Norwegische Volksmährchen II

Deep in the shadowed forests and along the mist-shrouded fjords of Norway, ancient beings still walk. Trolls blunder through mountain passes. The huldra lures wanderers with her cowtail hidden beneath her skirts. The nøkken rises from silver lakes, his violin singing songs too beautiful to resist. This second volume gathers Norwegian folktales preserved through generations of oral storytelling before Asbjørnsen committed them to paper in the 1840s. Here are stories of clever peasants who outwit supernatural foes, of transformations and bargains, of simple folk who stumble into the hidden folk's realm and return changed forever. These are not gentle fairy tales but something older and stranger: stories that remember when Norway was a place where the boundary between human world and otherworld wore thin at dusk, in deep snow, by still water. For readers who have ever felt the pull of the north, these tales offer pure, uncaged magic.