moving about the room, some drinking, some chatting,
but the bridal pair were sitting quietly, as is the custom.
Then there comes a mighty knock at the door, and nobody is
in a hurry to open it; the bride nudges the groom, but he
turns quite pale. A little time goes by, and then there comes
another single knock, a far heavier one. Then the bride
takes the groom by the hand and leads him to the door,
much against his will, and opens it. They both see a mon-
strously tall man standing there, and he says he has come to
sit at their wedding feast. So the bride pushes the groom
out to go and welcome his guest, praying that God give him
strength, and she herself goes back in.
As for the groom, he goes off with this man to the out-
building he had had built for him, and ushers him into it.
The stranger wants him to walk in ahead of him, but this
he will not do. So in the end the other goes in first, and as
he does, he says: ‘Another time you'll take good care not to
sneer at dead men’s bones.’
The bridegroom pretends not to have heard, and says that
he hopes the other will enjoy what has been laid ready for
him, and not be angry with him for not being able to stay
with him. The stranger urges the bridegroom to come in
there with him all the same, even if only for a moment, but
he will not do so, not on any account.
Then the dead man says: ‘Even if you can’t stay beside
me this time, nor even come inside the same building as me,
I suppose you will do one thing for me—come and visit me
in return.’
THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE DEAD MAN 119
But this the bridegroom flatly refused, and so slams the

door and locks it. Then he goes back to the bridal party,
where everything was pretty quiet, for everyone had been
reduced to silence by what had happened. Only the bride
still behaved cheerfully. After this, the guests took them-
selves off little by little, and the young couple settled down
for the night, and they slept till morning.
Next morning the young husband wanted to go and see
what had become of his latest guest of the evening before,
but the bride says he must not take so much as a single step
in that direction unless she comes with him. So they both
of them go out to the outhouse, she going ahead to open
the door; the guest has quite gone, and he has finished the
water in the flask, but has scattered the earth from the dish
all over the floor.
‘I thought as much,’ said the woman. ‘If you had gone to
this building without me, and if you had put one foot in
this earth, you would have passed into the ghost’s power, and
would never have returned to the world of men. But it won't
hurt me even if I do step in it, and so I'll sweep and scrub
the building.’
But other people say that as the ghost was just leaving he
went to the door of the room where the feasters were, or to
that of the room where the young couple were feasting, and
spoke this verse:
There’s no thanks from your guest,
For nothing did I taste
But water plain and cold
To mix with churchyard mould.
He never visited the young couple again, and they loved one
another long and dearly.
J.A. I 242-5; from Kristrún Ásmundsdóttir (d. 1898). This is a

variant of AT 470 A, ‘The Offended Skull (Statue), but with
the normally tragic ending averted by the bride’s cleverness and
courage (this brings the story near AT 813 B, where a wife saves
120 GHOSTS
her husband from the devil; cf. the role of the heroine in
“The Wizards of the Vestmanna Isles, pp. 154-8). The motif
of the huge thigh-bone occurs also in a somewhat similar tale of
a girl who, seeing it dug up, remarks ‘It would have been fun
to kiss that fellow when he was alive'; when the ghost claims a
kiss, she gives it boldly, and comes to no harm—or, others say,
dares not, and goes mad (J.A. I 242). The first generations of
Icelanders were sometimes thought of as gigantic in later
traditions, and the implication is that bones such as these were
theirs.
The Miserly Ghost
It happened once that the owner of a very fine farm died,

but on the very day he died all his money disappeared, and
his most valuable goods too—a set of table silver, and many
other fine things. Nor could anyone sleep in his bed, for all
who did so after his death were themselves found dead next
morning. One day, a man came by and asked for a night’s
lodging; the mistress of the house said it was not possible,
and told him what was the matter with this bed, and that she
had no other free to offer him to sleep in. The man said he
would not be afraid, and insisted on sleeping in that bed, and
in the end he got his way.
Towards evening the man goes out to the churchyard, digs
up some earth from a grave, and rolls in it till he is muddy
all over; then he goes back and lies down on the bed. At
about midnight the door opens, and something peers in and
says: ‘It’s nice and clean in here.’ The man feels certain
that this must be the dead farmer returning. The ghost now
comes right into the room and rips up the floorboards and
picks up great quantities of coins from under them, and
he tosses them about so that they fall in showers all over
him; this goes on and on, far into the night.
THE MISERLY GHOST 121
When the night is almost over and day will soon be

dawning, the man gets out of bed and goes down to the
churchyard; there he sees an open grave, and climbs down
into it. After a little while the ghost arrives, and asks the man
to get out of his grave; but he said he would not, not unless
he showed him where he had hidden the valuables which
had disappeared at his death. The farmer said he would do
no such thing, but in the end he let himself be talked into
it, since otherwise he would never manage to get back into
his grave.
So then he goes with this man to the wall surrounding
his homefield, and rips some turves out of it; there is a
trapdoor facing him, and he raises it and goes down into an
underground chamber below. The ghost showed the man
all the treasures in there, and demanded to be allowed to
go back into the grave; but this the man firmly refused,
unless he promised never to come out of it again. So
then the farmer promised, and they both went back to the
grave; the ghost lay down in it, and the living man arranged
things there as he thought appropriate.
After this the man goes back to the farm and lies down in
the bed; but in the morning when people come to his room,
they are all astonished to find him alive. He tells them all
about the money and the treasures, and where he found
them, and he gets half of it all for himself.
J.A. I 264-5 (Apturgdngan); a story current in Skarðsströnd.

Ghosts of this type are called fépúkar or maurapúkar, ‘money
goblins’ or ‘ant goblins’. Every night they visit their hoard and
play grotesquely with it; as they hate the living, those who wish
to spy on them must pretend to be dead men too, e.g. by rubbing
themselves with graveyard mould, or wearing ice-cold metal
gloves. Fépúkar dread daylight so much that they will even
abandon their wealth to get back to their graves before dawn.
There are four more tales on this theme in J.A. I 675-70 (one tr.
Powell and Magnússon 170-3), and it also appears as one episode
122 GHOSTS
in ‘The Boy Who Knew No Fear’. The typical fépúki generally

differs from the treasure-haunting ghosts of many other lands
by this imbecilic glee over his wealth; the idea of a remorseful,
guilt-ridden ghost only too glad to reveal his treasures to anyone
bold enough to speak to him is more rarely found in Iceland.
Either type of story expresses moral and social condemnation
of miserliness, but the Icelandic type adds a powerful undertone
of contempt.
The Boy who Knew no Fear

There was once a lad who was a cheeky young dare-devil.
All those responsible for him, whether they were his parents
or other relations, were very worried over this, for however
they handled him they could not teach him to feel scared
of anything. When they were forced to give up, they took
him to a parish priest who, they thought, would be the
best man to have a stern word with the boy and curb his
nature. But when the boy came to live with the priest he
very soon showed just the same attitude, and could never see
any danger in anything, whatever the priest might try. But
the boy was never badly behaved or obstinate with him,
any more than he had been before with the people at home.
And so for some while the boy lived at the priest’s, and the
priest made every effort to change him somehow, but never
succeeded.
One winter day three bodies were brought to the church
for burial, but since they arrived late in the day they were
left in the church overnight, to be buried next day. It was
the custom in those days to bury bodies without coffins, and
that was how these were, in shrouds only. When the corpses
had been carried in the priest had them laid across the
church in the aisle between the pews, one behind the other,
with a space between each and the next.
THE BOY WHO KNEW NO FEAR 123
When much of the evening was past, the priest said to

the boy: ‘Go out to the church for me as fast as you can, my
boy, and fetch the book which is on the altar.’
The boy went off quickly, for he was not uncooperative,
only reckless. So then he goes out to the church, unlocks
it, and means to walk straight in, but as soon as he is a
little way in from the door he stumbles over something and
falls flat. He is not at all put out, but gropes about in front
of him and finds out that he has fallen over a dead body,
picks it up and pushes it up on a pew out of his way. He then
goes a little further in, and falls over the next body; he deals
with it in the same way as the first. Then he goes on again,
and falls over the third body, and deals with it as with the
others, by taking it out of the aisle and throwing it on a
pew. After which, he goes up to the altar, takes the book,
locks the church door, and brings the book to the priest.
The priest takes the book, and asks him whether he had
noticed anything. The boy said that he had not, and he did
not seem in the least dismayed.
The priest said: “Well now, didn’t you notice the corpses
in the church, in the aisle? I forgot to warn you about
them.’
‘Oh yes, the corpses,’ said the boy. ‘I did notice them, and
I wondered what they had to do with you, Father.’
‘How did you come to notice them?’ says the priest. “They
must have been in your way.’
The boy said: ‘I don’t reckon they were.’
‘How did you manage to get up to the front of the
church?’ says the priest.
‘I pushed them out of the aisle and onto the pews; they're
still lying there.’
The priest shook his head, and said no more.
Next morning, when people were up and about, the priest
said to the boy: ‘You'll have to take yourself off from here;
I won't keep you in my household, as you're so reckless that
you don’t shrink from disturbing the repose of the dead.’
124 GHOSTS
The boy took this calmly, and bade farewell to the priest
and his household. After that, he wanders about for some
while without a roof over his head; but at one farm where
he spent a night, he learnt that the Bishop of Skalholt was
dead, so he makes a detour and sets off for Skalholt. By the
time he got there night was falling, so he asks for a lodging.
The answer was that he was welcome to lodge there, but that
he would have to rely on himself alone for protection. He
asked whether there was a risk, or what the trouble might
be. They answered that things had changed there since the
bishop’s death, that nobody could bear to stay in the place
once darkness fell, and that everyone in the house had had
to flee every night since then.
"Then I'm all the better pleased to stay,’ said the boy.
Then men told him not to say such things, for it would
be no joke to stay. When darkness came they all began to
leave the place, and bade the boy farewell with heavy
hearts, for they did not expect to see him again. The boy
stayed behind, quite cheerful.
When it was quite dark he lit a lamp; then he went
round the house, exploring it. Finally he went into the
kitchen, where everything was in good order; fat sides of
smoked mutton were hanging from the beams, and every-
thing he saw was of the same fine quality. It was a long time
since the boy had tasted smoked mutton, and he began to
have a longing for it, as he saw such plenty on every side. He
did not want to take a nap, so that he should not be caught
unawares by the haunting, and so he decides to go and light
the fire, chops wood, sets a pot of water on the flames, and
cuts up a side of mutton to put in it. So far, he was none
the wiser about the haunting. But when everything is in the
pot, he hears a muffled voice up the kitchen chimney,
saying: ‘May I drop in?”
He answers: “Why shouldn't you drop in?”
At this, down the chimney comes the whole upper part
of a man—the head, the shoulders, arms and hands—and this

chunk lies on the floor for a while without stirring.
Next, the boy hears the question again from up the kitchen
chimney: ‘May I drop in?
He answers as before: “Why shouldn't you drop in?
Then down the chimney comes the middle part of a man
down as far as the legs; this chunk falls beside the first, and
lies there just as motionless.
Then once again the boy hears the question from up the
kitchen chimney: May I drop in?
He answers as before: “Why shouldn’t you drop in? You
need something to stand on.’
Then down came a man’s legs, and they were amazingly
huge, as also were the sections which had already fallen
down the chimney. When these chunks had dropped down,
they lay still for a while on the floor.
When the boy grew bored with this state of affairs, he
went up to the sections and said: ‘Seeing you're all in now,
youd best get moving.’
Then all the sections squirmed up to one another, and
joined together to make a mighty huge man. He took no
notice of the boy, but walked straight from the kitchen into
the house, and the boy followed this big man wherever he
went.
The big man goes into one of the main rooms at the front
of the house, and goes up to a large chest and opens it, and
the boy sees that it is full of coins. Then the big man takes
fistful after fistful of coins from the chest and pours them over
his head, letting them run all over the floor behind him.
He carries on doing this all night till he has emptied the
chest; then he takes the heaps he has poured on the floor,
and pours coins from them over his head so that they fall
inside the chest. The boy stood watching while the ghost
poured coins to and fro, and saw how they rolled about in
all directions across the floor. Now the ghost starts gathering
them together again, flinging coins into the chest and
126 GHOSTS
sweeping his hands across the floor to find those which

had rolled away from the heap, and the boy realizes that
he must be thinking how it is getting on for daybreak, and
is hurrying as fast as he can.
Now there comes a time when the ghost has got all the
coins back in the chest, and the boy thinks he looks as if he’s
about to leave; indeed, he is just turning to go out from
the hall. The boy told him there was no need to be in such
a hurry, but the ghost said there was, for day was breaking.
The ghost tried to pass him, but the boy caught hold of him,
meaning to hinder him. So after a while the ghost grew
angry, took a grip on the boy, and said he would not
succeed in delaying his departure any longer. The boy
grappled with the revenant but soon learnt that he was no
match for him, so he avoided coming to grips and only
guarded himself against serious injuries and falls. This went
on for some time. .
At one moment the ghost had his back to the door, which
was open, and was about to lift the boy as high as his chest,
in order to hurl him down hard. The lad saw what he in-
tended, and knew it would be the death of him. So just as
the ghost was gathering all his strength to snatch him up, the
boy hurled himself upwards against his chest with such
violence that the ghost toppled backwards and lay on his
back across the threshold, half in and half out of the room,
and the boy landed on top of him as he fell. Now it so
happened that when this revenant toppled down with his
head outside the door, the light of the sun, which was well
above the horizon by then, shone into his eyes, and so he
split in half, and the two halves sank into the earth where
they lay, one on each side of the threshold, and the ground
closed over them when they had disappeared.
Though the boy was rather stiff and bruised after the
ghost’s attack, he sets to work and makes two wooden
crosses which he drives into the ground where the pieces had
sunk, one inside and one outside the door of the hall. After
THE BOY WHO KNEW NO FEAR 127.
this, he lies down and goes to sleep, until the men of the
household wake him later in the morning, when it was full
day. They greeted him, and now that they saw him alive
they were happier than they had been the previous night,
and they asked him if he was any the wiser about the nightly
haunting of their house. The boy said he had not noticed
any haunting. They would not believe him, however much
he tried to assure them this was true. After this he stayed
there quietly all day, as he was worn out by his encounter
with the ghost, and also because the men refused to part with
him, as he gave them courage.
That evening when he saw the men about to leave, he
tried every means to get them to stay quietly at home, and
said they would come to no harm from the haunting. But
it was no use; they would not believe him and went off, as
they had the night before; but by his words and encourage-
ment he had at least contrived that they parted from him
without fear. When they had all left the place, the lad got
himself food, lay down to rest, and slept till morning. As soon
as the men returned next day they again questioned him
about the haunting, but he said he had noticed nothing,
and that in future there would be no need to fear anything
of the sort. Then he told the whole tale of the previous
night, and showed them the crosses on the floor at the spot
where the pieces had sunk, and with this he led the men to
the treasure chest. They thanked the boy warmly for his
courage, and urged him to accept anything they had, either
these coins or other money, as a reward for what he had
done, and to stay at Skalholt as long as he liked. He thanked
them for this fine offer, but said he had no need of wealth or
anything else, nor would he stay any longer. However, he
stayed one more night, during which all the people stayed
in the house too, and no one came to any harm, either then
or later.
After this he left Skalholt, much to everyone's regret,
and set off in a straight line for the north. There is no more
128 GHOSTS
to tell about him for some while, till one day when he came
upon a cave. In he went, but he saw twelve beds in a side
chamber of the cave, facing one another in two rows of six.
These beds were all unmade, and as there was still part of
the day left before he need expect the owners of the cave
to return, he set to and made all the beds. Having done so,
he lay down on the innermost bed of one row, drew the
covers carefully over him, and went to sleep.
After a while he is woken by movement in the cave, and
hears that many men have come in and are wondering who
could have come by and given himself the trouble to make
their beds, and they say they are grateful to him. Then,
having eaten, they betake themselves to bed, by what he
can make out. But when the one whose bed he was lying in
went to pull the covers back, he at once noticed the lad.
They all thanked him for the good turn he had done them,
and asked him to stay and give them some help about the
home, for they were much in need of it; they were always
obliged to leave the cave at sunrise because otherwise
their enemies would come and fight them there, and so they
could never stay at home. The boy said he would accept
their offer, and stay; and then he enquired how it came about
that they had to go off every day to a battle so stubborn
that it never ended. The owners of the cave said that the
other men had been enemies of theirs who had often done
evil in times gone by, and that they, the cave-dwellers, had
always been stronger than them, so that even now they
overcame them every evening and killed them. Yet what
now happened was that their enemies always came to life
again by the morning, and every time were more terrible
and fierce than the time before, and that they would un-
doubtedly slaughter them all inside the cave if they were
not there to face them on the battlefield at sunrise. After
that, they lay down to sleep and slept till morning.
As soon as the sun was up, the men left the cave, well
armed, and told the lad to see to the cave and the housework,
which he promised to do. In the course of the day the lad

went out to a hazel wood in the same direction as he had
seen them go in the morning, in order to discover where
their meeting place was. As soon as he had set eyes on the
battlefield he ran back to the cave, after which he makes the
beds, sweeps the cave, and does everything necessary. In
the evening the owners of the cave came back weary and
worn out, and were glad he had done everything for them
so that they need do nothing but eat and go to bed. So then
they all go to sleep, except the lad; he lies awake, wondering
whether he can find out how it is that their enemies come
to life again by night.
As soon as he thinks his comrades are asleep he gets up,
chooses which of their weapons he prefers, and takes them.
Then he goes to the battlefield, and gets there past midnight.
There was nothing to be seen but dead bodies and de-
capitated heads. He remains there a long time. Towards
dawn he sees a mound not far from the battlefield open up;
out came a woman wearing a blue cloak and holding a
phial. He sees her go straight across the field to where a
fallen man lay, and smear something from the phial onto the
dead man’s headless body, and also onto that part of the neck
which was attached to the head, and then set the head back
on the trunk, and they at once grew together and the man
came back to life. She did the same to two or three others,
and they too came alive. Then the boy rushed at the old
woman and struck her her death-blow, for now he knew
what made the enemies come to life; and after this he slew
those she had revived. Once he had done so, he set to work
to prove whether he himself could manage to revive the
fallen in the same way as the woman, and he smeared stuff
from the phial on the stumps, and it worked just as well as
before. So now he alternately revived the fallen and slew
them again, until the sun came up.
Then his companions from the cave arrived, ready for
battle; they had been distressed that he had disappeared, and
130 GHOSTS
some of their weapons too. When they arrived, they thought
it a very pleasant change that their enemies should all be
lying motionless and dead. Seeing the boy there, they greeted
him and asked how he happened to be there. Then he told
them the whole story, and how the elf-woman had tried to
bring all the fallen back to life. He showed them the
phial of ointment, took one of the fallen men, smeared oint-
ment on him and put his head back, at which he came alive
as fast as ever, but the boy’s comrades killed him at once.
The men from the cave then thanked him warmly for his
courage and invited him to stay with them as long as he
liked, and offered him money for his help. He thanked them
for their fine offer, and agreed to stay.
After all this, the men from the cave grew so friendly
with the boy, and so merry and full of high spirits, that they
agreed to find out what it was like to die, since they could
all revive one another. Then they all slew one another and
rubbed ointment on, and so came alive again. They got a
great deal of fun out of this. On one occasion when the
boy’s head had been cut off and grafted back on the trunk,
his face had been turned backwards and the nape of his
neck to the front. Now when the boy caught sight of his own
backside, his head being the wrong way round, he almost
went crazy with terror, and begged them to free him from
such torture by whatever means they could. Then they
ran to him and cut his head off again and grafted it back
the right way. Then he recovered his wits, and was as fear-
less as before, and so remained ever after. Then he and
his comrades dragged all the dead men’s bodies into a heap,
piled their weapons on top, and burned them, and with
them the elf-woman who had come from the mount with
her phial of ointment. After that they went into the mound
and took out all the valuable things there, and carried
them all back to their cave. The boy stayed with them ever
afterwards, and no more tales are told of him.
JÁ. 1 270-5; a story current in Reykjavík. Another version is given

by Maurer (136-9), where the hero is Björn, nephew of the
famous priest and magician Hálfdan Narfason (d. 1568; cf. J.Á. I
515-20); there, owing to the influence of the numerous Master
Magician legends, the ghosts are all explained as illusions called
up by Hálfdan to test the lad. There are also two manuscript
versions (Sveinsson 1928, 23). None is as complex in structure as
the present version.
The basic pattern is AT 326, ‘The Youth Who Wanted to
Learn What Fear Is’, extremely popular all over Europe; the
Icelandic versions are derived from Danish, but in two cases,
instead of the normal ending in which the hero learns fear when
his wife throws cold water over him or drops a fish down his
back, they have the unparalleled finale about the ‘men in the
cave’ and the ‘everlasting combat’ (see Christiansen 1959, 180-7).
These are well-known motifs in Iceland. There are many tales
of outlaw bands living in some remote, mysterious spot where
outsiders can only come by accident or at the outlaws’ own
summons; they are sometimes called hellismenn, ‘men of the
cave’ (J.A. II 800-4), and in some legends magical powers may be
ascribed to them. The second motif, ‘everlasting combat’, is very
old in Scandinavia, and originally mythological; it reappears
in fourteenth-century fantastic sagas, notably Þorsteins þáttr
uxafóts, where the hero helps one party of dead men against
another, since only the living can ‘kill the dead (tr. Simpson,
218-20), and in Sorla þáttr, where the part played here
by the old elf-woman is played by a witch-like emissary of the
goddess Freyja.
There has been debate as to whether the ‘reversed head’ joke
is an older feature than the ‘fish or cold water’ joke as a finale
to this tale, for it occurs also in Straparola’s Italian version of
1550 (see Christiansen 1959, 180-7). It is in any case an idea
congenial to Icelandic humour; cf. the story of a girl who, when
menaced by a ghost with the words ‘Look at my red eyes, how
red they are!’, overawed it with the retort ‘Look at my black arse,
how black it is!’ (J.A. I 306).
Other characteristically Icelandic motifs are the coin-tossing
of the fépúki, and the wrestling-match, modelled on the famous
tussle between Grettir and Glámr.
K
132 GHOSTS
The Deacon of Myrka

In the old days there was a deacon living at Myrka in
Eyjafjord, but what his name was is not said. He had as
his mistress a woman named Gudrun, who lived, so some
people say, at Begisa, on the other side of Horga River,
where she was servant to a priest. The deacon had a grey-
maned horse which he always rode; he called it Faxi.
One day, a little before Christmas, the deacon went to
Begisa to invite Gudrun to the Christmas festivities at
Myrka, and he promised her that he would come and fetch
her in due course and take her to the festivities on Christmas
Eve. For several days before the deacon went over to
give Gudrun this invitation, there had been heavy snows
and hard frosts; but on the very day he rode to Begisa there
came a sudden thaw, and the ice broke up, so that by the
end of the day the river had grown impassable by reason of
floating ice and a strong current, while the deacon mean-
while loitered at Bægisa. When he did set out, he never gave
a thought to how the weather had changed in the course of
the day, but assumed that the river was still frozen solid. He
crossed the smaller stream in Yxnadal by a strip of ice that
still held, but when he got to the Horga River, it had cleared
itself of ice. So he rides downstream till he comes to Saurbee,
the next farm below Myrka, where the ice still held. The
deacon rides out onto the strip of ice, but just when he is
half way across, it breaks under him, and he fell into the
river.
Next morning, when the farmer at the neighbouring farm
of Thufnavellir got out of bed, he sees a saddled and bridled
horse by his homefield, and thinks he recognizes it as the
deacon’s Faxi. He is taken aback, for he had seen the deacon
ride away the day before, but had not noticed him return,
and so he soon suspected what must have happened. He
goes down to the homefield; and, just as he had thought,
THE DEACON OF MYRKA 133
it was Faxi there, soaking wet and in a sorry state. Next,
he goes down to a small headland that juts into the river,
and there he finds the deacon washed up on shore dead.
The farmer at once brings this news to Myrka. Now when
the deacon was found, the back of his head had been badly
cut about by floating ice. Anyway, he was carried home to
Myrka and buried, during the week before Christmas.
From the time the deacon left Begisa right up to Christmas
Eve no news of what had happened could reach Begisa from
Myrka, because of the breaking up of the ice and the
flooding. But on Christmas Eve the weather was calm, and
the river had gone down during the night, so Gudrun was
looking forward to the festivities at Myrka. Towards evening
she went to get ready, and when she was in the middle of
dressing she heard a knock; another woman who was with
her went to the door, but saw nobody—for indeed it was
neither clear nor dark outside, as clouds were driving fast
across the moon, sometimes hiding it and sometimes not.
When this girl came in again and said she had seen nothing,
Gudrun said: ‘It must be a joke meant for me, so of course I
must go.’ By then she was quite ready, except that she still had
to put her riding-cape on. She picked up the cape and put one
arm in its sleeve, but simply slung the other side over her
shoulder and held it.
As soon as she came out she saw Faxi standing by the
door, and beside him a man whom she took to be the
deacon. They did not say one word to each other, so it is
said. He lifted her and set her on the horse’s back, and him-
self mounted in front of her. So then they rode on for a
while, without speaking. They came to the River Horga,
where ice was still piled high along the banks; and as the
horse leapt down from the ice into the water, the deacon’s
hat was jerked forward, and Gudrun saw the skull itself
laid bare.
At that very moment the moon came out from behind
the clouds, and the deacon spoke:
134 GHOSTS
The moon glides,
And Death rides;
Don't you see a patch of white
On this head of mine tonight,
Garun, Garun?
She was startled, and remained silent. But other people
say Gudrun herself lifted his hat from behind, and then
said: ‘I see what there is to see.’
There is no mention of any further talk between them,
nor of their journey, until they reached Myrka; there they
dismounted at the lychgate of the churchyard, and the
deacon said to Gudrun:
You wait here, Garun, Garun,
While I take my Faxi, Faxi,
To the field beyond the fence.
So saying, he went off with the horse. She happened to look
into the churchyard, and there she saw an open grave; she
was horribly frightened, but even so, hitting on a plan, she
clutches the rope of the lychgate bell. At once she is clutched
from behind, and it proved lucky for her that she had only
had time to put one arm through the sleeve of her cape, for
the tugging was so fierce that the cape tore at the seam of
the sleeve, and the last she saw of the deacon was that he
tumbled into the open grave, still holding her torn cape in
his hand, and the earth poured down onto him from both
sides.
As for Gudrun, she rang without stopping till the farm
people from Myrka came out and found her, for she was so
frightened at all this that she dared not leave the spot nor
stop ringing, for she felt sure she had been dealing with
the deacon’s ghost, even though no word of his death had
yet reached her. And she no longer had the least doubt of
it once she had had a talk with the people of Myrka, who told
her all about the deacon’s death, while she in return told
them of her experience.
That same night, as soon as everyone was in bed and the
THE DEACON OF MYRKA 135
lights were out, the deacon came and attacked Gudrun, and
this caused such turmoil that the people had to get up
again, and nobody got any sleep that night. For two weeks
after that she could not bear to be ever alone, and someone
had to sit up with her every night. Some say a priest had
to sit on the edge of her bed and read psalms.
Now a magician was sent for, from Skagafjord in the
west. As soon as he came, he made them dig up a large
rock from above the homefield and roll it up against the
gable-wall of the house. In the evening, when it grew dusk,
the deacon comes and tries to get into the house, but the
magician forces him back to the gable-wall, and there drives
him down into the ground by mighty incantations; he then
rolls the rock on top of him, and there the deacon has been
forced to stay to this day. After this, all the haunting stopped,
and Gudrun grew more cheerful. A little later she went home
to Bægisa, but people say she was never the same again.
J.A. I 280-8, from Ingibjörg Þorvaldsdóttir (b. 1807), with

additional details from the Rev. Páll Jónsson (d.1889). A fine
version of the international type AT 365, ‘The Dead Bridegroom
Carries off his Bride’ (also known as ‘Lenore’, from the title of
Biirger’s ballad). Four other Icelandic versions are known, one
attached to a different pair of farms, and the others unlocalized
(J.A. I 283, 288-4; Maurer 73; Sveinsson 1928, 33). These four
all depart from the international prototype in explaining the
ghost’s behaviour as revenge by a rejected lover, this appearing
more credible than motiveless malignity. All five Icelandic
versions agree that the girl escaped and the ghost was laid; a rock
at Myrka was believed, in the late eighteenth century, to be that
under which the ghost was pinned (J.A. I 283). This story, there-
fore, like several others in the present section, can be regarded
also as a variant of ML 4021*, ‘A Troublesome Ghost Laid’.
A detail in the present version reflecting Icelandic beliefs is the
ghost’s use of ‘Garin’, a non-existent name, instead of Guðrún,
because ghosts are unable to utter the word Gud, ‘God’. Another
is the knock at the door; after dark, Icelanders would tap the
136 GHOSTS
window, and a knock, especially if it were only a single stroke,
was a sure sign of a ghost or other evil creature seeking entry
(J.A. II 542, and cf. ‘The Bridegroom and the Dead Man’, pp.
115-20). Finally, although a verse referring to the moon and
the ride of the dead is a common feature in AT 365, the present
narrative adds the precise detail of the clouds suddenly clearing;
this is yet another reminiscence of the fight between Grettir and
Glamr, at the climax of which the saga-writer makes a similarly
eerie use of scudding clouds and intermittant moonlight—indeed,
the identical phrase is used at this point in both saga and tale.
The Ghost’s Son
At one time, long ago, the farm of Bakki (now called

Prestsbakki) in Hrutafjord stood further north on a hill by
the sea called Hellisholar. But later it was moved because it
was haunted, and was rebuilt where it is now.
It happened that a farmer in the parish had asked for the
hand of the daughter of the priest at Bakki, but did not
get her; this put him in such a rage that he fell ill and died,
and was buried in Bakki churchyard. This happened one
summer, and much of the winter passed without anything
noteworthy happening, except that people thought the
priest’s daughter seemed rather strange that winter.
One evening it happened that her foster-mother, an old
woman who knew a great deal, went out to the churchyard
with her knitting; the weather was fine, and clouds were
driving fast across the moon. The priest’s daughter had
told her that this man came to her each night and treated
her lovingly and tenderly. She said she had become weary of
his frequent visits, and that she found now that she was
pregnant by him; also, she said that he had said that this
child would be unlucky in years to come. So then she had
asked her foster-mother to help her in her trouble, and there-
THE GHOST’S SON 137
fore the old woman went out to the churchyard, as we
have already said.
The woman went to the man’s grave, and it was open.
She dropped her ball of wool into the grave, sat down on
the edge of it, and stayed there knitting. Now ghosts cannot
get back into their graves if anyone drops anything into
them, and the old woman knew this, which was why she
dropped her ball in. So there she sat and waited until the
ghost came. He told her to take the ball out of his grave,
so that he could lie down in it. She said she would do no such
thing until he agreed to tell her the reasons for his night
wanderings.
The ghost said he went visiting the priest’s daughter—
‘And her father can't stop me now, says he. ‘I’ve given her
a child, and it is a boy she is carrying.’
‘Tell me what lies in store for the child, says the old
woman.
‘This is what lies in store for the boy, says the ghost.
‘He will become the priest here at Bakki, and the first time
he ever stands in front of the altar and blesses the con-
gregation, the church and everyone inside it will sink into
the ground. And I will then think my revenge is complete,
for not having had the priest’s daughter while I was alive.’
‘Yours is a fearful prophecy, if it proves true, says the
old woman. ‘Is there any way of preventing or averting
these horrors?’
‘There is one way, says the ghost, ‘if someone were to stab
the priest before the altar just as he was about to bless the
people. But no one would do that.’
‘Do you stick to that?’ says she. ‘Is there no other way to
stop this misfortune?’
‘No, no other way, says the ghost.
‘Then down you go into your grave,’ says she, ‘and never
come up out of it again!’
She then took out her ball of wool and the ghost went
down into the grave, which closed itself. The old woman
138 GHOSTS
read such spells over the grave that there was never any sign
of haunting again. She went home, and told no one what
had passed.
So time went by, and the priest’s daughter gave birth
to a boy, a big handsome one. It is not said that she ever
told her father who the baby’s father was; and the boy grew
up at Bakki with his mother and grandfather. One could
soon see that this lad outshone the rest in both mind and
body; when he grew older he was sent to study, and always
seemed to outstrip everyone else. So time went on till his
training was finished and he became his grandfather's
curate.
Now, to go back to the girl’s old foster-mother. She saw
that things could not go on as they were, for if so, what the
ghost had told her long ago would come true. So she went
to her son, who was a very brave man and would not have
too many scruples when there was much at stake. She told
him the whole story, and earnestly urged him to kill the
new priest as soon as he turned round to bless the con-
gregation from the altar, and said she would answer for it
that no harm would come of it if he did. He was unwilling,
but since his mother was so distressed and begged him so
earnestly he promised in the end, and she made him swear
not to change his mind.
Now the day came when the young priest was to say his
first Mass, and great crowds came to the church, and they
all admired his elegance and his voice. But as he raised his
hand to bless the congregation, the old woman made a sign
to her son. He stood up, though it was much against his will,
and stabbed the priest to the heart, and he fell dead. This
took everybody quite by surprise, and they wanted to take
the slayer. But some men went to see if they could help the
priest, but there was nothing left of him at all, except for
the topmost vertebra of his spine, which lay on the step in
front of the altar. So they now saw that there was more to
this man than met the eye. Then the old woman stepped
THE GHOST’S SON 139
forward and told the whole story from the beginning, at
which they were all filled with terror, and thanked her for
her resourcefulness and courage. They also noticed then that
the church was tilted, and that the chancel had sunk a little
way into the ground; this was because the priest had man-
aged to intone the first word of the blessing before he was
killed.
After this, Bakki was so haunted that the farm was
moved, and rebuilt where it stands now.
JÁ. I 285-7 (Bakkadraugurinn); a story current in Hrútafjörður.

For two variants, see J.A. I 287-9 and Maurer 300-1; in both,
the priest is killed by his altar-server, and three drops of blood,
not a bone, remain. The story is related to the Irish AT 764,
‘The Devils Son as Priest’, in which a devil or a dead man
predicts that a quarrelling couple will have a son, whose true
father will be himself, that he will grow up to be a priest, and
that all whom he then sprinkles with holy water will be damned.
But the young priest, learning his true nature, is saved from
this curse by severe penances.
The idea that a vertebra alone remains when a ghost has been
stabbed belongs properly to the stories about ‘Sendings’, for
which see “The Vertebra’ below, pp. 152-8. The ball of wool
in the grave can be parallelled in a legend from the Isle of Lewis
in the Hebrides, in which a woman prevents a ghost from
re-entering his grave by laying her spindle across it, and so
forces him to answer her questions (Swire 1961, 113).
The Girl who Turned in her Grave
On a farm in the western district of Alptamyra, in the

nineteenth century, there lived two brothers and a sister;
there was nobody but themselves to work on the farm. Now,
their lands lay in such a way that they had to cross a certain
fjord or bay in order to reach their meadows. One evening as
140 GHOSTS
they were all three returning from their meadows, they
ferried a load of hay across with them, and they had loaded
the boat so fully that there was nowhere for the girl to sit
except right at the stern, while the two brothers rowed on
the same bench amidships, where there was a clear space,
but they could not see their sister because of the pile of hay.
In this manner they crossed the fjord, and came to land at the
most convenient spot. But as soon as they went to unload
the boat, they found that the girl had disappeared, and they
did not know what had become of her, except that they
assumed that she had fallen overboard. As the evening
had grown very dark, so that one could barely see in front of
one’s face, they took no steps to search for her, being certain
that she would never be found alive.
So they went home, and slept. That night, one of the
brothers dreamed of her; he, thought that she came to him
in his sleep and showed him where to look for her. Next
morning the brothers both went out in the boat to search,
and they drew her body from the water at the very spot
which she herself had pointed out in the dream. After this,
she was made ready for burial, and laid to rest in the
churchyard.
Now it so happened that this girl had been in love with a
man in that neighbourhood, but he had refused to take any
notice of her. When they were about to bury her, this man
started having nightmares about her, and he complained
of this. Not long afterwards, this same man disappeared one
day, and nobody knew what had become of him. So then a
band of men went out to look for him, and he was found
down on the beach at the foot of some high cliffs, all
battered and crushed. The general assumption was that the
girl must have walked, and must have thrown him over the
cliff, and so killed him. As soon as this rumour reached them,
her brothers went and dug her up, and when they opened
the coffin they saw that there was indeed something wrong,
for the girl had turned round inside it, and was now lying
THE GIRL WHO TURNED IN HER GRAVE 141
face down. They did not like the look of this at all, so at
the same time as they turned her the right way round in
the coffin, they also drove two sharp steel nails into the
soles of her feet, and so closed the coffin up again and went
home, leaving everything as it should be. After this, there
was no more sign that their sister went wandering about.
J.A. I 298 (Stúlkan í Alptamyrarsókn), from Jón Borgfirðingur,

from a story current in Ísafjörður. For other tales of ghosts
revealing in dreams where their corpses lie, see J.A. I 228-82.
The nails in the feet used here to lay the ghost are parallelled
by the broken needle in the story quoted in the note to Tsn't
it Fun in the Dark!’ (p. 107), and also by the widespread custom in
many lands of staking the corpses of vampires, suicides, and other
suspected revenants.
The Woman in the Red Cap

In one priest’s household there lived an elderly woman as a
pensioner. She often used to quarrel with the servants there,
and one of them, whose name was Jon, would play spiteful
tricks on her. She promised him, shortly before her death,
that she would take revenge on him for the way he had
treated her. Soon after the old woman’s death, Jon died out
on the fells, but his body was not found till much later; it
was then buried, but the very next night the grave was
opened and the coffin smashed. So his body was buried a
second and a third time, but the same thing always hap-
pened, so that it could not lie still in the grave. Then the
priest found a way out, by having the body put in a sack
and left to lie behind the church door.
Now some time passed, until one day one of the women
who worked on the priest’s farm, whose name was Gudrun,
lost her tobacco pouch. That evening she started making
142 GHOSTS
such a fuss over her loss that the priest finally offered to
give her a new pouch, and some tobacco in it too, if she
would go out to the church then and there, and fetch the
sack of bones. She did not turn a hair, but just went and
fetched the sack.
That night Jon appeared to her, and said: “You have
treated my bones badly, and you will have to make me full
amends for that. Be sure to go out to the church on New
Year’s Eve, and say to the woman in the red cap: “Forgive
the skeleton that lies behind the door.” ’
Gudrun did as she was asked; on New Year’s Eve she
went out to the church, and it was full of people, but she
took no notice of that. There among the rest was a woman
in a red cap; Gudrun went up to her and said exactly what
she had been told to say. In a harsh voice, the woman
answered ‘Yes’. Next morning Gudrun told the whole story to
the priest. Then Jon’s bones were buried once more, and
after this the grave was not disturbed again.
J.A. I 806-7, from Maurer 74-5. For two variants, see J.A. I 305-8;
one is tr. in Powell and Magnússon, 235-7. This is a sub-type of
ML 4020 The Unforgiven Skeleton’, a story popular in all three
Scandinavian countries, but with wide variation in detail (for the
Danish and Swedish sub-types, see Ellekilde and von Sydow in
Nordisk Kultur IXB, 1931, 149-50, 232; for the Norwegian, Chris-
tiansen 1958). In the Aarne-Thompson system these tales are
classified as AT 760, “The Unquiet Grave’; there is also the closely
similar AT 882B*, “The Forgiven Skeleton’, from Czechoslovakia.
The Icelandic story differs from most versions at AT 760 (= ML
4020), but resembles AT 882B*, in that the forgiveness must be
obtained from someone dead, not from a living person or a
priest. The idea of hostility between two of the dead is familiar
to Icelandic thought (cf. J.A. I 226), but that of a guilty person
condemned to expiate a crime after death is not. The encounter
in the church on New Year’s Eve is based on the common
belief that on that night ‘the churchyard rises’, i.e. the dead go
to church, in the clothes they were buried in, to hear a midnight
THE WOMAN IN THE RED CAP 143
Mass there; they are followed by the fetches of all those in the
parish who will die during the next year (J.A. I 223). This belief
forms the basis of ML 4015 “The Midnight Mass of the Dead’,
about a living woman who unwittingly attends this ghostly
service; this legend, common in Norway, may have influenced
the final episode of the present tale.
Mori, the Ghost of Irafell

There was a man called Kort Thorvardson, a high official
and a respected farmer; for a long time he lived at
Modruvellir in Kjos, but eventually moved to Flekkudal,
where he died in 1821. He was twice married; his first wife
was called Ingibjorg, and her family came from the north.
Many men had wanted to marry her before Kort, but she
had refused them all. Her former admirers thought they had
been very shabbily treated when Kort married her, even
though he was far above them in many ways, and this made
them so bitter that they paid a wizard from the north to send
a Sending against Kort and his wife. In order to make this,
the wizard used a little boy who, so the story goes, had died
of exposure in the open country; the wizard called him back
while he was still warm, or even not quite dead, and sent
him against Kort and his wife at Modruvellir, and decreed
that this ghost would attach itself to them and to their
descendants to the ninth generation, and do them great harm.
People who have seen this ghost (and they are by no means
few) describe him as wearing grey breeches and a russet
cloak over his jacket, and a black hat with a very broad
brim; there is a deep gash or tear in the brim above his left
eye. He takes his name from the russet [mdr] cloak, and so is
called Mori. The wizard’s decree has been fulfilled only too
well, so they think, for as soon as Mori came south he
attacked Modruvellir, as planned, and did much harm of
144 GHOSTS
various sorts to Kort and his wife, killing their livestock
and spoiling their food. But there are no instances of Mori
killing people directly, neither at first nor later.
Once, Kort and his wife had reared two calves through
the winter. Mori chased them both over a rock-cliff next
summer, and they were found dead at the foot. Another
time, Kort had a mare, and this mare and her foal had been
allowed to graze all summer in his home-pastures. Late that
summer, men saw the foal galloping round and round a rock
as if it had gone crazy, and then it fell dead. When they got
to it, the foal was lying dead; it had the end of its gut stuck
fast to the rock, and had torn all its own guts out, and then
fallen dead. This was blamed on Mori.
Since Mori had not been quite thoroughly dead when
he was called back, he, like other such ghosts, needed his
food. Therefore he had to be given his rations, as for every
man in the household, both at Modruvellir and later on
when he took up residence at Irafell to haunt Kort’s son
Magnus; food meant for him had always to be set out in a
particular place. Mori had made sure of this by turning
everything topsy-turvy in Ingibjorg’s dairy; sometimes he
would sit on the cross-beams of the dairy and dabble about
in the milk churns with his paws, or he would fling them
on the floor and splash the curds all over Ingibjorg herself
or up as high as the rafters, or else he would throw turf and
gravel into the dairy-food where it stood ready, and so ruin
it. To counter this, Ingibjorg hit on the plan of giving him
his ration of dairy-food at each meal, after which he spoilt it
far less. However, on one occasion it did happen that Mori’s
supper ration was forgotten. Next morning when people
went into the dairy they saw him sitting there; he had his
great paws right down inside each barrel of curds, and was
squatting across the rims of both barrels at once, so that
he could paddle in the curds and splash them about at the
same time. After that, they took care never to forget to
give him his share.
MORI, THE GHOST OF IRAFELL 145
But it wasn’t only food that Mori needed; he was also

believed to need sleep, just like anybody else, and it is said
that after he went to haunt Magnus Kortsson at Irafell,
Magnus always had to leave an empty bed for him just
opposite his own bed, and that no one but Mori dared sleep
in it. Once, at the autumn sheep-gathering, it happened
that many people came to Irafell and were given hospitality
for the night. Late that evening a boy arrived and asked
to be put up. Magnus said he was welcome to use the house,
but that he could not offer him any place to sleep except the
floor, unless he was willing to lie on the bed opposite his
own—and this the boy accepted thankfully. When he lies
down he falls asleep quickly, but no sooner is he asleep than
something frightful comes over him, and there is a rattling
in his throat; he wakes with a start, and all night long he
can't get a moment’s quiet rest for these attacks. Next day
the weather was so bad that the guests could not leave, and
so stayed a second night at Irafell. That evening some lads
who lived at Irafell and knew Mori pretty well, having had
plenty of mudslinging matches against him, took a hand in
the game; they stuck knives all round the bed with their
points sticking out through the boards on every side. That
night the boy slept quietly, and people thought it was owing
to the fact that Mori did not dare go near him because of
the pointed knives.
After Kort died in 1821, Mori at first attached himself
to his eldest son Magnus, who lived for a long time at Irafell
(as has been mentioned already), and as Mori haunted that
farm for so long he was nicknamed Mori of Irafell, and the
name has stuck to him ever since. There is a story told about
Magnus, that he once went down to Seltjarness when there
were large shoals of fish off shore there, and since he had
no regular place on board anyone’s boat he went from boat
to boat and got a place in a different one each day. Two days
running he got a seat in the boat of Sigurd of Hrolfsskali; but
then Sigurd’s rowers began to notice that Magnus was
146 GHOSTS
never alone, wherever he went. And so on the third morning
when Magnus went aboard and Sigurd and his men were
already afloat, the rowers spoke their mind about Mori;
indeed, it is said that they had seen something looking like
a ball of russet wool or a dry horse-turd come rolling up on
board with Magnus. At this, Sigurd, who was held to be a
wary and intelligent man, told Magnus to leave the boat,
for he would not take him out to sea again—either because
he himself had also seen some sign of Mori, or because he
did not want his rowers to distrust Magnus and blame him
for their bad luck if anything went wrong.
On one occasion Magnus of Irafell left some loose sheets
of “Hallgrim’s Psalms’ with Asgeir Finnbogason, who at that
time lived at Bradrædi, for them to be bound up. One
evening Asgeir was out, and his wife waited up for him; and
at first she was up and about, but later she got into bed,
and merely stayed awake with a light burning till Asgeir
came home. Then he too went to bed, and so they put the
light out. Then she saw a rough-looking figure come into
the house, sit on a chair by the bed, and lay one arm along
the bed-board; now she was lying on the outer side of the
bed, and she found this arm so heavy and bulky that she
called out and asked who it was, and whether it was their
foster-son Jon. There was no reply. She again asked who
had come in, and told him to take himself off to the lowest
pit of Hell. Then up stands the man who had been sitting
on that chair, and his cat’s eyes glint in the moonlight that
shone through the window; then he vanished, through the
locked door. Then there came a terrific loud crash, and at
the same moment down falls a shelf on the far side of the
room, in the corner opposite the bed; there were many
books standing on it, among others the sheets of Hallgrim's
Psalms’ which Asgeir had taken from Magnus to bind. On
top of the shelf were several pairs of cups, and these were
smashed to bits, as one can imagine, and the pieces rolled
all over the floor. After this, the mistress of the house had the
MORI, THE GHOST OF IRAFELL 147
lamp relit, and got someone to sit up by her all night, and
did not get much sleep. But next day, early in the morning,
Magnus himself arrived at Bradreedi to ask for the loose
sheets which had been lying on the shelf—and he was told
what a pleasant ghost he had as his companion!
Once, another of Kort’s sons, named Einar, set out from
home to go to Kjos to see some kinsmen there. It was in
early winter. Einar went by the coast road across Kollafjord
and up onto Kjalarnes, but by the time he got there dusk was
falling. He went on all the same, and came to Skrautholar
on Kjalarnes after bed-time; he was no stranger to that
household, but all the same he did not want to be a nuisance
and rouse everyone, when they had just fallen asleep, so he
decided to go and look in the cowhouse and see if he could
find himself a space to lie there for the night. When he comes
into the cowhouse, he finds one stall empty, lies down, and
sleeps till morning. In the morning he gets up early, goes to
find the people of the house, and says he hopes they do not
mind the fact that he made himself at home, went into
the cowhouse, and spent the night in the empty stall, as
he had not wanted to be a nuisance. The men of the house
said he could have come in, and welcome too, even if he
had woken them; and that his coming in the way he did had
been far worse for them, because on the very morning of the
day he came, their best cow had been found lying with her
neck broken in the same stall where he later lay, and that
it looked as if Mori, who followed him and all Kort’s
children, had decided to make room for his master when he
was due to pass that way, in case he needed to use the
cow-stall, as had indeed happened now.
Selected from J.A. I 378-88, from local traditions. Ghosts who

attach themselves for long periods to particular families or farms
are called fylgidraugar or fylgjur, ‘followers’; they are always
malevolent, and all illnesses and afflictions in the family they
‘follow’, or indeed among their neighbours, were often ascribed
a
148 GHOSTS
to them. (This usage contrasts with other senses of the word
fylgja: in the older sagas, a benevolent guardian spirit, often in
animal form; in later lore, the ‘fetch’ of a living man, or the after-
birth. See J.A. I 854-9). They resembled some of the more sinister
British brownies and boggarts in their poltergeist tricks, and in
requiring offerings of food; but they were far from being helpful
spirits, their rare attempts in that line being apt to turn out disas-
trously, as in the case of Mori and the cow-stall.
Fylgidraugar can be either male or female; they are gener-
ally thought to be either a Sending, as this Mori was, or the
vengeful ghost of someone ill-used by some member of the
family they haunt. Male ones are very often called Mori because
of their russet jackets (dark unbleached woollen clothes being
a mark of poverty); a few are called Lalli or Goggur. Female ones
are called Skotta, ‘Peaky’, because they wear the old-fashioned
tall coif, but with the peak turned backwards like a dangling
tail; they also sometimes drool and suck their fingers. There is a
host of tales of such ghosts in J.Á. I 361-404. The belief in them
was widespread in the eighteenth century, and still strong in the
nineteenth; Jón Árnason brings his ten-page account of the mis-
deeds of Mori of frafell down to his own time with a reference to
Einar Kortsson’s youngest daughter. Indeed, modern collectors
have found that the belief in certain Moris and Skottas survived
into our own century, though more rarely.
9 @ BLACK MAGIC
How to Raise the Dead
There are many tales about dead men whom those skilled
in magic have brought back to life and forced to do them
service. Some say that to do this one must take one bone
from a dead man and put magic strength into it so that it
takes on human shape, and then send it to attack those one
wants to harm. If the man against whom such a Sending is
sent is clever enough to strike precisely the bone inside
it which had been taken from the dead body, or to name it
by its right name, the ghost will not be able to do anything
to him and will have to leave him alone.
But others say that more than this is needed to raise a
ghost. First, one must see that it is done on the night
between a Friday and a Saturday, and preferably between
either the 18th and 19th or the 28th and 29th of a month;
but which month or which week it is does not matter. The
sorcerer who means to raise a ghost must, on the previous
evening, write the Our Father backwards on paper or
parchment with a water-rail’s quill, using his own blood,
drawn from his left arm. He must also carve certain runes
on a stick, and go out to the churchyard at midnight, taking
both paper and stick, and go to whichever grave he chooses
—but it is thought prudent to pick out one of the smaller
ones. He must lay the stick on the grave and roll it to and fro,
meanwhile chanting the Our Father backwards from his
paper, and also certain formulas which few people know.
Then little by little the grave begins to stir, and various
strange sights appear to the sorcerer while the dead man is
being very gradually raised; but it goes very slowly, as the
dead are most unwilling to move, and say ‘Let me lie quiet!’
150 BLACK MAGIC
But the wizard must not give in to their pleading, nor yet
let himself be dismayed by the sights, but mutter his
incantations faster than ever and roll the stick, until the
dead man is half out of the ground. At the same time he
must be very careful that no earth falls outside the grave
when it begins to heave, for such earth can never be put in
again.
When the dead man has risen half way out, he must ask
him two questions (not three, or he will sink down again
out of fear of the Trinity); the usual ones are who he was
in his lifetime, and how powerful a man he then was.
Others say there was one question only, namely: How old
are you?’ If the ghost says he died as a middle-aged man or
older, it is not thought safe to proceed any further, because
at a later stage the sorcerer will have to wrestle with the
ghost, and ghosts can be extremely strong, their strength
being half as great again as it was in life, and so pro-
portionate to their age. That is why sorcerers prefer to
raise children of about twelve to fourteen, or at any rate
people who are not over thirty, and never on any account
those older than themselves.
When the dead man has said who he is and is half way
out of the grave, the sorcerer can either drive him down
again if he chooses, or can continue the spells till he is
quite out. When the dead first emerge from their graves,
their mouths and nostrils are all bubbling with a frothy
mixture of mucus and mud known as ‘corpse-froth’; this the
wizard licks off with his own tongue. Then he must draw
blood from under the little toe of his right foot, and moisten
the ghost’s tongue with it. Some say that as soon as he
has done so the ghost attacks him, and he will need all his
strength to get him under; if he succeeds and the ghost falls,
then the latter is henceforth bound to serve the wizard in
every way; but if the ghost is the stronger, he will drag the
man down into the grave with him—and those who thus
come into a ghost’s power never return again, But others
HOW TO RAISE THE DEAD 151
say that it ís the sorcerer who attacks the ghost when he is

only half way up, forcing him onto his back while his legs
are still caught fast and keeping him there until he is ready
to lick his mouth and nostrils and moisten his tongue.
Now if for any reason the sorcerer chooses not to let
the ghost come more than half way, and prefers to send him
down again, it is usually enough to speak the name of the
Trinity or to say the Our Father the right way round; but
if the dead man was himself a wizard in his lifetime, more
than this is needed. The sorcerer must have with him a cord
to which he has tied the ropes of both the bells on the
lych-gate (or all of them if there are more than two, since
otherwise the dead man would seize the rope that was still
free and ring that bell in opposition to the sorcerer, so that
no magic rhymes or formulas could touch him). So while
wizards are getting rid of ghosts, they ring the bells without
stopping, and recite not only the Our Father but also certain
magic rhymes, very different from those used to raise them.
If the sorcerer does not send the ghost down again, it will
follow him and his descendants for nine generations. So too
do ghosts that have finished the tasks their raisers first gave
them, unless the sorcerers send them on other errands or
manage to get rid of them—and he is a good wizard who can
do this without danger! For some say ghosts get stronger and
stronger for the first forty years they are above ground, stay
unchanged for the next forty, and dwindle away during the
third forty; they do not normally remain active any longer,
unless some spell or word of power causes them to do so.
J.A. I 817-19; this and other passages of Jón Arnason’s work that
are descriptive rather than narrative are collations of information
from many persons, and no individual informant is named.
Belief in necromancy has a long history in Iceland; it was
particularly associated with the cult of Odinn, and was closely
linked to his function as the god of esoteric wisdom. The necro-
mancers of later legend were less concerned with wisdom and
152 BLACK MAGIC
prophetic power, although one, Þorleifur Þórðarson (d. 1647), is
said to have kept a dead man’s head in a chest or in a rock
cleft, to prophesy for him (J.A. I 523). In most tales, the necro-
mancer is purely vicious; he raises the dead simply in order to
send them to attack his enemies or plague them by perpetual
hauntings. A ghost so used is called a Sending; it can take on
several forms, as the following stories will show. The earliest
instance of a Sending is the ‘wooden man’ made from driftwood
and a human heart in the fourteenth-century Þorleifs páttr jarla-
skdlds (tr. Simpson 141-52). The belief in this and other forms of
black magic reached their fullest development in the seventeenth
century and the first half of the eighteenth (cf. Benedikz 1964,
Davidsson 1940-43). For some English examples of the magical
uses of corpses, skulls, bones, and graveyard mould, see Thomas
231 and 443 and references given there; also Briggs 1971, I
434-6.
The Vertebra
A farmer was once out in his stack-yard when the day was
almost done and the light was fading fast. He noticed some-
thing coming into the yard, and all at once he felt afraid of
it, so he hastily flung down his pitchfork and ran away.
However, as he had to feed his cattle, he came back shortly
after to look for his pitchfork. He finds it, and on the prong
of it is a single vertebra from a man’s body.
The farmer realizes now that it must have been a ghost
that came into the yard, for he knew, from what learned
men say, that one need have no more than a single human
bone in order to make a ghost of it by magic, and that if a
man could contrive to strike this bone with an iron point,
the ghost would be defeated. The farmer thought his shot
had been an incredibly lucky one, for it had been done by
pure instinct. He took the pitchfork with the vertebra on it
and kept them both carefully.
THE VERTEBRA 153
J.A. I 320-1, from the Rev. Sveinbjörn Guðmundsson, c. 1847.
This belief well exemplifies the essentially physical quality of
Icelandic ghosts; even when the corpse as a whole is absent, one
bone at least there must be. Besides this and the following tale,
see the anecdote of how Þorleifur Þórðarson (d. 1647) drove away
a ghost by stabbing it (J.A. I 523). In Iceland as elsewhere, iron
is effective against evil creatures.
The Neckbone on the Knife
A certain widow lived on a farm of her own in the north

country. She was well off and very capable, so several people
asked for her hand, and among others a fellow in the same
neighbourhood who was skilled in wizardry—and him she
refused. This widow had the second sight, which made it
easier for her to protect herself.
Not long after, she was in the larder one day towards
evening, preparing food rations for her household, and she
was slicing a black pudding. She saw a spectre making its
way in along the passage, and in it came by the larder door.
The woman stood there with the knife in her hand, and
faced the spectre resolutely and fearlessly. The spectre
hesitated and tried to pass to one side of the woman, or
behind her, for an unclean spirit never attacks a fearless
person from in front. The woman saw that the spectre was
quite black, except that it had one white mark. She drove her
knife into that spot; there was a loud crash, and the woman
lost her grip on the knife, just as if it had been jerked out of
her hand. She saw nothing more, and she could not find
her knife.
Next morning the knife was found out on the flagged
court; the top vertebra from a man’s back was stuck on the
point of it, and yet all the gates had been closed the previous
evening.
154 BLACK MAGIC
J.A. I 321, from the Rev. Skúli Gíslason (d. 1888).
The Wizards of The Vestmanna Isles
When the Black Death was raging in Iceland, eighteen

wizards gathered, swore friendship with one another, and
sailed out to the Vestmanna Isles, intending to ward off
death there as long as they could. As soon as they saw by
their secret arts that the sickness was abating on the main-
land, they wanted to find out whether anyone there was still
alive; so they agreed to send one of their company to the
mainland, and for this errand they chose one who was
neither the most nor the least skilled in their arts. They
ferried him to land, and told him that if he was not back
before Christmas they would send him a Sending which
would kill him. This was early in Advent.
The man went off, walked a long way, and wandered far
and wide. But nowhere did he see a living soul; farms stood
open, and dead bodies lay about, scattered here and there.
Finally he came to one farm whose doors were shut. He was
amazed, and now hope stirred in him that he might find some
living man. He knocked, and out came a young and pretty
girl. He greeted her, but she flung her arms round his neck
and wept for joy to see a man, for she said she had thought
there was nobody left alive but her. She asked him to stay
with her, and he agreed. So now they went indoors and
talked; she asked him where he had come from, and where
he was going. He told her, and also told her that he would
have to be back before Christmas, but all the same she
asked him to stay with her as long as he could, and he was
so sorry for her that he promised that he would. She told him
there was nobody alive in those parts, for she said she had
walked a whole week’s journey from her house in each
direction, and found no one.
THE WIZARDS OF THE VESTMANNA ISLES 155
Now time slipped by and Christmas drew near, and then

the man from the islands wanted to go. The girl begged
him to stay, and said that his friends would not be so
hard-hearted as to make him pay for it if he stayed with
her when she was left all alone in the world. So he let
himself be persuaded.
And now Christmas Eve had come, and now he is deter-
mined to go, whatever she may say. So then she sees that it’s
no good pleading any longer, and says: Do you really
think you can get out to the islands tonight? Don’t you
think you might just as well die here beside me as die
somewhere on the way?”
The man realized that the time was too short now, and
resigned himself to stay quietly there and wait for death
where he was. So the night passed, and he was very gloomy,
but the girl was as merry as could be, and asked whether he
could see how the men on the Isles were getting on. He
said that they were preparing to send a Sending ashore, and
that it would arrive that day. Now the girl sat down on the
bed beside him, while he lay in bed, a little way behind her.
He said that he was beginning to grow sleepy, and that
this was due to the Sending’s onslaught. Then he fell asleep.
The girl sat at the foot of the bed, and she would constantly
rouse him a little and make him tell her where the Sending
now was. But the nearer it came the deeper he slept, and
finally, just after saying that the Sending had reached her
farm-lands, he fell into such a deep sleep that she could not
wake him again—nor was it long before she saw a russet
vapour come into the farmhouse.
This vapour glided gently, very gently, up the room to-
wards her, and then took on human shape. The girl asks the
Sending where it is going, and it tells her what its errand is,
and tells her to get up off the bed—‘for I can’t get at him
on account of you,’ it says.
The girl says that in that case it will have to do something
for her. The Sending asks what that might be. The girl
156 BLACK MAGIC
says it is to let her see how huge it could make itself. The
Sending agrees to this, and now it grows so huge that it fills
the whole house.
Then the girl says: ‘Now I want to see how small you
can make yourself.’
The Sending says it can turn itself into a fly, and with
this it changes to the likeness of a fly, for it imagines that
now it will be able to slip under the girl’s arm and get at
the man in bed. But it settles on a marrowbone which the
girl was holding and crawls right into it, and the girl sticks
a plug in the hole. Then she puts the bone in her pocket with
the Sending inside it, and now she wakes the man.
He woke up at once, and was much amazed at being still
alive. Then the girl asks him where the Sending is now, and
he says he has no idea what has become of it. Then the girl
says she had long suspected that those fellows out on the
Isles were no great wizards. So now the man was very glad,
and they both enjoyed Christmas and were quite contented.
But when New Year drew near, the man began to be silent,
and the girl asks what the matter is. He says that the men of
the Isles are now busy preparing another Sending, “and they
are all of them putting strength into it. It is to come here
on New Years Eve, and there's nothing that can save me
then.’
The girl said she would not cross that bridge before she
came to it— ‘and you ought not to be afraid of Sendings from
those men in the Isles.’
She was as merry as could be, so he felt ashamed of
showing any weakness.
On New Year’s Eve he says the Sending has come ashore
— and it is advancing rapidly, for great strength has been
put into it.’
The girl tells him to come out with her; he does so, and
they walk till they come to a thicket. There she halts, and
pulls some branches aside, and there in front of them is
a slab of rock. The girl lifts the slab, and there underneath
THE WIZARDS OF THE VESTMANNA ISLES 157
it is an underground chamber. They both go down into it,

and a gloomy, ghastly place it is; there is one dim lamp, and
it is burning human belly-fat in a human skull. In a bed
near this lamp lies an old man, rather ghastly-looking; his
eyes are blood-red, and all in all he is horrible enough for
the man from the Isles to be quite impressed.
‘Well, foster-daughter, says the old man, ‘there must be
something new going on if you are out and about. It’s a long
while since I saw you. What can I do for you now?”
Then the girl tells him everything that had happened to
her, and all about the man, and about the first Sending. The
old man asks her to let him see the bone. She does, and he
seemed to turn into quite a different person as soon as he was
holding it; he turned it round and round in all directions,
and stroked it all over.
Then the girl says: ‘Be quick and help me, foster-father,
because my man is beginning to feel sleepy now, and that’s
a sign that the Sending will soon be here.’
The old man takes the plug out of the bone, and out comes
the fly. He strokes and pats the fly, and says: “Off you go
now, and go to meet any Sendings from the Isles and swallow
them up.
Then there was a mighty crash, and the fly zoomed off,
and it had grown so huge that one jaw touched the sky and
the other scraped the ground; in this way it met all Sendings
that came from the Isles, and so the man was saved.
So home they went from the underground chamber, the
girl and the man from the Vestmanna Isles, and they settled
on her farm. They got married soon after, and increased
and multiplied and filled the land. And that’s as much as I
know about this story.
J.A. I 321-8, from a schoolgirl in Western Iceland, 1845. Sendings

could appear in many forms, but that of a fly was extremely
frequent (J.A. I 334-8, 340, 374, 529, 591, 594, 596, 626). In north
Norway too, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was
158 BLACK MAGIC
thought that magicians could send sickness in the form of a fly
(Lid 1935, 35), and in other parts of Europe it was commonly
believed that a witch’s familiar might well be a fly. In Iceland,
the correct method of dealing with a fly-Sending was to lure it
into a bottle or bone, stop it up, and often wrap it in a magic bag
made from a baby’s or a foal’s caul (J.A. I 334-8, 374). Powerful
magicians could safely release and redirect it, even against its
original master, as the old man does here; usually, however, the
container would be thrown into a bog or other remote spot, and
anyone who found it would be wise to leave it alone (J.A. I 320).
The same method of exorcism of dangerous ghosts is often men-
tioned in English tales (Briggs 1971, I 487, 501, 531-2, 535-6,
560-1, 579, 592-3).
Unwonted sleepiness as a sign of the approach of a hostile
supernatural being is already found in the sagas, in connexion
with fylgjur, ‘accompanying spirits’ (e.g. Njdls saga ch. 12, Finn-
boga saga chs. 39-40, Þorsteins Þáttr uxafóts). Human fat burn-
ing in a skull-pan, or a fatty human rib used as a torch, were
thought to give an unfailing light, but one that always burnt dim
(J.A. I 442-8).
The Priest and the Farmer
There was once a certain priest who was an ill-tempered

bully towards his parishioners. There was one farmer in the
parish who had never given way to the priest, and they had
often parted brass rags between them, and the priest had
always got the worst of it. The farmer was getting rather
old at the time when this story took place.
It happened once that the farmer was out and about
during the night, and had occasion to go past the priest’s
homestead. There he sees that the priest is grappling with
a ghost in the churchyard, and can barely hold his own.
He had raised quite a young girl who had died a little
while before, yet she was so fierce that he could hardly stand
THE PRIEST AND THE FARMER 159
up to her. The farmer watches the fun for a while, and then
says: ‘Bite her on the left nipple, man!'—and so he goes on
his way. The priest takes the lesson to heart, after which
he manages to overcome the lass. He then sends this ghost
against the farmer, telling it to do its worst against him.
But the farmer faces the ghost and gets it inside the leg-
bone of a horse; then he drives a plug into the bone and
ties it up in a foal’s caul, and lays it in the bottom of his
chest. And so, many years go by in which nothing happens
worth speaking of, and the farmer never takes the bone out
again, and so it bothers nobody.
There comes a time when this farmer takes to his bed,
having caught a sickness which he thinks will be his death.
He had only one child, a daughter, who was his heir. The
farmer calls for her and tells her about the horse-bone, where
it is, and what is kept in it; he warns her not to take the plug
out or disturb the bone in any way until twenty years after
his death, but says that after that time there would hardly be
any harm left in the ghost. And when the farmer has made
all the arrangements he thinks necessary, he dies, and is
given a most splendid funeral.
His daughter takes on the running of the farm after him,
and marries, and goes on living on the same land where
her father had lived. But her husband owned another piece
of land far larger and better than this, and they both
wanted to get hold of it by hook or by crook, even though it
was not available for their use, because certain men had
been living on it for many years.
It then occurs to them that it would be a good plan to
take the plug out of the horse-bone and send whatever lives
inside the bone against the farmers on that other piece of
land, and so this they do. But once the ghost is out of the
bone, it refuses to go, for it says it was sent to this very farm
and nowhere else, and it will not go away until it has
carried out its errand. The farmer and his wife stood there
helpless; they knew no way to get rid of the ghost, and the
160 BLACK MAGIC
upshot of the affair was that it remained with them and their
descendants ever afterwards.
J.A. 1 334-5, from Jón Sigurðsson, Member of the Alþingi (d. 1889).
This necromantic priest is ludicrously inefficient, for a young
girl who had been only a short while dead should be the easiest
type of ghost to control (see p. 150 above). For a variant of this
tale, see J.A. I 374-5, and for another cautionary tale on the perils
of unplugging horse bones, J.A. I 335-6.
How Petur Got a Wall-Eye
There was a man living in Arskogsstrond whose name was

Petur Jonsson; he died in 1829, at the age of eighty-five. He
only had the sight of one eye, and the other was completely
opaque; he had become wall-eyed like that early in his life,
and the reason was, or so people said, that he had tried to
learn black magic. For as soon as he thought he had mastered
the art, he wanted to prove his power and raise the dead.
In the middle of the night he went out to the churchyard
at Greater Arskog, to set to work and do this feat. Everybody
at the farm attached to the church was asleep, and the
whole place was quiet.
Now Petur sets to, and does everything the rules say,
and after long-drawn-out spells, a dead body begins to rise
up. Petur thinks it a rather unpleasant-looking ghost, and
his nerve fails him at the thought of licking its face—for it
so happened, most unluckily, that it was his own mother
he had waked. The old woman gets her strength back re-
markably rapidly, lumbers to her feet, and attacks her son
unmercifully. Each catches hold of the other in a wrestler’s
grip, and the longer they play this game, the more furious
she gets.
Now, as for the priest who lived in the farmstead, he
HOW PETUR GOT A WALL-EYE 161
woke up in his bed in the course of the night, and being a

man gifted with the second sight, knew that something was
going on in the churchyard. He dresses quickly, comes out,
and sees the wrestling match between Petur and the old
woman—and things had come to such a pass that Petur
was quite worn out. As soon as the old woman sees the
priest, she spits into her son’s eye, lets go of him, and
disappears. And it is from this old woman’s spit that Petur
is said to have got his wall-eye.
JÁ. I 335 (Draugur setur vagl á auga), from a story current in

Eyjafjörður.
The Black Death
When the Black Death was raging in Iceland, it never

reached the West Fjords, because twelve wizards from the
west country combined forces and all made a Sending to go
out against it, and they put strength into this Sending.
Now the Black Death was sweeping across the country in
the form of a vapour, which reached half way up the
mountain slopes, and out as far as the fishing banks; this
vapour was being guided by an old man who strode along
the mountains, and an old woman who strode along the
shore. The pair of them lodged one night with a tenant
farmer on Svalbardsstrond; this man thought they seemed
rather suspicious-looking, and so he stayed awake that night,
though he pretended to be sleeping, and he heard them
planning how to arrange their journey next day in order
to lay waste the whole district. By morning, they had dis-
appeared. The farmer was troubled, and went to find Helga
of Grund, who owned the land, and told her what he had
observed. She decided that the thing to do was to remove
162 BLACK MAGIC
herself and all her household high up into the mountains,

and the plan worked, as is well known.
When the vapour and the death-toll began moving west-
wards, the wizards had the Sending ready; it was a great
bull flayed to the knees, and it dragged its flayed hide behind
it. It met the old man and woman on the beach at the foot
of the Gilsfjord Cliffs, where their paths were bound to
converge; men with the second sight saw their encounter,
and the end of it was that the bull caught them both in its
hide, forced them down under it, and crushed them to
pieces.
JÁ. I 347-8, from the Rev. Skúli Gíslason (d. 1888). The Black
Death reached Iceland in 1402 and raged for two years, but it is
not so common a theme for legends there as in the rest of
Scandinavia (ML 7080, 7090; cf. von Sydow 1931, 136, 157, 173-4;
Christiansen 1964, 8-11). These latter also often personify the
plague as a hideous old woman, travelling through the countryside
with broom or rake; some tell how this personified plague was
outwitted, others deal with the plight of solitary survivors (cf.
‘The Wizards of the Vestmanna Isles’). For Sendings as flayed
bulls, see the note to the following story. The blue vapour has a
parallel in a Scottish tale, where the plague is described as
‘slowly flying along the ground ... in the shape of a little yellow
cloud’ (see Briggs, 1971, II 877).
Thorgeir’s Bull
There was a man called Thorgeir whom many called
Thorgeir the Wizard; his brother was called Stefan, and
nicknamed the Reciter, as he recited and sang amazingly
well, and their father’s name was Jon. A third man, named
Andres, is also mentioned, who was an uncle of these two
brothers; they all came from Fnjoskadal, and their fishing
THORGEIR’S BULL 163
grounds lay off Hrisey Isle in Eyjafjord. These men are all
said to have shared in the work when they made the Bull.
It is said that Thorgeir got a new-born calf from a woman
on Hrisey Isle, slaughtered it where he thought best, flayed
it from head to croup (some say from croup to tail) so that
it would trail the whole skin behind it, and then put strength
in it by magic. Yet even so the three kinsmen did not think
they had done enough; they put in its bones the essence of
eight creatures—the air, a bird, a man, a dog, a cat, a mouse,
and two sorts of sea-beasts—so that there were nine natures
in the Bull, including its cattle-nature. Because of this it
could move equally easily in the air, on land or in the sea,
and appear to one’s eyes in any of the forms fitting the
essences in it, just as it liked best. Though the Bull had been
made in the way described, Thorgeir still thought there was
a chance that it might be defeated, so he got a baby’s caul,
which gives victory, and draped it over it. As Thorgeir had
done most towards preparing this Bull and putting strength
in it, it was named after him and known as Thorgeir's Bull.
It so happened that Thorgeir had asked the hand of a
woman named Gudrun Bessadottir, but she had refused him.
They sent the Bull against her. For some time, however,
the Bull could not overcome her; but in the end things
got to such a pitch that she could find no peace anywhere
because of him, and when she had to go from one farm to
another, sometimes six or eight men would have to escort
her, since few people thought themselves safe in her com-
pany. Even so, she would sometimes be snatched from the
back of her horse and flung some fifteen or twenty feet
away, even though so many were escorting her; but on the
other hand, he would leave her in peace now and then.
In the end, she met her death from the harm the Bull did her.
Once, Gudrun was attending a service in church; the
Bull was tormenting her in church so that she had no peace,
and she had such cruel shooting pains that she was lying
helpless. So a man went outside the church, and he saw
M
164 BLACK MAGIC
the bull lying on the sloping roof of a house; one side of
this house faced the church, and on the side which faced
the other way lay the Bull, and he had laid his muzzle on
the crest of the roof, so that the man could see right down
into his open nostrils. It seemed to him that a grey string
came from the Bull’s nostrils and stretched right to the
church. But by the time the man got far enough to see round
to the other side of the house, the Bull’s body was just
disappearing.
A farmer named Magnus lived on the farm called Sund
in Hofdahverfi; his wife was named Helga, and she was a
near relation of Gudrun’s. After Gudrun’s death, the Bull
mostly turned its attentions to Helga, and tormented her
unceasingly. Up in Eyjafjord there was a man named Torfi
who knew magic lore; his home was at Klukur. Torfi was
asked to destroy the Bull and set Helga free. He came to
Sund, and saw where the Bull had taken up his position;
he was lying in the main room, right on top of Helga, and
she complained a great deal about a weight pressing down
on her, especially on her feet, although they were bare
—and in fact, the Bull was lying just on top of them. Torfi
did not manage to destroy the Bull, because he said he
did not know whether the caul had been pulled off the
child or been slit open at the feet and slipped off him in
that way, for sometimes the one was done and sometimes
the other, but while the Bull had the caul on it would be
hard to defeat him. The story goes that Helga later met
her death by the Bull’s doing, and that he haunted the
people of her house for a long while after.
Though Thorgeir’s original intention for the Bull was to
make him get rid of Gudrun, he used him for playing tricks
on various other people he thought he had a grudge against,
for the Bull was always devoted to him, though he could be
troublesome enough at times. Thorgeir would often send
him to mount other men’s cows and make them stampede,
THORGEIR'S BULL 165
and scatter them far and wide. Sometimes, too, men heard
him bellowing in fog or darkness.
On one occasion Thorgeir had come to Helgilsstadir for
a prayer-meeting, but went outside several times before the
meeting. When the meeing was about to start, the master
of the house went outside with Thorgeir, and they saw
something like a fog-bank over the mountain to the north,
though elsewhere the weather was clear and bright. Then
Thorgeir said: “Devil take it, hell get no further for the
moment!’ People thought that he meant the Bull, and was
making use of the fact that one of its natures was that of air.
But not long afterwards, a howling squall sprang up, and
men thought the Bull had known of this beforehand; people
often noticed similar things before storms and other un-
toward happenings.
There are tales current in the North Quarter that two
ghosts, Lalli of Husavik and Skotta of Eyjafjord, joined
forces against Thorgeir’s Bull and drove him all the way
up Fnjoskadal like a sledge-horse—but the sledge that Lalli
and Skotta were sitting on was the Bull’s own hide, and
the Bull was dragging the whole load by his tail.
Whenever the Bull could not successfully carry out some
errand he had to do for Thorgeir, he would go home and
attack Thorgeir himself, playing various tricks on him and
trying to destroy him. And even though Thorgeir was
very expert in wizardry, time and again it was extremely
difficult for him to defend himself against the Bull, and he
had to use all he knew if the Bull turned surly on him.
One day the Bull made such a determined effort to kill
Thorgeir that he, being at a loss what to do, turned and
ran indoors to his wife. His wife was holding a young
child of theirs, and in this crisis Thorgeir wanted to take
the child and give it to the Bull to calm him, but his wife
begged him with all her heart not to, but to take a heifer
which they had in their cattle-shed and give her to him.
Thorgeir did this; he loosed the heifer and drove her out.
166 BLACK MAGIC
But when some time had passed, the heifer was found not
far from the farmhouse, all ripped into little pieces.
It is not said that the Bull did any great harm after this,
except that he often drove cows mad. Also, he used to
follow Thorgeir’s kinsmen, and Thorgeir feared him so much
that he made his daughters (who were both called Ingibjorg)
carry runic charms in their aprons to protect them from
the Bull.
The Bull would take on different shapes when he
appeared, as has been said—sometimes the likeness of a
man or a dog, but most often that of a horned bull, flayed
as far as the tail, and dragging his bloody hide behind him
by the tail. But whatever the shape he appeared in, he looked
ugly enough, and most people feared him.
Thorgeir did not destroy the Bull before he died, or so
most men say; indeed, there is a tale that when Thorgeir was
on his death-bed and was at the point of death, a grey cat
(or, some say, a black puppy) was seen lying crouched on
his chest, and that that was one form of the Bull.
Some say this Bull was made at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, and others towards the middle of that
century. Thorgeir died in 1803, aged eighty-six.
J.A. I 350-2, from Bjarni Jóhannsson and Gísli Kronraðsson. A

variant account by another informant (J.A. I 348-50) adds further
details—that the Bull was made from a flayed calf’s head, an ox’s
hoof, and a dog’s paw; that it could also appear as a dog or cat, or,
on one occasion, as a grey horse with its back broken and its
belly scraping the ground, with bloody wounds where its
ears and tail were cut off. For a vision of a flayed calf raised by
magic, see J.A. I 553. There are similar flayed cattle with trailing
hides in Swabian and Bavarian lore (Maurer, 78); there is also
a skinless Scottish monster, the Nuckelavee, part man and part
horse, with raw flesh exposed and thick black blood pulsating
in its naked veins, which rises from the sea to blight crops, bring
disease, and drive cattle mad with fear (Briggs 1967, 58). English
ghosts too may appear as fearsome shape-shifting bulls, as in the
THORGEIR’S BULL 167
legends of the Great Giant of Hennlys and of the Roaring Bull
of Bagbury (Briggs 1971, I 487, 560-1); one at Millichope was
flayed (C. Burne, Shropshire Folklore, 1883, p. 642).
Torfi Sveinsson of Klúkur, who died in 1843 at the age of 82,
was famous as a seer and thief-finder, and for spells to relieve
those oppressed by hauntings. Though widely reputed to be a
magician, he never claimed such powers himself but ‘would leave
people to think as they pleased about it’; he was also believed to
have a ‘Speaking Spirit’ at his command, for which see pp. 175-6
(J.A. I 435, 484-5; for two stories about him from Olafur Davíðs-
son’s collection, see Craigie 363-6).
Lappish Breeches
People who wanted to gather money that would never
fail them used to get themselves breeches called Old Nick’s
Breeches, or sometimes also Lappish Breeches (as Lapps
are famous wizards), or Money Breeches, Corpse Breeches,
or Papey Breeches (because the men on Papey Isle used to
be so rich that it was thought uncanny).
A man who wants to have such breeches must make an
agreement with someone still alive that as soon as the latter
dies, he can have the use of his skin. As soon as this happens,
the survivor goes to the churchyard by night and digs the
dead man up. He then flays the skin off him from the waist
down and slips it off in one piece, for he must take care
that there is no hole in the breeches. He must put them on
straight away, and they will grow to his flesh until he
himself removes them in order to give them to someone
else. But before the breeches can be of any use, he must
first steal a coin from some wretchedly poor widow, at the
moment between the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel
on one of the three major church festivals of the year (or else,
some say, on the next day after he puts them on), and
put this coin in the pocket of them. After this, the breeches
168 BLACK MAGIC
will draw money from living men, so that the pocket is

never empty whenever their owner puts his hand in it;
but he must take care never to take the stolen coin out.
A point worth noting about Lappish Breeches is that a
man who has them cannot take them off or get rid of them
just when he likes, but on the other hand the whole sal-
vation of his soul depends on his doing so before he dies—
not to mention the fact that his corpse will be all swarming
with lice if he dies still wearing them. His one chance is to
find someone who will step into them as he takes them off,
and even so the only way he can do it is to step out of the
right leg only at first, and for the man who has accepted
them to step into it at once. As soon as he has done this, the
new owner cannot change his mind even if he wants to, for
if he tries to take his right leg out he will only find that he has
put his left leg in without knowing how this happened. Then
he in turn can never get rid of them except by the same
method. Lappish Breeches keep their powers as they pass
from man to man, and they never get torn.
J.A. I 428-9, from stories current all over Iceland. Mensalder

the Rich, who lived on Papey and died in 1799, was believed by
his contemporaries to have owned such breeches and to have
vanished at sea in a sudden squall because he could not bear
to part with them (J.A. I 429). It was also held that shoes of human
skin would never wear out unless one trod on consecrated
ground in them (J.A. I 443-4); magic gloves of human skin are also
mentioned (J.A. I 543); for the Witch’s Bridle, see pp. 180-1.
Similar ideas about the possible evil use of a corpse’s skin may
once have been known in England. There is a legend recorded
from two different parts of Devonshire of a wicked squire who
sold not his soul but his skin (posthumously) to the Devil; when
the Devil tried to flay the corpse, he found the skin full of holes,
and hence useless to him (Notes and Queries Series I, vol. III,
1851, 404; Tickler, Dartmoor and its Borders, 2nd ed. 1871, 117-
18; cf. Briggs 1971, I 56, 153). In a Norwegian tale (Christiansen
1964, 162-4), the Devil flays a corpse and wants to carry off the
LAPPISH BREECHES 169
skin to prove that the dead man belonged to him; a boy tricks
him out of the skin on the plea that he wants to make shoes of it.
The Tide-Mouse
There is another trick for getting wealth which will never

fail, which needs less magic, though still some, and this is
to have a Tide Mouse. This is how it is obtained. First, a
man takes some hair from a pure maiden, and with it he
weaves a net with meshes narrow enough to catch a mouse.
This net must be laid in the sea over some spot where he
knows there is treasure lying on the sea-bottom, for a
Tide Mouse can only be found where there is silver or gold.
The net need not lie for more than one night if the spot is
well chosen, and the mouse will be in it by morning.
So now the man takes the mouse and brings it home and
puts it wherever he means to keep it. Some say it must
be kept in a barrel of wheat, others in a box; it must be
given wheat to eat, and must lie on maiden’s hair. One must
take good care that it never slips out, for it always wants
to get back to the sea. Next, one must steal a coin and lay it
among the hair under the mouse, and the mouse then draws
money out of the sea—every day one coin of the same
value as that first laid under it, but this latter must never
be taken out, or it will never draw money out again.
A man who has a Tide Mouse must take care to get rid
of it before he dies, either by giving it to someone else or
putting it in the sea, or else he will suffer great agony, and
the mouse will go back to the sea of its own accord when
the man dies, and this will cause terrible storms at sea. Every-
one out at sea will be in dire peril, and there will be wild
storms on land too, strong enough to turn everything topsy
turvy; these storms are thought the most dangerous storms of
all, and are known as Mouse Squalls.
170 BLACK MAGIC
Já. I 429-80, from stories current in the south and west of
Iceland. It has been suggested that the word flæðarmús, Mouse
of the High Tide’, is only a corruption or misunderstanding of
the German Fledermaus, ‘bat’. However, it does have some
Scandinavian parallels, at least as regards its mode of action: e.g.
the Swedish spiritus, a kind of magic insect which a man may
buy and keep in a pouch, and which will every day draw to its
owner as much money as he paid to get it, though to the risk of
his soul if he does not rid himself of it before he dies (von
Sydow 1931, 133). Moreover, the chief use of the mandrake root
in Iceland was to draw buried silver out of the earth day by day
(J.A. I 645). Mice are common witches’ familiars in Britain.
Jon Arnason mentions some exceptional storms which were
believed to have been ‘Mouse Squalls’; one was at the death of
Bjarni Jénsson, a reputed wizard, in 1790, while another in
January 1799 was held to be due to a Tide Mouse escaping from
its owner, Jón of Fossi, and returning to the sea (J.A. I 430).
The Carrier
If people want to grow rich by stealing milk or wool, they

have discovered a handy way, which is to have a “Carrier or
‘Spindle’. These are two names for the same thing, the
former being current in the north of Iceland and the latter
in the south and west, while in the east both are used; the
former comes from its function, the latter from how it is
prepared.
To get a Carrier, a woman must steal a dead man’s rib
from the churchyard on Whitsun morning, soon after he has
been buried; then she wraps it in grey wool or yarn which
she has stolen elsewhere (or others say she must pluck tufts
from between the shoulders of a widow’s sheep which has
just had its wool plucked), wrapping it round the rib till
it looks just like a twist of wool, and this she leaves lying
between her breasts for a while. After this, she goes three
THE CARRIER 171
times to Communion, and each time she lets the wine (or,
some say, both bread and wine) dribble onto the materials
which will form the Carrier, by spitting it into her bosom.
Some say it need touch only one end of the Carrier, but
most say both. The first time the woman dribbles on the
Carrier, it lies quite still; the second time, it stirs; the third
time, it is so strong and lively that it tries to jump out of her
bosom. She must then be extremely careful that it should
not be seen; if women were denounced as having Carriers,
it is said that their punishment used to be to be burnt or
drowned with the Carrier on them, so wicked and terrible
was this thought to be. Justice was not thought properly
carried out unless the Carrier had been pursued till it took
refuge under the woman’s skirt; her petticoat was then either
tied up or sewn up below the Carrier, and both of them
destroyed like that.
When the Carrier has been given its full strength in the
manner described, the woman can no longer bear to keep
it at her breast, so then she draws blood from the inside of
her thigh, which causes a fleshy growth there, and she lets it
suck there. It lives there and feeds on the woman’s blood
whenever it is at home, and for this reason one can always
recognize those who are ‘a Carriers mother because they
are lame and have blood-red warts like fleshy growths inside
their thighs. However, it appears that women also kept them
in empty kegs or barrels in their dairies, at any rate some-
times. As soon as the Carrier’s mother bears a child and has
milk in her breasts, it will try to get at her, and if it does
manage to suck her breast her life is at stake, for it will suck
her to death.
The reason for having Carriers was to make them suck
other people’s cows (or, some say, ewes) out in the pastures.
Afterwards they come to their mother through the dairy
window while she is churning—for she has so arranged
that the churn is standing right by the window while it is
in use. When the Carrier comes to the window, it calls out,
172 BLACK MAGIC
saying ‘Full belly, Mummy!’ or “Churn lid of, Mummy!’.

Then the woman takes the churn lid off, saying ‘Sick it up,
dear son!’, or ‘Spew in the churn, little rogue!’, or “Let it go,
son!'. Then it sicks up all it has sucked into its mother’s
churn so that plenty of butter forms in it.
Butter that comes from a Carrier's spew is known as
Carrier Butter; outwardly it looks like other butter, but if
one makes the Sign of the Cross over it or marks it with an
X or with the pattern sk, called the Butter Knot, it all breaks
up into little pieces and looks curdled and clotted, till there
is nothing to be seen but little flakes, or it even melts into
froth. For this reason it is thought wiser, if one is offered
sound butter at table or in a market, to make one or other
of these marks on it. It has also sometimes happened that
Carriers did not know the limits of their own stomachs, and
so sucked more milk than they could carry home to their
mother at the dairy window, in which case they vomit it up
on the way home. People have often thought that they saw
this ‘Carriers’ Spew’ on the moors at the same season as
Iceland Moss; it looks yellowish white, and thick.
When the Carrier sucks milk, it sets about it by jumping
on the cow’s back and coiling over her croup, and then
making itself so long that it can reach the dugs from both
sides at once, and it sucks through both its ends at once. But
people who say that a Carrier has only one mouth say that
it twists round on the croup as soon as it has sucked the dugs
dry on one side, and then takes from the other side. It often
happens that milch cows and ewes have a disease of the
udders in which these swell and harden and the dugs become
useless, and sometimes they never thrive again and have to
be slaughtered. This udder disease is an inflammation, but
people used to believe that it was due to milk being sucked
by Carriers. To protect beasts against this disease, it was still
the custom in some places in the nineteenth century to make
the Sign of the Cross under the udder and over the croup,
and to lay a Psalter on the spine.
THE CARRIER 173
Carriers had other uses besides sucking milch cows, for
they could be used also for stealing wool, though this is
more rarely mentioned. One spring day all the wool of a
certain farm was being washed; the weather was good for
drying, and all the wool was spread out in great swathes on
the homefield. In the evening the weather looked set to be
fine and dry again, so the wool was not even gathered
into a heap, let alone taken indoors. When the people got
up next morning, the wool seemed to have been all scraped
into a heap, and when they went out to have a closer look,
the first thing they knew was that they saw the whole mass
whirl itself into a single huge skein, and thereupon the whole
pile set itself in motion, except for a few scattered wisps—
and those wisps were all the farmer got, for the big ball of
wool rolled off so fast that there was no chance to follow it,
and so vanished; and people believed that a Carrier must
have wrapped the wool round itself and gone off with it.
When a Carrier's mother grows old and worn out, the
Carrier troubles her so much that she can no longer bear to
have him suck the nipple on her thigh. Then she sends him
up into the mountains and orders him to gather up all the
lambs’ droppings from three pasture-lands, and he works
himself to death over this, for he will do all he can to bring
them all home to his mother, and never let himself rest. In
proof of which, men have said that one often finds human
ribs among heaps of lambs’ droppings up on the pastures.
Carriers are amazingly rapid, and go hurtling over hill and
dale; sometimes they seem to roll like a clew of thread or a
skein of wool, or sometimes they leap along on one end.
There are a few examples of men who chased them on horse
back, but only on the swiftest of horses. When pursued, a
Carrier will hide himself under his mother’s skirts, and so the
man who sees this can tie her clothes around her legs and
have her put to death.
174 BLACK MAGIC
J.A. I 430-3. For anecdotes illustrating various points, particularly

tales of men who saw a Carrier at work and chased it till it took
refuge beneath its owner's skirts, see J.A. I 483-5. The term
tilberi, ‘carrier’, is used in the north of Iceland, and snakkur, pro-
bably meaning ‘spindle wrapped in yarn’, in the south and west;
in the east both terms are used. The tale of the Carrier making off
with the wool is from the East Quarter. Belief in the Carrier
cannot be traced back any earlier than the seventeenth century
in Iceland, though one writer of that period claims that a woman
was burnt in 1500 for having one (Sveinsson 1940, 177).
In Sweden and Finland there are closely similar ideas about
the bjdra, ‘carrier’, also known as ‘milk-hare’ or ‘troll-cat’. It can
be made out of various objects, such as a stick burnt at both
ends, a spindle wrapped in wool, or a stocking-leg; it is brought
to life by three drops of the woman’s blood, or of stolen milk,
and is sent to suck milk and spew it up, as in Iceland. It may
take the form of an animal, especially a hare or cat, in which
case, if it is shot, milk will spurt from it (Craigie 337; von
Sydow 1931, 132,-3; von Sydow in Lid 1935, 125-6). In Denmark,
however, as in the rest of Europe generally, it is thought that the
witch herself takes on the form of a hare or sends out her soul
in this form. For an unusual English tale, in which the witch’s
emissary, though appearing as a goose, was in fact a magically
animated jug, see Briggs 1971, I 56, 153.
The Speaking Spirit

If a man wants to know the future, all he need do is to
procure himself a Speaking Spirit, and this will tell him all
he wants to know. In this it resembles the spirits or ghosts
that appear to some men in dreams to give them information
or warnings, but a Speaking Spirit talks to one when one is
awake, and one needs far more magic to get oneself a
Speaking Spirit than a Dream Man.
If a man wants to obtain a Speaking Spirit, he must first
go off quite alone to some spot where he knows that no one
THE SPEAKING SPIRIT 175
will come, for his life will be forfeit if he is interrupted
while he is calling the spirit to him by magic chants. He
must lie down in the shade and turn towards the north. He
must stretch a foal’s caul over his mouth and nose, and then
read aloud certain magic rhymes. The caul is sucked into
his mouth as he chants, and then the spirit comes and tries
to get down inside the man, but the caul blocks the way,
and as soon as it is there, the man clenches his teeth together.
So then the spirit is trapped inside the caul, and the man
puts the caul in a box, with the spirit inside it.
The spirit will not speak until the man has sprinkled it
with Communion wine; to do this, he must have the box with
the spirit inside it under his neckerchief when he goes to
Communion, and then spit the wine into it. One can also
give a Speaking Spirit maydew, but this is not essential.
The Speaking Spirit tells its owner everything he wants to
know, but it is most willing to talk during heavy storms or
on nights when the wind is in the east. If it slips out of the
box, it will enter into its owner and drive him mad.
A certain Torfi, who lived at Klukur in Eyjafjord, had a
Speaking Spirit which had grown hoarse with old age and
neglect; it used to declare that it had come down from the
thirteenth century, passing from one man to another. I have
never heard tell who it had been in its lifetime—for a
Speaking Spirit is the wraith of a dead man. When a man is
fey, his Speaking Spirit will begin to lie to him, but not
before.
Torfi passed on his Speaking Spirit to a certain Sigfus of
Efstaland in Oxnadal, and when he in turn was old he wanted
to pass it on to Jon of Audnir in Oxnadal, but he would
not take it. This spirit was kept in a red oak box. When
Sigfus felt he had not long to live, he went out to Engimyra
Knoll one night, and took Jon with him. They buried the
box in the knoll, and Sigfus prepared its grave and blessed
it. Jon asked him why he blessed the spirit’s grave, and
Sigfus said: ‘I’m blessing it in the Devil's name, my friend.’
176 BLACK MAGIC
Some people think they have seen a wraith above this spirit’s
grave, and in the 1860s people still remembered where it
lies. There is a curse that follows Speaking Spirits, namely
that wherever there is one buried on a farm, the man and
wife there will never get on well together, and it is thought
that this has proved to be the case on this farm.
JÁ. I 435-6. This belief was already current in the sixteenth

century. According to other versions, the would-be seer might
have to wait as long as three or even six days before the spirit
would come; a calf’s caul, a horsehide bag, or a simple cloth
might be used, and the captured spirit should be kept in a horse’s
hoof (J.A. I 130, Maurer 94). Torfi of Klúkur is the same man as
was mentioned above as failing to exorcise Thorgeir’s Bull; Sigfús
Þorleifsson, to whom he is here said to have given the spirit, died
in 1829, but Torfi himself lived till 1843. The anecdote about
them is from a schoolgirl from northern Iceland in 1845. For the
‘Dream Man’, see the note to “The Lovers’ above, p. 108-9.
Sitting Out at Crossroads

The purpose of this rite is to call up the dead, not in order
to send them against other people, but so as to question
them; it is several times referred to in medieval texts, but it
has left few traces in later oral tradition, where ‘sitting out’ is
associated with the belief in elves more than with that in
the dead. The rite must be carried out on New Years Eve
or on the Eve of St John’s Day (June 24); the former date
is the more general, and applies to the belief in both ghosts
and elves.
He who wants to learn things by ‘sitting out’ must make
his preparations to go out on New Year's Eve, taking with
him a grey cat, a grey sheepskin with its fleece on, the hide
of a walrus or (others say) of an old bull, and an axe. Taking
SITTING OUT AT CROSSROADS 19/9)
all these with him, the magician must go to a crossroads

where four roads run, each in a straight unbroken line, to
four churches. He must lie down in the crossroads itself,
spread the hide over him, and tuck it in well on every side,
so that no part of his body sticks out from underneath it.
He must hold the axe in his hands and stare fixedly at the
edge of it, and never look either to right or to left whatever
may appear to him, nor ever answer a single word if he is
spoken to. In this position he must lie, still as a corpse, till
day breaks next morning.
As soon as the magician had arranged himself, he would
begin reciting the formulas and spells that served to call up
the dead. At this, if he had any relations buried in one or
more of the four churches to which the roads led, they
would come to him and tell him all he wished to know about
past and future happenings through many generations. If
he had the firmness of mind to face the edge of the axe and
never take his eyes off it or let one word pass his lips, what-
ever happened, he could not only remember all that the
dead had told him but could also go again in safety whenever
he wished, so as to question them about anything he desired
to know by ‘sitting out’. But people cannot remember any-
body who returned from sitting at the crossroads without
suffering for it in some way.
J.A. I 486-7. Cf. the practice described above, pp. 56-8, for
summoning elves at crossroads. This form of necromancy can be
traced back to heathen times in the Icelandic Eddic poems
Hávamál and Voluspd, and also in Norway, where men seeking
occult wisdom would ‘sit out’ on burial-mounds (Hallfredar
saga ch. 6), and where Christian laws forbade men on pain of
death to “go on seers’ journeys and sit out so as to raise trolls
up, and thus do heathen magic’ (Gulapingslog). In the ecclesias-
tical Maríu saga, thought to be by Kygri-Bjorn Hjaltason (d.
1237-8), a would-be seer is advised to go to a lonely forest, lay
a freshly flayed ox-hide on the ground, draw nine squares round
it with devilish incantations, and then sit on it till the Devil comes
178 BLACK MAGIC
to reveal the future. Whether by ‘the Devil Kygri-Bjorn meant a
dead man, an elf, or a troll is unfortunately impossible to tell.
The same practice was known on the Faroes, where, as in
Iceland, it was sometimes the dead and sometimes elves (there
called ‘trolls’), who came, bringing treasures and seeking to
break the seer’s concentration (see Craigie 383-4 for a version
with trolls, and Williamson 234 for one with ghosts, taken from
J. Jakobsen’s Faerösk Folkesagn og Aevintyr, 1898-1901).
Animal Plagues
A man who wants to injure his enemies can either send them
a Sending, which has been described already, or a
stefnivargr, which literally means ‘a wolf aimed at another,
and refers to any animals that are given magic strength and
then sent out against others to do them harm and injury.
There was once a rich man who lived out on the Akureyjar
Isles, an absolute skinflint who always grudged giving any
help to the poor. In revenge, a certain wizard sent him such
a devastating host of mice that they destroyed everything he
owned, and in the end he died in abject poverty. For a long
time afterwards the mice remained on the islands, until a
new landlord sent for another wizard. The latter arrived and
gave orders for a whole leg of mutton to be roasted, and then
sat down in the open air and settled down to eat it. All at
once, the mice arrived in crowds and gathered round to
get a bite of it. The wizard stood up, took the leg of mutton
in his hand, and went back into the farmhouse and so
through every room in it, and then out again and so all
round the island, until every single mouse on the island had
come out to him. Then he flung the leg into a deep pit,
which he had earlier had dug in readiness. All the mice
sprang into the pit after the meat; then he had the pit
covered over at once, and strictly forbade anyone to disturb
ANIMAL PLAGUES 179
it from then on. After that there were no mice on the

Akureyjar Isles for a long time. Many years later, the then
owner ordered foundations for a new building to be laid
at this spot, and his men were so careless as to reopen the
pit. Then the mice rushed out again in a twinkling of an eye,
and ever since, to this very day, they have been a plague on
these islands which in other ways are such good land.
A certain Icelander once spent a winter in Finnmark, and
an old woman on the farm where he stayed wanted to marry
him, but he did not want her, and went home next spring.
The old woman was mightily annoyed, and decided to
avenge herself. She took two foxes, one male and one female,
and chanted spells over them. Then she got the foxes on
board a ship going to Iceland, and decreed that they were
to increase and multiply there, so that the land would never
be free of them; also, they were to attack the first kind of
animal they would see in that land. Now the old woman
thought the foxes would see men first, and intended that
they should destroy them; but the ship they were on went
aground in the East Quarter, and the foxes leapt ashore on
the headland that ever since then has been called
Melrakkanes, ‘Foxes’ Headland’. There they saw a flock of
sheep, and these were the first kind of animal they saw in
the country. They have since then increased and multiplied
and spread all over the country, and they attack sheep and
kill them.
J.A. I 489 (Stefnivargur); the story of the mice is from Maurer

94-5, and that of the foxes from a schoolgirl in Múlasýsla in
1845. The belief in a wizard’s ability to drive or lure mice away,
sometimes into a cave, was current already in the seventeenth
century; it is mentioned in Bishop Gisli Oddsson’s De Mirabilibus
Islandiæ, 1637. Norwegian examples are classified by Christiansen
under ML 3060, ‘Banning the Snakes’; British ones under 3061*
‘The Pied Piper’ (Briggs 1971, II 307-8). That a cruel miser should
be punished by a plague of rats or mice was common in medieval
N
180 BLACK MAGIC
European local legends; some examples, including that of Bishop

Hatto, are given in S. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the
Middle Ages, 1877, 447-56.
The Witch’s Bridle
Whoever wants to be able to ride through the air and across

water must have the Witch-Ride Bridle. To make this, one
should dig up a newly buried corpse and tear a strip of skin
off the whole length of the spine; this will be used as reins.
Next, one must flay the dead man’s scalp off and use it for
the head-piece of the bridle; the hyoid bones are to be used
as the bit and the hip bones as cheek-pieces. It is also neces-
sary to chant spells over the bridle, and then the bridle
is ready; nothing more is needed now but to lay the bridle
on any man or beast, stock or stone, and then it will rise
up into the air with whoever is sitting on it and will fly
quicker than lightning wherever one wants to go. There is
then a loud whistling sound in the air, and some men believe
they have heard this, and even the rattling of the bridle
itself.
J.A. I 440 (Gandreidarbeizli), from stories current in Borgar-

fjörður. The word I have here translated ‘witchride’, gandreið, was
of much wider application in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century
sagas, where it is variously used of an ominous figure seen riding
through the skies, of a she-troll riding by night to a gathering of
trolls, and of an elf-boy riding a magic stick (Njdls saga ch. 12,
Ketils saga hængs ch. 5, and Þorsteins páttr bæjarmagns). Other
phrases using the word gandr (the precise meaning of which is
unknown, though it always refers to magic) are applied to the
shamanistic sending-out of the soul in sleep or trance, and to
shape-changing (Lid 1935, 37-9).
None of these older passages mentions any bridle; the grue-
some use of skin and bones is quite typical of the macabre pro-
THE WITCH’S BRIDLE 181
cedures of seventeenth-century Icelandic magic. The effect of the

bridle is illustrated in the story of ‘Hild the Queen of the Elves’
(pp. 43-51 above), and also in one about a servant-lad whose mis-
tress rode on him to a Sabbath, where a coven of twelve women
were studying black magic under Satan’s tuition (J.A. I 440-1).
This latter tale has strong Continental affiliations, and is not
typical of Icelandic witchcraft beliefs, in which the ride and the
Sabbath play a very minor role (Davidsson 1940-3, 55).
Witches’ bridles are known in English lore too; there was
mention of one in the second Lancashire witch trial in 1634, and
it is also a feature of local legends of the type ML 3057*, “The
Witch-Ridden Boy’ (Briggs 1962, 102-8, 253; 1971, II 623-4, 715,
749-50).
Thor’s Hammer
If a man owns a Thors Hammer’, he will know who it is

who has robbed him if he loses anything. To make this
hammer, one must have copper from a church bell, three
times stolen. The hammer must be hardened in human
blood on a Whitsunday, between the reading of the Epistle
and the Gospel. A spike must also be forged out of the same
material as the hammer, and this spike one must jab against
the head of the hammer, saying: ‘I drive this in the eye of
the Father of War, I drive this in the eye of the Father of
the Slain, I drive this in the eye of Thor of the Aesir.’ The
thief will then feel pain in his eyes; if he does not return
the stolen goods, the procedure is repeated, and then the
thief will lose one eye; but should it prove necessary to
repeat it a third time, he will lose the other eye too.
Another method is for a man to steal a copper bell from
a church between the Epistle and Gospel, and make a
hammer from it. When he wants to know who the thief is, he
must take a sheet of paper and draw a man’s eyes on it, or,
better still, a whole face with two eyes, using his own blood,
182 BLACK MAGIC
and on the reverse of the sheet draw a suitable magic sign.

Next, he must take a steel spike and set one end of it on the
eye and strike the other end with the Thor’s Hammer, saying
‘I am giving eye-ache to the man who robbed me’, or ‘T am
knocking out the eye of the man who robbed me’. Then the
thief will lose one eye, or both, if he does not give himself
up first.
J.A. I 445, from a story current in Northern Iceland. An actual

hammer of this type was seen by Maurer in 1858; it had been
given to his informant’s late husband many years before by an
old woman reputed to be learned in magic; it was made of
copper, about three inches long, with a detachable handle to be
used as the jabbing spike. The idea of punishing a thief by
magically knocking out his eye is common in the three other
Scandinavian lands, both in learned books of magic and in
popular practice; in the latter case, it is almost always a
blacksmith who carries out the rite (von Sydow 1931, 133, 151;
Lid 1935, 44-535). A smith, with his hammers and fiery forge,
makes a very appropriate surrogate for Þórr. The ‘suitable magic
sign’ mentioned in the text may possibly be one called “Thor’s
Hammer’ which resembles the swastika, the god’s symbol in
heathen times: 5 (J.Á. I 446).
6 @ BURIED TREASURE
The Treasure of Fagriholl

Not very far from Stykkisholur is a hillock called Fagriholl
in which, so they say, all the riches of the old monastery at
Helgafell lie buried. There was an attempt made once to
dig into this hillock, and as soon as the diggers had got
fairly deep into it, it seemed to them as if Helgafell Church
was all ablaze, and they ran to put the fire out. Later,
preparations were made to dig into it a second time, and
this time they thought that armed men came up out of
the ground and threatened to kill them if they did not stop
digging. After this, no native Icelanders could be found
willing to dig into this hillock, so some Danes were got for
the work, but the attempt proved fruitless.
J.A. I 279, from Maurer 72. Maurer’s informant, Egill Svein-

bjarnarson Egilsson, was the owner of the land on which this
hillock stood, and it was he himself who had been forced
by local hostility to hire Danes when he wished to open it up.
Helgafell Monastery was sacked in the 1540s by men sent by
the King of Norway to impose the Reformation on Iceland;
according to Jón Guðmundsson the Learned (d. 1658), its manu-
scripts were burnt, and the parson guilty of this desecration died
by drowning the following year, ‘as a punishment’.
Tales such as this and the next one fall into the widespread
group ML 8010, ‘Buried Treasure’, which has many local varia-
tions; frequently recurring motifs include eerie sights, illusions
of fire, monstrous or ghostly guardians, a taboo on speaking, and
last-minute catastrophes (for a few Danish examples, see Craigie
407-12; for a Norwegian one, Christiansen 1964, 23-4; for a
summary of Swedish material, von Sydow 1931, 129-30). In the
184 BURIED TREASURE
similar English legends, it is often thunderstorms or phantom
horses that scare away the treasure-seekers (Briggs 1971, II 337-8,
380), but illusions of fire occur too (Briggs 1971, II 213, The Gold
of Craufurdland’).
Jón Árnason put these tales into the section on ghosts, because
in Iceland buried hoards are thought of as belonging to and
guarded by the dead. There is a plain link with the ancient belief,
the basis of many episodes in sagas, that dead men in their
burial mounds keep guard over the wealth and fine weapons
buried with them; but whereas in sagas the hero always defeats
the dead man and carries off the treasures, in the later folktales
the seekers are always baffled and the treasure lost. Similarly, in
Grettis saga ch. 18 the hero successfully wins treasure, the exist-
ence of which he learnt from seeing blue flames flickering about a
burial mound, but in later tales (J.A. I 276-7) such flames vanish
before they can be tracked down.
For other tales of treasures guarded by illusions, see J.A. I 149,
276-80, 488; II 80, 84.
The Chest of Gold
A burial mound stands in Vatnsfjord Parish in the west

country, near Isafjord. There is a chest of gold hidden in it
which people have often tried to get at, but they have
always had to stop on account of the horrible visions which
appeared when the mound was dug up. Once, two enter-
prising young men agreed to go and break into this mound,
and they dug until they saw the chest. It was so heavy that
they could not lift it, though they were sturdy fellows, so
they dug all round its sides, and underneath it too. The
chest had very strong iron bands round it, with rings at
each end. So now one of them got down under the chest and
lifted it, while the other hauled on it by a rope tied to one
of these rings. But as soon as the chest was raised, the ring
broke away from the end, so that it crashed onto the man
THE CHEST OF GOLD 185
beneath, and he died at once. The man who was up above
was frightened, abandoned the work, and fled, but kept the
ring. It was a great big copper ring, and he gave it to
Vatnsfjord Church, where it is on the church door to this
day.
Other people say that certain men had agreed to dig
the mound up. They found the chest, bound with iron, and
with rings at each end of it. They passed a rope through the
rings and pulled, but one man stayed down in the hole to
lift the chest from below. By the time the chest was almost
level with the brink, the men above were pretty near ex-
hausted, and thought it more than doubtful whether it
would come up or not.
Then one of them said: ‘It will come up, if God wills.’
Then the one who was down below lifting the chest yells
out: ‘It must come up, whether God wills or not!’
At that, one of the end rings broke off, so that the chest fell
on the man below and killed him, and the sides of the pit
caved in. The others ran off, terrified, and gave the ring to
Vatnsfjord Church, and stopped digging altogether.
J.A. I 279, from a schoolgirl in the west of Iceland in 1845. For

another tale in which treasure seekers got only a broken ring-
handle for their pains, and gave it to the local church, see J.A. I
488. Two other churches are said to have as door-handles rings
broken from a giantess’s treasure-chest; for a different aetiological
legend about a door-handle, see the story of Bergthor, pp. 84-7
above. The second part of the present tale, with the motif of the
man who would not say ‘if God wills’, is closely parallelled in a
legend attached to the supposed grave-mound of Ingólfr
Arnason, the first settler of Iceland (J.A. II 75); it has very many
international parallels in stories about buried treasures or sunken
bells. (An English one, attached to Willy Howe in Yorkshire, is
given in Briggs 1971, II 396.)
186 BURIED TREASURE
The Dreamer and the Treasure
A good many men were once travelling together, and one

Sunday morning they pitched tent on a pleasant grassy
field; the weather was clear and bright. These men all lay
down to sleep, lying in a row in the tent. The one nearest
the entrance could not get to sleep, so he was looking at
one thing or another in the tent. Then he saw a wisp of
bluish vapour hovering above the man who lay furthest in,
and then this wisp drifted through the tent and out into the
open.
The man wanted to know what this could be, so he fol-
lowed the vapour. It drifted gently, very gently, across
the field, and finally came to where an old horse-hide and
skull were lying; these were full of blowflies, and they were
buzzing loudly. The vapour drifted inside the horse skull.
A good while later, it came out again and drifted off across
the field once more, till it came to a tiny brook which ran
through the field. It followed the course of this downstream,
and it looked to the man as if it was trying to cross. The
man was carrying a whip, and this he laid right across the
brook (for it was so narrow that the handle could reach
right across), and the wisp of vapour went along the handle
of the whip and so drifted across the brook. Then it went on
again, and eventually reached a little tussock in the field.
The vapour vanished down inside this. The man stood and
waited for it to come back. Soon it came. Then it went back
again along the same track as it had come; the man laid his
whip across the brook and the vapour crossed along it as
before, and then it went straight home to the tent, never
stopping till it was hovering over the man who lay furthest
in, and then it disappeared. Then the other man lay down
and fell asleep.
Towards evening the travellers got up and fetched their
horses, and as they were busy loading them up, they chatted
of this and that, and among other things the man who had
THE DREAMER AND THE TREASURE 187
been sleeping at the inner end of the tent said: ‘I wish I

owned what I was dreaming of today.’
What was it? What did you dream of? says the one who
had seen the vapour.
The other says: ‘I thought I was walking about out here
on this field. Then I came to a splendid large house where a
crowd had gathered and were singing and playing with the
greatest merriment and glee, and I stayed a long time in that
house. When I came out again, I walked a long, long way
across fine level plains, until I came to a broad river which
I tried for a long time to cross, but I could not. Then I saw
a terrifyingly huge giant coming; he was carrying an enor-
mous big tree in his hand which he laid across the river,
and so I crossed it by way of the tree.
‘Then I walked on again for a long, long way, till I came
to a huge burial mound. It was open, and I went in, and
what did I find there but a great barrel, full of money! I
stayed an immensely long time in there, staring at the money,
for I had never seen such a heap as that before. Then I came
out again and went home by the same way as I had come,
and when I reached the river the same giant came with
his tree and laid it across, so that I crossed by way of the
tree, and so came home again to the tent.’
The man who had tracked the vapour was filled with
secret glee, and says to the one who had had this dream:
‘Come along, my friend, let’s both go and look for that money
at once.’
The other burst out laughing, thinking that he wasn't
quite right in the head, but all the same he did go. They
follow the route which the vapour had taken, come to the
tussock, and dig it up, and there they find a keg full of
money. Then they went back to their companions, told them
the whole story of the dream and vapour, and showed them
the keg of treasure.
J.A. I 856-7, from an old woman in Borgarfjörður. The Icelandic

188 BURIED TREASURE
title of this tale, Dalakúturinn, "The Keg of Treasure’, shows that

in the narrator’s mind its chief interest lay in its ending, and I
have therefore put it in this section. However, in essence it is, as
Jón Árnason points out, related to ancient beliefs about the nature
of the soul, and hence to tales of shape-shifting, and so does not
come into any of the main categories of more recent Icelandic
beliefs and tales. It is an example of ML 4000, “The Soul of a
Sleeper Wanders on its Own’, sometimes also known as the
‘Guntram Legend’ because it first occurs in the History of the
Longobards by Paul the Deacon (d. 790), where it is told of the
soul of King Guntram of Burgundy. The tale is widely known
in Western Europe, occurs also in central Asia, and is common
in Japan; for two Norwegian examples, see Christiansen 1964,
47-8. In its basic form there is no mention of treasure, but the
few instances where this is included are also classified as AT
1645 A, ‘A Dream of Treasure Bought’. For a close Scottish
parallel recorded in 1852, see Briggs 1971, II 583-4.
The idea of a féþúfa, ‘money tussock’, occurs in several tales,
and wasebelieved in many parts of Iceland; elves, mermen or
ghosts may reveal its existence (J.A. I 61, 182-4, 307-8). The pre-
sent tale shows clearly its relationship to the old idea of treasures
in a burial mound, the small tussock appearing a great burial
mound to the dreamer.
7@GOD AND THE DEVIL
What Old Nick Got out of Man
No sooner had God set to work to create man, than the

Devil was filled with malice and wanted to try to harm him.
So Old Nick loops his tail up behind him, goes off to find
Almighty God, and asks Him to give him the tips of man’s
longer fingers, these tips being all of different lengths, so
that then all the fingers should be of equal length. God
promised him that he could have the longer bits, provided
that the fingers really are of different lengths once the hand
is clenched. So anybody whose fingers are not all even when
they touch his palm, had better beware of losing the top
joint of his fingers.
When Old Nick saw he would never make much profit
out of this promise of the Lord’s, he asked the Lord to give
him the muck which a man drops when he goes into the
fields to ease himself. The Lord gave him permission to take
it, provided the man does not look behind him when he has
finished what he wanted to do. But most men do look behind
them, so they say.
When Old Nick saw he would get nothing from this
either, he asked God for the bits of finger-nail which men
cut or clip off. God promised he could have them if the whole
nail was trimmed in one piece and not broken up afterwards,
but if it was cut in three sections, Old Nick would get none
of them. Therefore all men cut their nails in three or more
sections; for otherwise Old Nick stores up the trimmings, if
they are cut off in one piece and not snapped in two after-
wards, and he makes strips of shoe-leather out of them until
he has some shoes to wear, and this does indeed happen
from time to time.
190 GOD AND THE DEVIL
JÁ. II 2-3 (Snemma beygist krókurinn, sem verða vill), from a

story generally current in Northern Iceland. The taboo on
trimming nails in one piece was widespread, and an alternative
explanation offered was that the Devil would use such trimmings
to build (or to nail together) a ‘ship of the dead’ (J.A. II 549). This
type of belief can be traced back to pagan myths; in Snorri
Sturluson’s Edda (c. 1220) it is said that at the Doom of the Gods
some of their demonic foes will come in Naglfar, a ship built
from dead men’s nails, and so a man who dies with untrimmed
nails helps to hasten the building of that ship. Conversely, also
according to Snorri, leather trimmings thrown away in shoe-
making help the gods, for they go to make the shoe with which
Óðinn's son Víðarr will trample on the great Wolf's jaw.
Old Hornie Tried to Make a Man

The Devil wanted to be just as clever as God, so he set to
work in the hope of creating a man. But his experiment
did not turn out to be a great success, for instead of his
making a man, the final result was a cat—and furthermore
there was no skin on it.
Saint Peter took pity on the creature and made a skin for
the cat, as the verse says:
Old Hornie tried to make a man,
And got a cat without a skin;
Saint Peter hit on a good plan—
A fur to wrap the pussy in.
Indeed, the cat’s fur is the only part of the beast which is
any good.
J.A. If 3, a story current throughout Iceland. Other humorous
tales also illustrate the Devil’s inefficiency as a creator; he is said
to have tried to put out the newly created sun by pissing at it,
but only managed to form Lake Myvatn in the process (J.A. II 2).
There is a pun here on my ‘mosquito’ and miga ‘to piss’; more-
over, the mosquitos that infest this lake are said to have sprung to
life from the vermin in the Devil’s beard (J.A. I 627).
OLD NICK SPEAKS LATIN IgI
The Halibut, the Lumpsucker, and the Jellyfish

One day Jesus Christ was walking by the sea, and Saint
Peter with him. Christ spat in the sea, and from this came
the halibut. Then Saint Peter also spat in the sea, and from
this came the lumpsucker; both fish are considered good
eating, but all the same the halibut is the superior dish.
The Devil came sneaking up behind them and saw what was
going on; he wanted to be just as good as the others, so he
too spat in the sea, but from his spittle came the jellyfish,
which is no good at all.
JÁ. II 3, from a story current in Borgarfjörður. St Peter is here
shown as a minor creator, well-intentioned, but less powerful
than Christ; as in the previous tale, though he cannot equal God’s
achievements, he does easily surpass those of the Devil.
Old Nick Speaks Latin
Once, a priest who was a pretty ignorant fellow had to

baptize a baby, in the days when it was the custom to drive
the Devil out from the baby by an exorcism, and in Latin
too.
So this priest says: “Abi, male spirite!’
But Old Nick himself was sitting in a corner of the church,
and at this he lets out a howl, and says: ‘Pessime
grammatice!’
Then the priest says: “Abi, male spiritu!’
And Old Nick says: “Ye lee’d afore, and lee the noo!’
Then the priest says: ‘Abi, male spiritus!’
And at this Old Nick took himself off, remarking as he
went: ‘Sic debuisti dicere prius.’
JA. II 23, from the Rev. Búi Jónsson (d. 1848). In a German
parallel given by Maurer (106-7), the Devil wins; the dialogue
runs thus: Exi tu ex hoc corpo—Nolvo—Cur tu nolvisP—Quia tu
male linguis—Hoc est aliud rem, says the priest, and abandons
the attempt. I am indebted to Benedikt Benedikz for pointing
out that by giving Old Nick a Scots accent the literal sense of his
retort and its rhyme can both be perfectly preserved.
The Goblin on the Church-Beam
There was once a priest, though of which parish is not said,

who was saying Mass one Sunday as usual, and everything
was going along quite correctly as it normally did; nothing
odd happened until he had gone up into the pulpit and
begun preaching his sermon, but then a man at the front of
the church burst out laughing in the course of the sermon.
Nobody showed that they had noticed at the time, neither
the priest nor anyone else, and indeed it only happened the
once. So the priest completed his sermon, returned to the
altar, and went on with the Mass to the end.
As soon as it was over, the priest inquired who the man
had been who had so scandalized the congregation, and he
was told who it was. Then the priest sent for this man and
asked him what he had found so funny in what he had been
saying from the pulpit that day that he could not restrain his
laughter, and so had scandalized the congregation; or if not,
what else had made him act in that way.
The man said it would never enter his head to laugh at
the priest’s teaching—but I saw something which you
probably did not see, Father,’ says he, ‘nor anyone else in
the congregation, very likely.’
“What was that?’ says the priest.
‘When you had just gone up into the pulpit, Father, two
old women sitting in the corner pew on the women’s side at
the back of the church began to tear each other to pieces,
each hurling unforgivable insults at the other. At that
moment I happened to look up at the cross-beam, and I saw
that a goblin had appeared up there. In one paw he clutched
THE GOBLIN ON THE CHURCH-BEAM 193
a shrivelled leather boot, and in the other he held a horse’s

leg-bone. This goblin was poking out his little skull-cap to
catch every filthy word the old women let fly, and frantically
writing down everything they said on this patched-up boot,
writing with the horse-bone, while they went on and on and
on.
"There came a time when there was no more room on the
boot; so this devil, not at all at a loss, sets to work and
stretches it, holding one end in his fangs and the other in
his claws, and so he makes it last a while longer. Then on he
goes again with furious energy, until the whole boot is
scribbled over; then he does as before, stretches the boot,
and so gets back to his writing. So it goes on, time after
time; the goblin stretches the boot this way and that way,
whenever there is no more room left on it.
‘In the end, though, there comes a time when he has
covered the boot with writing right up to the eyelets, and
has stretched it out so thin that there’s no stretch left in it;
but since the old women are still going it hammer and
tongs, and the goblin can’t bear to miss a single one of their
filthy words, he sets to work once more and stretches it
with all his strength. And just as he’s got his teeth well and
truly into it, the boot splits, and at that the goblin topples
backwards off the cross-beam, and he would have landed
smack on his bum on the church floor if it wasn't that just
as he’s on his way, just tumbling down, he drives his claws
hard into the beam. And then, Father, I couldn't help
laughing—and I humbly beg your pardon, and that of the
congregation, if I caused scandal.’
The priest decided that the man could be excused for
what had happened, and set him a light penance only, as an
example to others; but he said the old women ought to
have something better to do in church than to keep the
devils amused with their disgraceful language.
JÁ. Il 4-5, from Sigurður Guðmundsson (d. 1874). This amusing

194. GOD AND THE DEVIL
exemplum, first found in the collection by Jacques de Vitry, was

already known in Iceland in the thirteenth century, for it occurs
in Maríu saga, an ecclesiastical work probably by Kygri-Bjorn
Hjaltason (d. 1237 or 1238) (ed. C. R. Unger, pp. 176-7). It is
classified as AT 826 ‘The Devil writes Down Names of Men on
Hide in Church’, and is popular as a folktale in Germany,
Lithuania, and Sweden, occurring also in other Baltic and Slavonic
areas. (Cf. F. C. Tubach, Index Exemplorum, no. 1630; R. Wild-
haber, Das Siindenregister auf der Kuhhaupt, Helsinki, 1955).
The Dance in Hruni Church
Once, long ago, there was a priest at Hruni in Arnesysla

who was very fond of merrymaking and pleasure. When
people came to the church on Christmas Eve, it was always
his custom to hold no service during the first part of the
night, but rather to hold a great dance inside the church with
his parishioners, with drinking and gambling and other un-
seemly sports going on far into the night. This priest had
an old mother called Una; her son’s ways were not at all
to her liking, and she often found fault with him over them.
But he paid no attention, and for many years he kept to the
customs he had adopted.
One Christmas Eve the priest went on with the dancing
and fun longer than usual; then his mother, who had the
second sight and the gift of prophecy, went out to the
church and told her son to stop the fun and start saying
Mass.
But the priest says there is still ample time for that, and
says: (One more round-dance, Mother!’
So his mother went back from the church to her house.
Three times over the same thing happens—Una goes out to
her son and tells him to take heed of God, and to stop
while things are as they are, and no worse. But he always
answers in the same words as at first. But as she is walking
THE DANCE IN HRUNI CHURCH 195
through the church and about to leave her son for the third
time, she hears someone speaking a rhyme, and catches the
words:
Loud the mirth at Hruni,
Lads sport beneath the moon-o;
Theyll dance to such a tune-o
Men won't forget it soon-o.
There'll be none left but Una,
There'll be none left but Una.
As soon as Una gets outside the church, she sees a man
standing outside the door; she did not know him by sight,
but she disliked the look of him, and felt sure it was he who
had spoken the rhyme. She was most upset by the whole
affair, and thought she could see how things were now
taking a dangerous turn, for this might well be the Devil
himself.
So then she takes her son’s best horse and rides off in
great haste to the nearest priest, and begs him to come
and try to help them in their trouble, and to save her son
from the danger he is in. This priest goes with her at once,
bringing many men with him, for the people who had been
hearing Mass at his church had not yet left. But by the time
they reached Hruni, the church and churchyard had sunk
down into the earth, with all the people inside it, and they
heard shrieking and howling from deep down underground.
One can still see traces showing that a building once stood
on the high ground at Hruni, and the name is still given
to a hill there and to the farm at its foot. But the story goes
that after this, the site of the church was moved further down
the valley to where it is now, and moreover it is said that
there was never again any dancing on Christmas Eve in
Hruni Church.
J.A. II 7-8, from the Rev. Jón Jónsson Nordmann (d. 1877) and
the Rev. Jóhann Briem (d. 1894). An almost identical story is
told to account for the deserted site of Bakkastadir in Jokuldalur
o
(J.A. II 6-7). At Hrúni, a hollow in the earth which resembles
the ground-plan of a church is pointed out as proof of the tale.
As attached to that site, the story is widely known, and is told
with several slight variations in the verse; it is first found
mentioned in the Dictionary of Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík (1705-
1779), who thought that it dated from before the Reformation.
It certainly bears a resemblance to the well-known medieval
tale ‘The Dancers of Kölbigk', about a group of people who
profaned a churchyard by dancing there, and were doomed to
continue unceasingly for a whole year, and then to live as
dancing beggars; this legend dates from c. 1020 (see Gaston
Paris, Les Danseurs Maudits, 1900; cf. the legend attached to
the stone circle at Stanton Drew, Somerset, for which see Briggs
1971, I 95-6, II 201). The idea of a church sinking into the ground
occurs in several other Icelandic tales where the Devil, or an
evil ghost or wizard, nearly brings about this calamity (cf. “The
Ghost’s Son’, pp. 186-9 above, and J.A. I 585, II 5-6).
‘My Jon’s Soul’

There were once an old cottager and his wife who lived
together. The old man was rather quarrelsome and disagree-
able, and, what’s more, he was lazy and useless about the
house; his old woman was not at all pleased about it, and she
would often grumble at him and say the only thing he was
any good at was squandering what she had scraped together
—for she herself was constantly at work and tried by hook
or by crook to earn what they needed, and was always good
at getting her own way with anybody she had to deal with.
But even if they did not agree about some things, the old
woman loved her husband dearly and never let him go short.
Now things went on the same way for a long time, but
one day the old man fell sick, and it was obvious that he
was in a bad way. The old woman was sitting up with him,
and when he grew weaker, it occurred to her that he could
‘MY JON’S SOUL’ 197
hardly be very well prepared for death, and that this meant
there was some doubt as to whether he would be allowed
to enter Heaven. So she thinks to herself that the best plan
will be for her to try and put her husband’s soul on the right
road herself. Then she took a small bag and held it over her
husband’s nose and mouth, so that when the breath of life
leaves him it passes into this bag, and she ties it up at once.
Then off she goes towards Heaven, carrying the bag in
her apron, comes to the borders of the Kingdom of Heaven,
and knocks on the door.
Out comes Saint Peter, and asks what her business may be.
‘A very good morning to you, sir, says the old woman.
Tve come here with the soul of that Jon of mine—you'll have
heard tell of him, most likely—and now I'm wanting to ask
you to let him in.’
‘Yes, yes, yes, says Peter, ‘but unfortunately I can't. I
have indeed heard tell of that Jon of yours, but I never heard
good of him yet.
Then the old woman said: “Well, really, Saint Peter, Td
never have believed it, that you could be so hard-hearted!
You must be forgetting what happened to you in the old
days, when you denied your Master.’
At that, Peter went back in and shut the door, and the old
woman remained outside, sighing bitterly. But when a little
time has passed, she knocks on the door again, and out comes
Saint Paul. She greets him and asks him his name, and he
tells her who he is. Then she pleads with him for the soul of
her Jon—but he said he didn’t want to hear another word
from her about that, and said that her Jon deserved no
mercy.
Then the old woman got angry, and said: ‘It’s all very
well for you, Paul! I suppose you deserved mercy in the
old days, when you were persecuting God and men! I
reckon Td better stop asking any favours from you.’
So now Paul shuts the door as fast as he can. But when
the old woman knocks for the third time, out comes the
Blessed Virgin Mary.
‘Hail, most blessed Lady,’ says the old woman. ‘I do hope
you'll allow that Jon of mine in, even though that Peter and
Paul won't allow it.
‘It’s a great pity, my dear, says Mary, ‘but I darent,
because he really was such a brute, that Jon of yours.’
‘Well, I can’t blame you for that,’ says the old woman.
‘But all the same, I did think you would know that other
people can have their little weaknesses as well as you—or
have you forgotten by now that you once had a baby, and
no father for it?’
Mary would hear no more, but shut the door as fast as
she could.
For the fourth time, the old woman knocks on the door.
Then out comes Christ himself, and asks what she’s doing
there.
Then she spoke very humbly: ‘I wanted to beg you, my
dear Saviour, to let this poor wretch’s soul warm itself near
the door.’
‘It’s that Jon, answered Christ. ‘No, woman; he had no
faith in Me.’
Just as He said this He was about to shut the door, but
the old woman was not slow, far from it—she flung the bag
with the soul in it right past him, so that it hurtled far into
the halls of Heaven, but then the door was slammed and
bolted.
Then a great weight was lifted from the old woman’s
heart when Jon got into the Kingdom of Heaven in spite of
everything, and she went home happy; and we know nothing
more about her, nor about what became of Jon’s soul after
that.
J.A. II 39-40; from the Rev. Matthías Jochumsson (d. 1920). There
are similar jokes in medieval French and German literature about
a farmer arguing at the Gates of Heaven with SS. Peter, Paul
‘MY JON’S SOUL’ 199
and Thomas, and reminding them of their sins. The Icelandic
tale seems unique in making the Virgin Mary one of the victims
(Rittershaus, 343-4). The final motif in this tale causes Sveinsson
to classify it as AT 330, The Smith Outwits the Devil’, since in
the latter the cunning smith sometimes gets into Heaven by
hurling his magic knapsack through the gate and then wish-
ing himself into it. There is, however, no resemblance between
the rest of AT 330 and the present story, which belongs with a
numerous cycle of jokes about old men and women very popular
in Iceland.
% BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS
AT see Aarne, A., and Thompson, S., 1961

FFC Folklore Fellows Communications
JA see Árnason, Jón, 1862-4
ML. see Christiansen, R. Th., 1958
Motif see Thompson, S., 1955-8
Aarne, A., and Thompson, S., 1961, The Types of the Folktale,
Helsinki (FFC 184)
Árnason, Jón 1863-4, Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Aefintýri, Leipzig
Árnason, Jón, and Davíðsson, Olafur, 1887-1903, Íslenzkar Gátur,
Skemmtanir, Vikivakar og Þulur, Reykjavik
Benedikz, B. S., 1964, The Master Magician in Icelandic Folk-
Legend’, Durham University Journal, Dec. 1964, 22-34
Briggs, K. M., 1962, Pale Hecate’s Team, London
Briggs, K. M., 1967, The Fairies in Literature and Tradition,
London
Briggs, K. M., 1970, A Dictionary of British Folk Tales in the
English Language: Part A, Folk Narratives, London
Briggs, K. M., 1971, Part B, Folk Legends, London
Christiansen, R. Th., 1946, “The Dead and the Living’, Studia
Norwegica II, Oslo, 1-96
Christiansen, R. Th., 1958, The Migratory Legends: A Proposed
List of Types with a Systematic Catalogue of the Norwegian
Variants, Helsinki (FFC 175)
Christiansen, R. Th., 1959, Studies in Irish and Scandinavian
Folktales, Copenhagen
Christansen, R. Th., 1964, Folktales of Norway, London
Christiansen, R. Th., and O’Suilleabhain, S., 1963, The Types
of the Irish Folktale, Helsinki (FFC 188)
Craigie, W., 1896, Scandinavian Folklore, London
Davíðsson, Olafur, 1940-3, Galdur og Galdramál á Íslandi,
Reykjavík
Hartland, E. S., 1891, The Science of Fairy Tales, London
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS 201
Hartmann, E., 1936, Die Trollvorstellungen in den Sagen und

Mirchen der Skandinavischen Völker, Stuttgart-Berlin
Lid, N. (ed.), 1935, Folketru. Nordisk Kultur XIX, Stockholm-
Copenhagen-Oslo
Maurer K., 1860, Isldéndische Volkssagen der Gegenwart, Leipzig
O'Sullivan, S., 1966, Folktales of Ireland, London
Pentikáinen, J., 1968, The Nordic Dead-Child Tradition, Helsinki
(FFC 202)
Powell, G. E. J., and Magnússon, Eiríkur, 1864, Icelandic
Legends I, London
Rittershaus, A., 1902, Die Neuislándischen Volksmirchen, Halle
Simpson, J. 1965, The Northmen Talk, London
Sveinsson, Einar Ól., 1929, Verzeichnis Islandischer Mdrchen-
varienten, Helsinki (FFC 83)
Sveinsson, Einar Ól., 1940, Um fÍslenzkar Þjóðsögur, Reykjavik
Swire, O. F., 1961, Skye: the Island and its Legends
Sydow, C. W. von (ed.), 1931, Folksiger och Folksagor. Nordisk
Kultur IXB, Stockholm-Copenhagen-Oslo
Thomas, K., 1971, Religion and the Decline of Magic, London
Thompson, S., 1955-8, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Copen-
hagen and Bloomington, Indiana
Thomson, D., 1965, The People of the Sea (2nd ed.), London
Tubach, F. C., 1969, Index Exemplorum, Helsinki (FFC 204)
Wildhaber, R., 1955, Das Siindenregister auf der Kuhhaupt,
Helsinki (FFC 168)
Williamson, K., 1970, The Atlantic Islands (2nd ed.), London
@ INDEX OF TALE TYPES
Numbers preceded by AT are from Antti Aarne and Stith

Thompson, The Types of the Folktale 1961; those with ML
are from R. Th. Christiansen, The Migratory Legends 1958;
those with ML and an asterisk are from K. M. Briggs, A Dic-
tionary of British Folktales, 1970-1.
Bracketed numbers indicate that the resemblance between
the international tale and the Icelandic tale is only partial.
(AT 306 The Danced-Out Shoes) 43-52
AT 826 The Youth who Wanted to Learn what Fear Is 122-31
(AT 330 The Smith Outwits the Devil) 196-9
AT 365 The Dead Bridegroom Carries off his Bride 132-6
AT 866 The Man from the Gallows 111-12, 112-13
(AT 400 The Man on a Quest for his Lost Wife) 100-2
AT 470A The Offended Skull 115-20
AT 500 The Name of the Helper 78-5
AT 508 The Gifts of the Little People 22-3
(AT 507A The Monster’s Bride) 43-52
AT 555 The Fisher and his Wife 60-3
(AT 670 The Animal Languages) 92-4
AT 758 The Various Children of Eve 14-15
AT 760 The Unquiet Grave 141-3
AT 764 The Devil’s Son as Priest 136-9
AT 804A The Beanstalk to Heaven 62-3
(AT 813B The Accursed Grandson) 115-20
AT 826 The Devil Writes down Names of Men 192-4
AT 882B The Forgiven Skeleton 141-3
(AT 1161 The Bear Trainer and his Bear) 52-5
(AT 1645A A Dream of Treasure Bought) 186-8
ML 3057* The Witch-Ridden Boy 48-52
(ML 3060 Banning the Snakes) 178-80
INDEX 203
_ML 3061* The Pied Piper 178-80
ML 4000 The Soul of a Sleeper Wanders on its Own 186-8
(ML 4015 The Midnight Mass of the Dead) 142-3
ML 4020 The Unforgiven Dead 141-8
ML 4021* A Troublesome Ghost Laid 106-7, 107-9, 115-20,
120-2, 124-7, 134-5, 139-41, 152-4, 154-8, 158-60
ML 4025 Infants Killed before Baptism Haunt Mother 105-6
ML 4060 The Mermaid’s Message 92-4
ML 4075 Visits to Fairyland 40-1
ML 4080 The Seal Woman 100-2
(ML 5000 Trolls Resent a Disturbance) Ti
ML 5020 Trolls Make a Causeway 83-4, 87-9
ML 5055 Fairies and the Christian Faith 40-3
ML 5070 Midwife to the Fairies 17-19, 20-2
(ML 5080 Food from the Fairies) 79-81
ML 5085 The Changeling 28-31
ML 5086* Released from Fairyland 31-3
(ML 5095 Fairy Woman Pursues Man) 76-8
ML 6015 The Christmas Visitors 52-5
ML 6030 The Message of the Fairies 69-70
ML 6055 The Fairy Cows 23-5, 94-6
ML 7065 Building a Church: the Name of the Master-Builder
33-5
ML 7080 The Plague as an Old Hag 161-2
ML 7090 The Fate of Survivors of the Plague 154-8
ML 8010 Hidden Treasure 188-4, 184-5
w% GENERAL INDEX
aetiological legends, 4, 14-16, 41-2, 62, dancing, in church, 194-6; of elves, 47,
67, 81-8, 100, 138-9, 185, 190-1, 53, 55-6
194-6 Devil, as creator, 190-1; exorcised,
animals, devastating, 42-3, 97, 102-4, 191-2; sinks church, 194-6; wants
178-80 part of man, 189-90; writes down
Árnason, Jón, 1-4, 11-12, notes passim sins, 192-4
belief, degrees of, 3, 7-8; reinforcement disenchantment, 23, 25, 80-1, 95-6;
of, 4-5 see also exorcism
bells, power of, 67-8, 78, 86, 134, 151, divination, 56-8, 174-8
181 dreams, 10, 17, 107-9, 111, 116-7,
Black Death, 154, 161-2 140-1, 187-8
black magic, 9-11, 143, 149-82 elves, 6-7, 14-63, 129-30; abduct
blasphemy punished, 185, 194-6 humans, 25-9, 31-4; cause illness or
blood, drawing, 23, 25, 80-1; used in injury, 6, 22, 32, 56-8; changelings,
magic, 171, 181 25-31; dance, 47, 53, 55-6; fear the
bones, in ghost, 8, 138-9, 152-3; to be Cross, 6, 27; fear daylight, 53-4; fear
respected, 111-13, 115-19; used in God's name, 55-6; feast, 47-8, 52-5;
magic, 152, 157-60, 170-4, 180-1 helped by humans, 16-22; help
bugbear, 3, 89-91 humans, 16-17; (in)visible, 14-19,
bull, supernatural, 10, 162-7 27-8, 56-8; live in water, 54, 96;
carrier, witch’s, 170—4 live underground or in hillocks,
caul, used in magic, 158, 159, 163-4, 14-16, 18, 22, 31-2, 34, 37, 46, 58-9,
175-6 60-3, 129-30; love humans, 5, 15-16,
changelings, 3-5, 25-31 35-42; move house, 56-60; origin of,
Christ, 99, 191, 198 14-16; punish humans, 19, 22-4, 56;
Christian rites, power of, 27, 55, 64-5, reward humans, 16-19, 21, 22, 50-1,
67-9, 71, 78, 85, 87-8, 100, 126-7, 55-6, 60-3; religion of, 6, 41-3, 53;
134-5, 150-1, 170-2, 175, 181 size of, 6, 27-8; social organization of,
Christmas Eve, supernatural happenings 6; steal, 60; treasures of, 55-8; visit
on, 44-51, 56, 58, 81-3, 90, 133-5, houses, 52-6
155-6, 194-5 everlasting combat, 128-31
Church, attacked by troll, 67, 87-9; Eve, 14-15
built by elf, 33-5; furnishings, exorcism, by blessing, 64-5, 69; by iron,
origins of, 41-2, 87, 95, 185; sunk, 145; by Latin, 191; by naming, 34-5,
137-9, 194—6; visited by ghosts, 142— 73-5, 96-8; by whipping, 29-30;
3; wall damaged, 67, 100 see also laying ghosts
collecting methods, 2-3, 11-13 familiars, 10, 169-76
cows, from elves, 5, 23-5, 61; from fearlessness, 50, 69-70, 81-3, 106-7,
mermen, 5, 94-6; milk stolen from, 111-12, 122-31, 141-2, 153, 155-6
170-2 ; turned to rock, 83-4 fingernails, 189-90
crossroads, 56-8, 176-8 fly, supernatural, 10, 156-60
curse, 42-3, 48-51, 67-8, 136-9 food, from supernatural beings, 32, 57—
daylight, power of, 53-6, 81-4, 88, 8, 61, 77, 80-1; set out for elves, 56;
121-2, 126; see also lights for ghost, 118-19, 144
INDEX 205
foxes, 179-80 knowledge, magic, from dreams, 108-9;
ghosts, 3, 5-9, 105-61; appear in from elves, 16-17, 19, 56-8; from
dreams, 107-9, 111, 116-17, 140-1; ghosts, 151-2, 174-8; from merman,
appear in segments, 124-5; attack 92-4; from trolls, 70
the living, 8, 111, 114, 126, 128-31, laughter, enigmatic, 92-4
134-5, 140, 143-9, 161-7; attend laying ghosts, 8; by a cross, 126-7; by
church, 142-3; avenge insult to another ghost, 157; by magic, 108,
corpse, 8, 110-19; avenge past wrongs, 117-19, 135, 137-8, 151; by prayer,
8, 105, 109, 136-7, 140-2; beget a 151; by re-burial, 110-13, 140-1;
son, 136-9; fear (day)light, 106-7, by stabbing (with iron), 136-9,
121-2, 126; follow a family, 8, 143-8, 152-3; by staking or nailing, 107,
162-7; laid, 8, 107-8, 110-13, 117- 126-7, 141; by wrestling, 107, 126;
19, 126-7, 135-41, 151-3, 156, 159; in a bone, 156-60; under a stone,
miserly, 8, 120-2, 125-7; sent by 135
wizards, 143-7, 149-67; visit lover legends, types of, see aetiological, his-
or relative, 107-8, 132-7; see also torical persons, local legends
laying ghosts, sendings, raising the dead lights, power of, 23, 106-7; see also
giants, see trolls daylight
gigantic possessions of trolls, 68, 80, local legends, about caves, 104; about
86-7 churches, 33-4, 41-2, 66-7, 86-8, 95,
God, 14, 55-6, 99, 185, 189-90 99-100, 110-11, 115, 134, 136-9,
grave, corpse cannot rest in, 141-2; 160-1, 183, 185, 194-6; about farms,
corpse raised from, 149-52; desecra- 16-17, 25-8, 33-4, 58-60, 85-6, 88,
ted, 110-13, 115; earth from, 117-20, 94-5, 132-41, 143-7, 161; about
150, 152; object in, hinders ghost’s fishing-grounds, 94; about fjords, 42,
re-entry, 121, 137; open while ghost 77; about headlands, 179; about
walks, 121, 134, 137 hillocks and mounds, 175-6, 183-5;
greed punished, 22-3, 55-6, 60-3 about islands, 40-1, 64-5, 83-4, 97,
154-7, 178-9; about lakes, 42, 96-8,
Grímsson, Magnús, 2
102-4, 190; about rocks and moun-
Grýla, 3, 89-91 tains, 16-17, 31-2, 42, 58-60, 64-6,
hair, used in magic, 169 68-71, 76, 84-8, 162
Heaven, ladder to, 62-3; entered by magic breeches, 167-9; bridle, 46;
trick, 197-9 49-51, 100, 180-1; carrier, 170-4,
Hidden People, see elves drink, 38; fishing gear, 93-4;
historical persons, subjects of legends, hammer, 181-2; lure, 66-7, 71-2,
Arnór Ólafsson, 31-3; Bjarni Jónsson, 78-9, 178-9; mouse, 169-70; oint-
170; Einar Kortsson, 147-8; Guð- ment, 18-19, 78, 129-31; punish-
mundur Arason, Bishop, 64-5; ment of theft, 181-2; sleep, 155-8;
Hálfdan Narfason, 100, 131; Jón stone, 46, 49; storm, 169-70
Krukkur, 57-8; Jón of Auðnir, 175; magicians, black, 9-10, 99-100, 143,
Jón of Fossi, 170; Ketill Jónsson, 111; 149-60, 162-9, 174-9; white, 10-11,
Kort Þorvarðsson, 143-4; Magnús 31-2, 103, 108, 135, 157, 159, 161-2,
Kortsson, 144-7; Mensalder the 164, 178-9; see also witchcraft
Rich, 168; Ólafr Tryggvason, 71-3; mermaid, 94-5
Páll Tomasson, 64-6; Pétur Jónsson, merman, 92-4
160-1; Sigfús Þorleifsson, 175-6; midnight Mass (or other night service),
Skapti Sæmundsson, 20-1; Torfi 44-5, 52, 55-6, 81, 194-5; of the
Sveinsson, 164, 167, 175-6; Þorgeirr dead, 142-3
Stéfansson, 162-6; Þorgeirr stjakar- money, see treasure
höfði, 71-2; Þorlákr Þórhalsson, monsters, 42-3, 97, 102-4
‘Bishop, 64-5 mouse, 169-70, 178-80
206 INDEX
name, guessing, 33-5, 73-5; uttering, taboo, on accepting offers, 55-8, 117,
96-8 176-8; on cliff-climbing, 65-6; on
necromancy, 9, 143, 149-52, 174-8 dancing, 55-6; on eating, 32, 57-8,
New Year’s Eve, supernatural happen- 76-8; on hearing own name, 33-5,
ings on, 52-8, 142-3, 156-7, 176-8 73-5, 96-8; on hearing Devil's name,
numskulls, 1, 60-3 98; on kissing, 39-40; on looking, 55,
old woman, never satisfied, 60-3; 58, 83, 177; on speaking, 57, 115,
plague guide, 161-2; quarrels in 177; on treasures, 183-5; on walking
church, 192-4; saves husband’s soul, ahead, 117; on walking in graveyard
196-9 mould, 119
ogres, see trolls test of courage, 122-31, 141-2; of
oral story-telling, 11-13 concentration, 56-8, 176-8; of self-
Otherworld, visit to, 17-22, 31-2, 40-1, control, 55-8, 83, 176-8
46-51 thief, charm to punish, 181-2
outlaws, 1, 128-31 Thor, 78, 181-2
politeness rewarded, 69-70, 79-80 transformation, cow to island, 83-4;
priest, accursed, 136-9; dances in elf to woman, 43-51; elf to infant,
church, 194-5; expels trolls, 64—5, 25-31; leaves to gold, 86-7; man to
68-9; ignorant, 191-2; lays ghost, ogre, 78-9; man to whale, 42-3;
160-1; magic powers of, 10; outwits seal to woman, 100-2; troll to stone,
troll, 66-7; raises ghost, 158-9 81-4, 87-8
prophecy, 58, 92-3, 137, 174-8 treasures, 5; obtained by magic, 167—
quest to learn fear, 122-31 70; of elves, 22, 41-2, 47-8, 53-8; of
raising the dead, 9, 129-30, 143, 149- ghost, 120-2, 125-7; of troll, 86-7;
52, 176-8; see also Sendings underground, 92-4, 130, 183-5, 187;
riddle, 72; riddling reply, 92-3 underwater, 102-3, 169
sagas, 3, 7, 8, 11-13, 19, 40, 51-2, 60, trolls, 7, 64-91; abduct humans, 3, 5,
65, 87, 94, 104, 107, 131, 136, 148, 76-81; attack humans, 3, 5, 64-9,
152, 158, 177, 180, 184 71-5, 81-3; fear Christianity, 7,64—-5,
St John’s Eve, 176-8 67-9, 71, 78, 85, 87-8; fear daylight,
St Paul, 197 81-4, 88; friendly, 69-70, 80-1, 84-7;
St Peter, as creator, 190-1; as porter of live among rocks or mountains, 66—
Heaven, 197 70, 74, 76, 78-80, 84-8; live inside
seal-woman, 100-2 cliffs, 64-5, 71-2; man-eating, 66-7,
second sight, 10, 27, 31-2, 58-60, 71; turn to stone, 81-4, 88; wade
108-9, 161, 164, 192-3 through sea, 77, 83-4
Sendings, 8, 10, 143-7, 149-67; as bull, vapour, as plague, 161-2; as Sending,
162, 163-7; as fly, 156-60; as vapour, 153; as soul, 186
155, 165 verse, contest in, 69-70, 81-3; spoken
sister and brother contrasted, 22-3; by Devil, 195; by elf, 24, 27, 34, 40;
and sister contrasted, 55-6 by ghost, 105-6, 108, 110, 119, 134;
sitting out, 56-8, 176-8 by troll, 69, 72, 80, 82; used to lay
size changed at will, 25-6, 28, 155-6 ghost, 8, 10, 107
skin, used in magic, 167-9, 176-8, 180 Virgin Mary, 62-3, 198-9
sleep, caused by magic, 155-8 water horse, 96—100
snake, monstrous, 102—4 water snake, 102—4
Snorri Sturluson, 35, 89, 190 whale, supernatural, 42-3, 97
soul as breath, 196-9; as vapour, 186-8 witchcraft, 9-10, 46-51, 170-4, 180-1;
Sveinsson, E. Ól., 3, 7 see also magicians, black
i,
ra
9
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731. 184//
839.6 SIMPSON, JACQUELINE
Sim ICELANDIC FOLKTALES AND
LEGENDS
“|
LUDINGTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
Bryn Mawr, Pa. 19010

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Ludington Public | Jacqueline Simpson

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

The jacket design is based on the painting, ‘A nice bit of meat

1 The Hidden People

The Boy who Knew no Fear

7 God and the Devil

The folk legends of Iceland are too little known outside

Jon Arnason (1819-88) and his friend the Rev. Magnus

which they then serve to reinforce. This is very clear in

been strongly held in Iceland, and is characterized by the

ghosts, so common elsewhere, are comparatively rare in

bookish theories and the Continental ‘confessions’ based on

Magnusson’s Icelandic Legends and Craigie’s Scandinavian

collectors, educated men, but reared in this tradition, would

detail in the latter tale, which, though alien to the classic

The Origin of Elves (1)

J.A. 1 5 (Huldumannagenesis); current in many parts of Iceland.

tinguishable from human beings in appearance, and as having

The Origin of Elves (11)

band of fallen spirits, so it is not surprising that you cannot

The Elfin Fisherman

It is said that in the old days a farmer lived at Gotur in

J.A. I 6-7 (Sjómaðurinn á Götum); from Runófur Jónsson, from

The Elfin Woman in Childbirth

Away in the East Quarter—in Oddi, so it is said—a young

J.A. I 15-16, from the writings (c. 1830) of Olafur Sveinsson of

J.A. I 19-20. Skapti Sæmundsson lived from 1768 to 1821, and it

formant, he having heard the story from his grandmother when

Playing ‘Blind Beggar’

J.A. I 28-9 (‘Legg í lófa karls, karls’), from Olafur Sveinsson of

Lappa, the Elfin Cow

On a farm in the west, the cowman went out one winter

one, and it was commonly said of them that they were

The Changeling who Stretched

stretching and stretching himself, till he is touching the

JÁ. I 41-2 (Umskiptingurinn í Sogni), from Ragnheid and

‘Let Us Take Him!’

Two elfin women once went to a farm to leave a changeling

J.A. I 43-4; a tale common throughout Iceland. The protective

JÁ. I 44-5 (Barnsvaggan á Minni-Þverá), from an account written

Father of Eighteen Elves

J.A. I 42-3; a story common throughout Iceland. This is the wide-

huge porridge-stirrer is a popular motif in Norwegian variants,

The Child and the Elf- Woman

At Heidarbot in the district of Thingey, it happened one

disappeared, and she told him. So that evening, at about the

JÁ. I 48-9; a story current in Eyjafjörður. There are many

The Church Builder at Reynir

There once lived a certain farmer at Reynir in Myrdal. It

delays in getting timber, and now haymaking time had come

a Church: the Name of the Master Builder’. It is less common

The Girl at the Shieling

Next winter a man came to ask the hand of the priest’s

in their own quarters. He sees the taller lodger and the

JA. I 64-7, from Helga Benediktsdóttir (d. 1855). Two variants

The Red-Headed Whale

found, so his companions went home leaving matters as

from the cradle she flung it in through the church door,

Hild, Queen of the Elves

he had a housekeeper called Hild, and nobody knew any-