Episode 87 – Shotgun Wedding – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 87 Show Notes

Source: Danish Folklore

This week on MYTH, it’s a strange inversion of the more famous tale of The Little Mermaid. You’ll see that you shouldn’t trust strange mermen, that bells are more powerful than children, and that underwater houses are dope. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll learn why you shouldn’t piss off your She-Hulk wife. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 87, “Shotgun Wedding”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Way back in Episode 12, we covered the famous tale of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. What we didn’t cover back then was that Ariel was not Andersen’s first foray into stories about love and sea creatures. Four years earlier, he penned a stage play known as Agnete og Havmanden based on an existing Danish folk ballad (though it is also found in Sweden and Norway). The origins of the tale have been lost, though most scholars believe that this ballad is much later than typical Danish ballads (which began life as French folk songs in the 13th century), possibly as late as the 18th century. The version I’ll be using comes from a translation of Swedish author Helena Nyblom from 1910 as well as a translation of one of the older surviving ballads.
Hundreds of years ago, on a bright and lovely summer’s day, there stood a castle on an island in the middle of a lake. The world back then was as lovely as it is today (if not more so, truth be told). A clear blue sky arched over a verdant forest of deep greens and over lush meadows in a riot of colors. The red stone of the castle walls rose above it all, tall and sturdy, to a splendid golden roof glistening in the summer sunlight. Afternoon gave way to evening and then to twilight, and the dying sun shone like a burning ember on the golden roof of the castle, lighting up the cloudless sky like a golden sea. Not a soul could be seen throughout the serene, idyllic world. The only sound to break the tranquil silence was the soft song of a nightingale perched high in a lime tree growing in the castle’s gentle garden.
Into the serenity stepped a young girl from a door in the castle. In the ballad, this girl is a peasant standing on a bridge over the water rather than some form of nobility, but her name is the same in both: Agnete (or Agnes in some later versions). Agnete stepped carefully down the steep steps of the castle and out through the courtyard until she came to a small pier jutting out into the lake. There, the young woman plucked a blossom from the nearby lime tree, sat down, and stared out over the water to watch the last rays of the sun sink behind the forest.
In the traditional ballad, almost nothing is said of the heroine’s origins, but Nyblom fleshes her out quite a bit. She was the daughter of the lord of the red-walled castle, his only child and the sole bit of comfort he had in the world after the death of her mother many years earlier. After all, what’s a good folktale without a dead parent? In the ballad, her mother is alive and well as she makes an appearance later on, but that’s neither here nor there. For her part, Agnete felt stifled by her father, trapped in a gilded prison of red brick. She stared out over the lake, watching the flaming red ball of the sun sink into the water, and she wondered what life would be like in the magical kingdom of the clouds. She dreamed of a life of freedom, an existence of constant change in form and color and location every moment, rather than the completely and utterly predictable life her father planned for her.
Her peace was broken by unexpected movement from the water beneath her feet. The surface of the lake rippled as a strange form broke into the world from the depths. Agnete had never seen anyone like him before – part man, part fish, all beautiful as hell. Granted, she spent all of her time in an isolated existence without eligible men, but he was objectively foine. The ballad says his hair was like spun gold and his eyes sparkled delightfully. The young woman was fascinated by him but also startled and a little frightened by his unexpected entrance and strange appearance. She backed away from the end of the pier, on the verge of bolting for the safety of the castle.
He raised his hands to her in a gesture that clearly asked her to wait, that he meant no harm, and she paused. There was a look of profound sorrow on his face that touched her soul and made her hesitate. “Who are you, stranger? How did you get here? I thought I was alone out here.” The merman (because that’s what he was) smiled a mysterious smile, but said nothing. His eyes held her gaze, big and liquid and sad, captivating her soul and holding her there on the knife’s edge between staying and leaving. “Answer me! Who are you? Are you in trouble? If there’s something I can do to help, I will gladly do so; and if I can’t, maybe my father can. He’s a powerful man.”
At last, the stranger spoke. “Your father cannot help me. You and you alone can bring me peace and happiness.” His voice was gentle as a summer breeze rustling in the sails of a ship on the open ocean, and again he made a slow gesture of supplication, begging her not to leave. Still she hesitated, frozen by his silent pleading and his alien beauty. His wet hair draped in golden curls around the most beautiful face she had ever seen, right down to the strange smile on his soft purple lips. Most of all, she was captivated by his eyes. Agnete had never known that someone’s face could express such a complicated mingling of tenderness and sorrow. They were as deep and powerful as the lake itself, the vast expanse of water that had so often captivated her soul: dark and mysterious and unfathomable one moment, bright and sparkling and gorgeous the next. She found herself walking back towards the water until her feet stopped on the stones farthest out in the water of the lake. A third time, she asked ‘tell me who you are.’
The strange merman took a deep breath. “I am a king beneath the sea and have lived for hundreds of years beneath the surface of this lake. Before even the foundations of your castle had been laid, this was my home and my kingdom. Once, the land around my watery home was wide and open, but the brush grew up into a forest before my eyes. I watched as humans cut back the forest and my lake began to shrink, as all natural things do when the humans arrive. Even diminished as it is, there is no lake in the whole wide world as beautiful as mine, as still and as deep and as peaceful as this.”
Agnete looked into the depths of the shimmering waves of the lake in wonder. “Is it not strange and frightening down there among the reeds and the seaweed and the creatures of the deep?” She shivered a little at the thought. The sea king laughed gently. “You humans always think any place besides your own is dark and terrible. My home is beautiful, far more wondrous than anything to be found up on the surface world. The sun shines bright through the glittering water but does not burn. When terrible storms ravage the lands and shake your cold stone castles, they barely touch the tranquility at the bottom of the lake.” He shook his head with a touch of melancholy. “I can describe my realm with all the eloquence I can find and still it would barely touch on the true beauty to be found there. I can’t describe even a fraction of what you would see down there.” Basically, darling it’s better down where it’s wetter, take it from the sea king.
Agnete considered his words. “You make it sound enchanting, but it’s impossible. Humans cannot live at the bottom of the lake.” Even so, she took another step towards the water, her toes just above the surface. “You only think that because you have never tried. I can easily take you down to see the lake’s splendors without harm if you wanted. I would love to show you wonders beyond anything you’ve ever dreamt of.” He laid a hand gently on her pearly shoes, his eyes hopeful and pleading. A part of Agnete’s heart longed to accept, but she wasn’t ready to leave everything behind. “I couldn’t abandon my father like that. If I disappeared, he would be worried sick and would go out searching for me. He would be heartbroken. So I’m sorry, but I can’t.” She glanced up at the darkening sky. “I think I should go back home before dark. Good night, sea king.”
“Wait, please!” The merman’s voice quavered with a deep ache. “Please don’t leave me like this. Am I supposed to return to my aquatic realm as lonely as I was when I arrived? At least give me a token, a keepsake from your hand to remember our time by. Would you give me that lime tree blossom in your hand? As long as its intoxicating fragrance lasts, I can remember tonight and imagine you are with me.” This dude is being more than a little bit of a creeper here. You’ve known this girl for like all of five minutes my guy, so dial it back a little.
Agnete was a gentle-hearted soul and a flower blossom seemed a small enough thing to ask, so she saw no reason to refuse the merman. She leaned down towards the water, hand outstretched to the sea king. “I will gladly give you what you ask. Here, take it.” Smiling, he did so. He reached up from the lake, water droplets glinting red in the setting sun, and took her reaching hand with the lime blossom in it. Instead of taking the proffered flower, he pulled Agnete towards him and grabbed her waist, pulling her off the rock and into the water. She screamed in surprise and fear, but the sea king paid her terror no heed as he dragged her down into the watery depths. As she vanished with a small splash, the sun dropped below the horizon leaving a quiet, empty night behind. Agnete was gone.
In the ballad version, the sea king asks Agnete to be his beloved much as he does here, but that Agnete agrees to go with him willingly. He uses his power to stop her ears and close her mouth to protect her from the watery deep. In both versions, the result is the same (although the moral implications are much more disturbing in this telling) though the ballad skips over some of the details.
As you might expect, the sudden disappearance of the castle lord’s only child was quickly noticed and the alarm was immediately sounded. Her father was horrified by her unexplained absence. He gathered up a search party of servants and set out to comb the park and surrounding countryside. They even ventured into the depths of the old growth forest to look for the old knight’s missing daughter but to no avail. She seemed to have simply vanished into thin air until a young boy was wandering by the lake and found a pair of pearl shoes lying under the stones of the pier. The old man knew those shoes and he feared what they must mean. The castle focused its search on the lake; they were no longer looking for the girl but for her bloated, drowned body floating among the reeds. Even this dark, macabre wish went unfulfilled as no trace of Agnete was ever found. Her father was left alone with his hollow ache.
Years went by, taking their toll on those living in the castle. The time lay heaviest on the lord of the castle, aging him far beyond his years and leaving him listless and disengaged. He stopped caring about anything, spending his time wandering along the lake and up and down the pier. When the sun rode high in the cloudless sky, he peered down into the depths of the lake hoping to see…he wasn’t even sure. Some nights, he stayed out there all night, flitting like a shadow under the pale light of the moon. His daughter was gone, but it was the lord who haunted the grounds, thin and pale.
As you probably guessed, Agnete didn’t drown. She’d been dragged down into the depths, far from the light and the sweet, sweet air sure, but the sea king was powerful. She found that she was able to live just fine in the depths of the lake (though she did sometimes miss the surface). She had been utterly terrified when the sea king, you know, kidnapped her and pulled her into an alien aquatic world; her fear disappeared as they reached the lake bed. For one, the sea king himself became somehow sexier and sexier the deeper they went. He’d been pretty damned foine to start with, so he was now drool-worthy. For another, he had not oversold the beauty of his underwater kingdom.
This far down, breaking waves sounded more like delicate harp music, more enchanting than anything Agnete had ever heard. The glimmering moon rising over the water shimmered like the purest silver. When the sun rose again in the morning, a riot of colors exploded throughout the world. Blue sparks glittered through a world limned in fiery gold and burning turquoise. As the day went on, gold gave way to flowing lilac like summer clouds blowing through the sky. Far from being miserable, Agnete was surprised to find herself happy beneath the lake with the sea king. Once she had, you know, processed the trauma of being straight up fucking kidnapped.
She wandered through the aqueous gardens full of strange flowers, picking those that seemed most beautiful to craft herself a crown. They had a captivatingly alien beauty, but she was disappointed to find that they had no fragrance (what with being underwater and all). Still, that was a small price to pay for the magical sight of fish darting above her head in flashes of ruby and silver and gold like strange metallic birds. And still there was more for her to discover.
He led her to his crystalline palace at the heart of a deep green valley. “This is my great hall, where you and I will celebrate our coming wedding.” Agnete stared in awe at the marvels around her. A great golden lamp shone brightly in the heart of a crystal dome high overhead. It was only upon a second, closer look that she realized she was seeing the sun blazing down through the water to refract throughout the rainbow-hued hall. She was utterly captivated by the sight. The sea king smiled to see her wonderment and reached for his harp. “And now, I shall play for you.”
From the first liquid note from the merman’s graceful fingers, Agnete thought her heart would break from the sheer beauty. Her soul vibrated to the unearthly music, so hauntingly lovely that it bordered on pain and her eyes filled with tears at the agony and the ecstasy. And then the king began to sing.
All was forgotten as she lost herself in rapture, even her own sorrow and pain and joy. Gone was her father in his red-stoned castle and likewise her happy childhood in the garden. Lost was the love of her father and the cherished memory of her mother. She forgot that she had ever lived above the waves or looked up at the night sky overhead. She forgot the sweet smell of summer roses blossoming in the castle garden and the shivering thrill of catching a snowflake on her tongue and the quiet peace of incense wafting through the airy halls of the church. Nothing existed but her and the king and their underwater paradise. She longed for nothing in the world but to be at her king’s side for the rest of her life, listening to him play his sweet music. It sounds a lot like this magical fish-man put his kidnapping victim under some kind of magical mind control. Gross.
When he had finished playing, he looked at his beloved (who was utterly bewitched by his spell). “Come, my love. You shall be my queen and rule with me forever and ever. Do you wish for that, my dear Agnete?” Having had literally every memory of anything but that possibility plucked right out of her brain, she could not conceive of wanting anything else. “Yes, yes! Make me your queen!” And so the sea king made her a crown of white water lilies and set it on her head himself. From that moment on, she was the queen of the underwater kingdom.
As she settled into her new life as queen, she explored her new kingdom. As it turned out, it was much larger than she had first thought. I mean, there’s a reason we’re calling him ‘the sea king’ and not ‘the lake king’. This particular lake was the headwater of a rushing river that led all the way to the vast ocean, and all of it was their domain. Joy thrilled through both their veins as he took Agnete by the waist and together they glided along the underwater currents to the infinite expanse of the sea. All of it was hers and she could go anywhere she fancied. Except the surface. She definitely couldn’t go to the surface. Ever. The sea king feared that if she saw the dry world above, she would remember everything that she had left behind (or more accurately, had stolen away from her) and long to return home.
Again, in the ballad version, none of this mental whammy bullshit is necessary. That Agnete went to the undersea kingdom to be bride and queen of her own free will without need for magical music. In both stories, the couple spent the next seven years together in wedded bliss and the rest plays out about the same. Seven-ish, maybe eight years. In that time, she gave birth to seven sons. All seven bore a strong resemblance to their father, with golden curls and big, dark eyes, even the babe still sleeping in his cradle.
On one morning, just like every morning for the last seven odd years, Agnete was singing to her youngest in his reed cradle. The other children were outside playing in the undersea currents and waves. This particular morning happened to be a Sunday, not that she knew what day it was since all of the days rolled together down here. Something caught Agnete’s attention, a low, deep sound that tolled through the deep in pulsing waves. The sound touched her soul and set it vibrating with something low and sad that she couldn’t quite remember. Bells. She looked up towards the distant source far above. She knew that sound, the deep mournful toll of the church bells. On this day, she was in the right place at the right time to actually hear the bells for the first time in seven years. “I’ve heard those before, but…when? Where?”
Unbidden, an image rose in her mind of the church she had attended throughout her life on the surface. She could see the towering arches lit by flickering candles on the altar echoing with the melodious tones of the organ. A deep well of melancholy and longing sprung up in her soul and she sighed deeply. Agnete left the cradle and the children to go and speak to her husband, the sea king.
“My husband, I wish to go and visit the church above once more. It has been such a long, long time since I’ve been there. Please, please let me go!” The merman stared at his queen in sudden alarm. How had she suddenly regained her lost memories of her former life? He’d been so careful. “You…you want to go to church? Why now? Why today?” She shook her head. “My soul aches for it, with a terrible longing I don’t entirely understand. I think I might die if you don’t let me go.” She didn’t mean that as an exaggeration, and the sea king knew it.
“I…fine. If you need to go see the church, then you may go. But…promise me that you’ll return? By sundown? Your children and I will all be waiting for you.” Agnete smiled gently at her husband. “Of course I’ll return, silly. Do you think I could really find happiness without you, without the children, without the youngest still sleeping soundly in his cradle?” During their conversation, the merman had smoothly maneuvered them back to the children and the cradle. With a small smile, Agnete leaned down and kissed the sleeping babe’s head gently. I don’t know what he’s so worried about. It’s not like he kidnapped her from her home and then wiped all of her memories of her previous life to chain her to a marriage she had never actually chosen. Oh right, the sea king’s an asshole. Yeah, he probably should be worried.
Trepidatiously, he led his wife up to the surface, shooting out of the deep like an arrow loosed from a bow. When they breached the waves, he carefully lifted Agnete out of the water and sat her on the stone pier outside the castle that had been her home. With one last sorrowful look, the merman dove into the ocean depths again, leaving Agnete alone with the surface world.
It was…overwhelming. Her head was spinning with the mixture of alien and familiar flooding through her. She definitely didn’t remember any of this, and yet her soul screamed out that yes she fucking did. The sun, so much stronger up here than she was used to, blinded her and she had to shade her eyes from its harsh glare. The riot of bright colors and powerful smells was too much for a long, dizzying moment. When her head finally cleared, she looked again and this time, she recognized her father’s castle, its red stones towering above the garden. It was as tall and strong as it had been when she’d been taken and the smells of the garden, the delicate mixture of roses and lime blossoms, were just as she remembered. Swallows chirped as they swooped and dove through the air, high tones ringing above the deep song of the bells. The church doors stood open beckoning her. Agnete answered, running to them as fast as she could.
The service had already begun and the room was filled with people kneeling and praying. In their midst knelt an old man dressed in the fine garb of a knight. His beard, long and white, trailed away from where his face was buried in his hands. She knew him. He was older and far more careworn than in her memories, but she was certain that this was her father. Tears streamed down his hands and his chest hitched with the sobs he was trying and failing to subdue. As more of her memories flooded back, she realized that she must be the reason for his tears. She’d vanished without a trace for years and years and hadn’t even thought about him again, much less sent him a message. It was too much. It was all far too much. Agnete dropped to her knees at the back of the church, weeping with seven years of accumulated pain.
The service seemed to drag on forever. Clouds of incense filled the church with fragrant smoke as the candles on the altar burned low. The rumbling music of the organ rose in a glorious crescendo, building towards the finale of the song filling the world. Then, as if a cloud had passed over the sun, everything went dark. Agnete could see the figures of the saints in the stained glass turned away, refusing to look at what was happening. She felt a draft and realized that the doors had opened. She turned and saw the sea king standing there. “Agnete – my beloved – you have been gone so very long. Come back with me.”
She did not answer, and her feet did not move. She buried her face in her hands to avoid meeting his gaze. The sea king gently touched her shoulder, and a shiver of terror and longing ran through her. She still refused to look at him. “Agnete, please.” His voice was so soft and sad that she could hardly stand to listen. Her heart was breaking, torn between two worlds. “The little one in the cradle is crying because he cannot see you. Come back to us. Please.” And that sucks because none of this is the fault of the children. They’re innocent pawns in this ugly business.
At this, Agnete finally lifted her face and met her husband’s gaze. Her face had gone pale (even paler than seven years without much sun had left her), the pain in her soul obvious, but her voice was clear and strong. “They shall wait in vain. You can wait with them for as long as you like, for the rest of time for all I care. I’m not going back. Nothing you say can make me return to your realm, not even for them. Now go. Leave me be and never return!” And she turned her back on him.
The sea king sighed so deeply and with such bone-deep sorrow that the candles flickered and the stones shook. “Agnete, look at me. Please?” His pleading had no effect on her. She did not turn back around. Instead, she knelt down on the spot and stayed there, as still as a statue. Realizing that it was beyond all hope, the sea king turned away slowly and left the church. Agnete felt another cold draft on her skin as the door opened and then closed. When she looked up again, he was gone and the saints were once more beaming down on the church from their rainbow-hued windows. The sun shone down as brightly as it had ever done, filling the church with warmth and light as everyone stood to leave.
Agnete stayed where she was, rooted to her spot near the entrance until her father shuffled towards the door on his ragged, weary way home. He stopped dead as his gaze fell upon her and he stared at her as though she were a ghost come back to haunt him for his failures. Given her long, unexplained absence and her incredibly pale complexion, that’s not an unreasonable assumption, honestly. It makes at least as much sense as her being kidnapped and mind wiped by a merman. “Agnete?” With a sob, she rushed to her father and threw her arms around his neck in a huge bear hug (and if you’re a fan of the Film Reroll podcast, you’ll know why my first thought there was ‘arms and legs’).
He hugged her back fiercely, weeping openly. “My daughter, is it really you?” She laughed through her sobs. “It’s really me. I’m sorry I was gone so long. I was living in the castle of the sea king beneath the waves, but I have finally found my way back home and I will never leave again. I’m staying very firmly on dry land from now on.” He laughed with her and, hand in hand, they walked together out into the warm sunshine towards the castle.
I do feel bad for the children, who didn’t ask for any of this, but I can hardly blame Agnete for not wanting to return to her captivity after finally regaining her lost memories. Her staunch unwillingness to be moved by the sea king’s blatant attempt to manipulate her maternal feelings stands in sharp contrast with the heroines of most traditional Danish ballads – at least, those that feature a woman being seduced by a supernatural being, of which there are quite a few. Given how late this one came into existence, it’s entirely possible that this inversion of traditional tropes is deliberate, as is the sea king’s powerlessness in the face of her strong will (which is utterly different from his strong-arm tactics at the beginning of the tale). It’s also likely that the conflict between Christian and earlier pagan forces in the tale is an original part of the story rather than something grafted on later as is often the case. And so, with Agnete finally free of her kidnapper, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s would-be wedding crashers are the hulder-folk.
Many of the most popular tales of the hulder-folk center around an inhumanly beautiful woman, known as a huldra. Simon Hughes of the Folklore Thursday website did a fantastic job of compiling hulder stories and will be used as the primary source here. As we just saw in the main story, tales of inhumanly beautiful men, known as hulderkall, were also told. The hulder-folk are one of the hidden people of Norwegian folklore much like the fey or the kitsune and, as that comparison might make you think, they are absolutely trickster figures. The common thread in most tales of the hulder-folk is a central theme of kidnapping. Stories exist of them taking children, young women and men, and at times even older adults. In some stories, the motives behind these body-snatchings are made readily apparent in the tale (often marriage), but other tales seem to have no motive at all beyond pure mischief.
When children are taken, a baby from the hulder-folk is left in its place (a variety of changeling). No real explanation for this odd habit is typically given although given their description of big-headed children who never stop screaming, eyes red from their constant crying, maybe it’s not so hard to guess. These tend to be less stories than anecdotes, an explanation offered for a particularly difficult child. More common are tales of the hulder-folk tricking good Christian people into marriage like the sea king did to poor Agnete. His approach was a bit more direct that many of the hulder-folk though no less shitty and creepy. In one tale, the hulderkall enchants the young women into believing that she is marrying her sweetheart and uses some shapeshifting to keep her from suspecting who she’s really marrying. Fortunately, the young woman’s dog smells something fishy and goes to fetch the real sweetheart before the marriage can be completed. Other stories have the hulderkall stalking the girl he’s infatuated with and offering her gifts each night despite her utter lack of interest in the creeper.
Many stories exist of young men captivated by a huldra; sometimes they know exactly who she is and others they are magically bamboozled. In the former, the young man in question often stumbles across a huldra and is smitten by her incredible beauty, certain that she would never stoop to marry someone as common as himself. A version of this tale is recounted in An Evening Hour in the District Governor’s Kitchen by Peter Christen Asbjornsen that is fairly typical of this type and serves as a good sample.
Once, many years ago, there lived a prosperous family who had a son. The handsome young lad had grown up to be a dragoon, a cavalry officer, and had heard that the hulder-folk often moved into the mountain cabins when their human occupants left for the winter. He decided he was curious to see these strange creatures borrowing his home and so he dressed himself in his full uniform and headed up the mountain that autumn. As he rode up to the pasture near the cabin, he felt such an unusual heat for the late fall that he knew the hulder-folk must already be in residence.
Tying his horse to a stump, he drew one of his pistols and crept up to the window to peek inside. There, he saw an old man and an old woman, so worn and wrinkled with age that he thought he had never seen anything as hideously ugly as these two creatures in all his life. However, the young woman who sat inside with them was every bit as unbelievably beautiful as they were ugly. He felt his breath catch and he thought that he would die if he did not have her as his bride. All of them, including the young woman, had cow tails (a common attribute of the hulder-folk in many tails, though sometimes it is a fox’s tail instead of a cow’s).
The dragoon took a direct soldier’s approach and kicked open the door. With a loud battle cry, he fired his pistol directly over the young girl’s head, scaring her so badly that she tripped and tumbled to the floor. Yeah, he’s definitely the asshole of this story. When she looked up again after her fright and fall, the ethereal beauty was gone replaced by the hideous ugliness of her folks. The old man looked at the dragoon who had broke in and fired a fucking weapon inside the home. “You wanted her, so now she’s yours.” The dragoon was no longer at all sure that he wanted this woman (because when her beauty is literally the only thing you know about her, it’s not like you can have a deep emotional connection) but he was unable to move even a step forwards or backwards.
The old man helped his daughter wash her face, molding it back into something more human. Together, they were able to reshape her face back into something plain, though they were not able to recapture the impossible beauty (much to the dragoon’s chagrin). Her cow’s tail was tucked away discreetly, leaving her human-looking enough to go out into the world. “She’s yours now, young man. Put her up on your saddle and take her into the village and marry her. Set us a place in the pantry of the pasture cabin for we don’t want to mingle with the human wedding guests (and you don’t want that either, I’m guessing). When the toast is held, you may come and see to us.”
The dragoon realized he had demanded this literally at gunpoint so there was no backing out now. He decided that it was best to make a life with the woman he had kind-of kidnapped so he did as he was told. As requested, he checked on the pantry at the toast but saw nothing unusual. After the wedding was over and the guests had gone home however, he found that the pantry was now filled with silver and gold, more money than he had ever seen before. This trend continued for the next several years. Every time they threw a party, they set a place for her folk in the pantry and, when the festivities were over, it was full of more money than he knew what to do with. Unfortunately, the dragoon was still the shallow dick who had kidnapped a beautiful stranger at gunpoint and then tried to change his mind when she wasn’t as beautiful as he thought. Endless easy money wasn’t enough apparently and he resented his wife’s plainness (or ugliness depending on the tale). He grew resentful, and he took to pushing and even hitting her for petty squabbles. Yeah, fuck this guy. But don’t worry, the story’s not over yet.
One fall, as the frost was just setting in, they had decided to ride into town. He wanted to reshoe the horse before they left to make sure the horse wouldn’t slip on the journey. He had some skill with the art of blacksmithing and so he went to his forge to make one himself. He made a shoe and put it up to the horse’s foot, but it was too large. With a sigh, he went back and tried again. The next was far too small. He tried again and again but, each time, it was the wrong size. Day had passed into evening and on towards night. His wife sighed. “Seriously, can’t you even get this right? You’re not much of a lover but you’re somehow even clumsier as a smith. Alright, fuck it. I’ll get the horse shoed.”
The huldra went down to the forge, picked up the iron horseshoe in her fists and straighten it out with her bare fucking hands. Oh, didn’t I mention? Hulder-folk are sometimes said to have the strength of 10 men. Making sure her husband was watching carefully, she then deliberately bent the shoe to the shape she wanted using nothing but her bare hands. Under her incredible strength, it twisted as easily as a paperclip and fit the horse perfectly. The dragoon swallowed nervously. “Uh, cool. Aren’t you going to be a little stiff in the fingers tomorrow?” “You think so? I wonder how I would fare if you were as stiff in your fingers but don’t worry. I like you just enough to not want to use my powers on you. Make sure that doesn’t change.” I think she’s just warning him that she could twist him up like a pretzel if she wanted but the first time I read this, I read it as her wondering what she could do to his penis the next time it was in her fingers if she wanted. Either way, the threat worked wonders. From that day on, he became a much more docile and doting husband.
It wasn’t always about sex with the hulder-folk. At times, they could be downright practical. There is a tale from A Night in the Northern Mark about a man who falls through the floor of his barn into a secret home underground that was wrought entirely of gold and silver. Of course, it was hard to appreciate the craftsmanship through all of the cowshit. The man’s barn was located directly above their dining room and, after they pointedly offer the farmer a meal at the shit-stained table, he agrees to move the barn. In return, he is blessed by help and protection from his appreciative invisible neighbors.
Most of the time, the kidnappings were a bad thing (as you might expect) and so there were of course all kinds of methods for getting rid of them, ranging from the mildly annoying to the holy shit variety. For changeling children, the approved method was to take them out three Thursdays in a row and either whip them bloody or burn their noses with red hot fire tongs. That’s the ‘holy shit, you’re really going to do that to a fucking child’ end of the scale. On the other end, getting rid of adults was a lot less traumatic and ranged from throwing sulfur on the bed to firing a shot over the top of the cabin to startle the disguised hulder-folk into losing the shapeshift. If you’re actually kidnapped, invoking Christian prayer was said to be able to return you safely (although at least one case exists where hulder-folk kidnapped a Christian man specifically to have him steal blessed food for them since they couldn’t touch it). And of course, as we saw with Agnete, the ringing of church bells is said to be able to cut through the enchantments.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
Next time, we’re going to swing back to the islands to catch up with an old friend – Maui. You’ll discover that birds know some hot secrets, that throwing a god is rewarding, and that Maui’s curiosity is a force to be reckoned with. Then, in Gods and Monsters, it’s the terrible origins of man’s best friend. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.