Troll Revels

OLD GYÐJA GOT LEFT BEHIND. Everyone else in Trøllanes piled onto sleighs or sledges and fled the doomed town, but the old woman’s temper had burst all bounds. Every year she argued the townsfolk should stay and fight off the invasion and every year her sons bundled her onto a sleigh against her will, off to refuge in Mikladalur.

Well, not this year. Her sons had not returned from their midwinter hunt in time, and no one else wanted to risk her wrath.

So here she stood in the doorway of her cabin, the only soul left in Trøllanes on the eve of Twelfth Night. Regret for her rashness crept down her spine like icicles.

detail from “Rückkehr Vom Wald,” 1890, by Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899)

Midwinter in the Faeroe Islands meant overlong night-time hours and only fleeting brightness near noon. The sun had already set. Dusk swept the icy landscape.

Shadows moved, dark against the snow.

Gyðja stepped out into the courtyard, looked in all directions – and saw countless moving forms, hunched, swaggering, all coming on straight for the village.

The old woman fled back indoors. She barred the door, shuttered windows, and huddled near the woodstove, shaking with cold and terror.

Soon she heard scuffling and tromping in the courtyard, then a rattling of the latch. Gruff voices called and answered. Rough laughter sounded from all quarters.

Now someone pounded at the door until the walls shook. The bars rattled loose from their brackets and clattered to the floor. The door latch lifted.

Gyðja stifled a shriek and dove beneath the table, hoping not to be seen.

The door slammed open. Footsteps came in. More and more, like a flock of sheep crowding into a fold. But those weren’t sheep hooves she saw. Troll feet stomping to troll music. Trolls prancing around, bashing into furniture, knocking bowls and cups to the floor and trampling them to bits.

Every house in the village, Gyðja knew, shook with the tramping and clamor of trolls, corrupting the sanctity of the holy day like they did every year. Trøllanes was cursed in name and in fact!

The old woman clapped hands over ears. She bit her lip to stifle the screams that tried to burst forth.

Toe-claws gouged the floor. Hairy tail-tips whipped past. The wild abandon reached a frenzy. Hulking bodies slammed the table. It reared, about to reveal the huddled human beneath.

The old woman shrieked, “Jesus have mercy on me!*”

That hated name – a blessing to Christians, a cursing to troll-folk – shattered the revelry, splintered the crowd. They peeled away, spilled out the doors and windows. One monstrous voice howled, “Gyðja broke up the dance!*”

The old woman crawled out of hiding and edged through debris to the door.

From every cabin, misshapen forms hopped and trundled and galloped, fleeing town.

“Laplanders in Snowstorm,” 1905, by John Bauer (1882-1918)

A few days later, the first wary townsman came scouting and found Trøllanes vacated. When Old Gyðja stepped into view, he startled and crossed himself. “We thought you were surely dead!”

The old woman chuckled, pointing to clawed footprints in the snow. “I was too much for them!”

The trolls have not disturbed Trøllanes ever since.

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* lines straight from the folktale, from Kalsoy in the Faeroe Islands

text: © 2022 Joyce Holt

artwork: 19th and early 20th century paintings. Public domain info here.

Ribbons

KNUT AMBLED DOWN THE STEEP PASTURE SLOPES, fiddle case tucked under one arm.  Sunlight spilled over the eastern ridge.  Morning breezes wafted with the scent of juniper and spruce, with the barest whiff of manure.

Tov caught up, grinning.  “One last kiss,” he boasted.

“If her father finds out, you’ll be wed before harvest,” Knut said, punching his friend’s shoulder.

“We did nothing but dance.  I have blistered feet to prove it.”

“Didn’t you get tired of the same old tunes all night?  I did.  I have blistered fingers to prove it.”  Knut waggled his free hand.

Tov shrugged.  “Familiar tunes, familiar steps, fast and frenzied, the way we all like it.”

“Ah yes.  Your feet do the dancing, freeing up mind and heart for the flirting.” 

Tov yawned.  “After a night like that, I could sleep all day.”

“Should have left before cockcrow, like the other guys did.”

“Listen to the cows low!  The girls will fall asleep at their milking.” 

“What a gallant beau you are, to leave at first sign of chores!”

“Edge of the Spruce Forest,” 1881, by Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926)

The path left the high mountain farm of Svinøkslid and plunged into thick spruce forest below.  Morning dimmed to mystical twilight.

“Look!” Tov said.  “Night settles again.  I’ll just settle me under a tree, snatch a short nap.  Go on without me.”

“No you don’t!  You’ll be sneaking back to Svinøkslid and—”  Knut broke off and halted. 

The keening notes of a fiddle floated through the cool, tangy air.  Knut swung about, straining to get a fix on the direction. 

Ah.  Uphill – but not toward the farm.  Up opposite slopes toward wild terrain too rough for cattle, unbroken by paths, cloaked in towering evergreens.

“Stones in the Forest,” 1860, by Ivan Shishkin (1832-1989)

“What’s that melody?” Tov asked, voice hushed.

The tune swirled in and out and around itself, ribbons of music tangling in the wind.

“I’ve never heard anyone play like that!” Knut whispered, entranced.  His fingers twitched, yearning to catch the melody and sing it on his own strings.

The haunting song swelled.  It wrapped like a serpent around the two young men, pinned them motionless on the path. 

Twilight deepened.  Or had their eyes simply ceased to catch light?

No breeze stirred.  Or had their skin fallen senseless?

No sense remained but that of hearing.

Buried in the unearthly tones, Knut heard a scuffling.  He felt a jostling.  His own feet, dancing in the dark, keeping time with the skirling, magical music.  Enchantment! he realized with a jolt.

“Tussar!” he blurted.

Light returned.  Wind whispered across his cheek.  Chaff settled.  Knut looked down at the path, where his feet and Tov’s had stirred the dirt into a dust bath.  How long had the music bewitched them?

“What?” Tov croaked, blinking.

“Tussar-folk.  Tussar-music.  Elf magic.”  Relief washed through Knut, but also despair.  He’d silenced the glorious melody.  He dashed uphill, the direction he’d fixed, but found no sign of any creature.  Impenetrable forest soon barred his way.

Ever after, elven music wound its tendrils through the dreams of two lucky – unlucky? – fellows.

“The Path in the Forest,” by Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898)

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Folktale from Svinøkslid farm, as found in “Tussar og Trolldom,” a collection of folklore local to Telemark, Norway. This source also says (translated by author Joyce Holt):

“Tusse-slaatten is the name of a melody which was played on a fiddle; it’s a mixture of gangar and springar. In the old days around Brekke farm they once heard tussar-folk play and dance this tune.  When they danced downhill, the tune was springar, and when they dance over the level or uphill, it was gangar.”

Gangar is an even two-beat pattern, for a dance at an even walking pace; springar has a syncopated three-beat pattern, with dancers slightly dipping on the second beat and springing up on the third.

text: © 2021 Joyce Holt

artwork: 19th century painting: in the public domain, according to these sources:

wikiart: “This artwork is in public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 70 years or less.”

wikipedia: “This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer.”

{{PD-US-expired}} : published anywhere (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before 1926 and public domain in the U.S.