Episode 148 – The Giant Brothers – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 148 Show Notes

Source: Sami Folklore

This week on MYTH, we’re traveling to the snowy north for stories from the Sami people. You’ll see that you should always watch where you’re stepping, that giants sleep very soundly, and that all you have to do to get treasure is ask for it. Then, in Gods and Monsters, a young man will learn why you shouldn’t mock the sky. 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 148, “The Giant Brothers”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
This week, we’re venturing into the folklore of a people we haven’t met yet – the Sami peoples, who are indigenous to Sapmi, or what is today Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. This region was once known as Lapland in English, and the people were called Laplanders or Lapps but, as you might guess, these terms were invented by the English and are considered offensive, so we’ll be using Sami throughout. Our main tale comes once again from Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books, published between 1889 and 1913.
“Mother, I have seen such an incredible man!” said a little boy as he came in from the cold. He had been sent out to gather sticks for the fire and had only now returned to his home in Sapmi. That was a somewhat unusual thing but not immediately concerning – there were a lot of interesting people living in the area so his mother smiled indulgently. “Have you now? And what was this incredible man like, my son?” She took off the boy’s sheepskin coat and shook out the loose snow on the doorstep.
“Uh huh. I’d been looking for sticks forever and was getting tired, so I leaned against a tree to rest for a bit. All of a sudden, I heard a soft ‘sh-sh-sh’ noise through the dead leaves from somewhere in the brush. I froze, afraid that a wolf had snuck up on me or something, but it wasn’t a wolf at all! No, it was a man, but a big man – twice as tall as father – with a long red beard and a red tunic tied by a silver girdle. A silver-handled knife hung from his waist and a huuuuuge dog followed along with him. It was bigger and stronger looking than any wolf I’ve ever seen, maybe even any bear! Uh, mom? What’s wrong? Why are you so pale all of a sudden?”
Indeed, his mother had gone deathly pale, all the blood draining from her face in shock and horror. “That…that was the Stalo, my son – Stalo the man-eater! You were right to hide like you did or you might never have come back to me at all. If you ever run into him again, be careful. He’s very tall and very strong, but he’s not at all bright. Many Sami have escaped his clutches by playing some clever trick on him. You can’t outfight Stalo, so you have to outthink him.”
The woman was even more grateful for her son’s good instincts when, not long after this conversation, rumors began to be whispered around town that old man Patto’s children had vanished. They had simply disappeared without a trace. Their devastated father had searched the country around his home for many, many miles, but all in vain. He had not found so much as a dropped handkerchief, a footprint, even a drop of blood to say where they had gone or what had happened. That is, until another little boy mentioned seeing a giant of a man with a red beard and a red tunic lurking around behind the well where Patto’s children had often played. The boy had been terrified of the stranger and had hidden in the bushes, which proved wise. He had seen the Stalo laying a clever trap along the path to the well; anyone unfortunate enough to stumble into it would be rolled into the water and trapped there until they drowned. Or were fished out by someone – like, say, a giant with a taste for human flesh.
As he watched, the little boy had seen Patto’s youngest daughter go skipping down that very same path. Too afraid to do anything but look on in silence, he saw her foot get caught in the tripwire stretched across the path at the steepest point. She stumbled and fell, slipping down the hill and into the well. She had flailed and cried and found herself within reach of a smiling Stalo. And then she was gone. When Patto heard the little boy’s story, he was scared, sad, and angry. Very, very angry.
Vowing vengeance against the thing that had stolen his daughter from him, had stolen and eaten all his children, the man snatched his heavy fur coat off the hook by the door and stormed out towards the forest. He found the worn path to the well and spied the hard-to-see snare stretching across it. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he climbed into the well, pretending that he had been caught in the snare and rolled down the hill. Patto was careful to keep his head above the water though, and his wits about him. Treading water, he waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. Very soon, he heard the ‘sh-sh-sh’ of something moving through the dead leaves. Quietly, Patto allowed himself to float, pretending to have drowned in the well. As Stalo pushed out of the forest to check his trap and see if he had caught dinner, he saw the still form of the old man. He laughed, loud and ugly. “This time I went and caught an old jackass! Ha ha! Wonder if he’ll taste as good as his kid.” Pulling the limp Patto out of the water, Stalo slung him across his shoulders and carried him home.
Stalo stripped the corpse, dropping Patto’s wet clothes in a heap on the floor. Then he tied the naked man up with a cord and hung him over the fire to roast. Luckily for the not-actually-dead man, the cord was just intended to hold a lifeless body, so it wasn’t hard for a living man to escape. As soon as Stalo was busy elsewhere, Patto did exactly that. The giant meanwhile was busy building a box intended to hold the cooked meat when it was done. He was working out in the yard to avoid getting wood chips all over his floor. Stalo was no craftsman, so this was a very crude, ugly box but it was soon mostly done. He figured it just needed a few rough places chopped out with an ax.
Realizing he hadn’t brought his ax out with him, Stalo called inside to his son to fetch it for him. With an annoyed groan, the young man got up from whatever he was wasting his time with and looked for the ax. It wasn’t in its usual spot, nor was it in any of the other logical places for an ax to be. The young giant looked everywhere he could imagine the tool to be, but there was no sign of it. “You sure you didn’t bring it outside with you, dad? I can’t find it anywhere in the house.” Cursing his son for a lazy, incompetent lout, Stalo told a different son to do the job but, you know, better. One by one, each son did so but none had any better luck than the first of their brothers. “Lazy, stupid assholes! What use are you? Any of you? Bah, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself I guess.”
Putting aside the box, Stalo tromped loudly towards the door. As he came through, the door swung closed behind him to reveal that there was a very good reason the Stalo boys hadn’t been able to find the ax. Patto had crept in, naked as a jaybird, and stolen it away. He’d hidden it under his clothes and pretended to still be strung up over the fire whenever Stalo had looked. But now he had crept up behind the door and was waiting. With a mighty swing, Patto’s ax bit deep into Stalo’s neck. In a gout of gore, the giant was beheaded, a shocked expression on his face as his severed head rolled into the living room to bleed on the floor. The sight terrified the giant’s sons, who fled at the blood-soaked avenging angel that had slain their father.
Thus did Patto avenge his dead children.
But our story’s not done. Stalo’s three sons had fled the scene, but they were very much still alive. Luckily for Patto, they were every bit as dull and unobservant as their father had been so they hadn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together. After Stalo’s head had been cleaved from his body, they had sprinted as fast as their legs could carry them back to their mother. She had been out in the pasture tending to their reindeer and so had not been home when Patto had gotten his revenge. “Mother, father is dead! I don’t know what happened. He just walked in the door and then he looked surprised and then his head was bouncing into the living room. It must’ve been some evil magic or something. We were afraid that the spell would come for us next, so we came to find you. Protect us, mommy!”
Their mother was an ogress and was very much aware of how they took after their father. Cleverness had never been his strong suit, nor was it theirs. She figured there was a much simpler explanation to be had, but she knew that there would be no getting it from her sons. They believed they had seen black magic and so that’s all they had seen. Sighing, she set her three boys to milking the reindeer while she herself went back to the house to bury her husband’s body. Once that was done, all four moved into the ogress’ place not far from Stalo’s place. It’s not clear to me if Stalo and the ogress lived in separate houses or if the couple had two houses that they moved back and forth between to take care of the reindeer. It doesn’t really matter.
With their father dead, the three Stalo boys took over the family business of being forest monsters. Now, at this time, there were two brothers named Sodno (maybe it was their last name or maybe their parents were just lazy about coming up with names). They lived with their sister Lyma about three days’ travel from the pasture where the ogress and the three Stalo brothers lived. Lyma would stay behind to tend the reindeer by herself while the two Sodno brothers went out to hunt farther afield. Rumors had begun to be whispered in the nearby towns and huts that the Stalo brothers had been seen in the pastures on their own hunting trip. Everyone knew what the Stalos ate and no one wanted to be their next dinner. The Sodno brothers listened to these whispers with a shrug. Not their circus, not their monkeys. The danger of the man-eating giants was too far away to worry about.
Except, of course, that it wasn’t. One day while the two Sodno brothers were away on a hunting trip, the Stalo brothers swooped down and kidnapped Lyma along with the reindeer she’d been tending. The whole lot of them were carried or driven back to the ogress’ cottage. The land where this crime occurred was empty without another soul for many miles, so there was no one there to see which way the giants went with their stolen lives. Lyma was a clever and lucky young woman though, and she kept her wits about her as she was taken. She grabbed a ball of twine that was sitting nearby and managed to tie it to the door before her kidnappers stormed in. She let it play out behind her to show her brothers the way. It wasn’t nearly long enough to go the entire three day journey of course, but it was enough to lead past the torn up, muddy earth to the fresh snow near the forest. The twine pointed directly towards the distant cabin and the giant footprints in the snow.
When the Sodno brothers returned from their trip, they were concerned to see the fields empty of the expected reindeer. Cautiously, they checked the hut and the shed, but both were likewise empty. The two young men called Lyma’s name over and over, but of course there was no response. They realized that something terrible must have happened (and given the rumors they had ignored as unimportant, they had a pretty good idea of what that terrible thing was). They scoured the area around their home in the hopes that Lyma had managed to leave them some clue. And, like Ariadne in Episode 131B, Lyma had indeed left them a literal clue, a spool of twine pointing the way.
The brothers set out immediately. They followed the thread until it ran out. By that point, the Sodno bros were certain that their culprits were the Stalos bros, and they likewise knew that they were another day’s travel from their cabin. As much as they wanted to though, the two young men didn’t dare charge in guns blazing. The Stalos had the strength and size of giants and, to make things worse, they outnumbered the Sodnos three to two (four if you counted the ogress). Frontal assault was out, so trickery would be the order of the day. They explored the area around the cabin until they discovered a well not too far from it. Reasoning that their sister might be used as slave labor and sent to fetch water from the well, the young men climbed up into a large tree that overlooked the path.
And there they waited. And waited. And waited. The two brothers sat up there in that tree for hours, well after the sun had set and the full moon had risen high above the trees. At last, their patience was rewarded – coming up the path to the well was, indeed, Lyma with an old bucket. As she dipped it down into the water, the very leaves seemed to whisper her name. “Psst! Lyma! Hey, Lyma!” She jumped at that, looking around for whomever was speaking but saw only empty forest. “Don’t look around. Pretend everything’s normal and you’re just getting water. Me and Sodno are both here and we’ve got a plan to get you out. You and all our reindeer.”
Lyma picked up the bucket she had dropped and busied herself with drawing water from the well while listening intently to the unbelievably wonderful sound of her brother’s voice. Just in case one of the Stalo giants were watching, everything needed to seem normal. “Everyone knows that the Stalos are all super picky about their food. Paranoid, more like. If they find anything has been dropped into their meal, they’ll abandon the whole thing and toss it to their dogs to finish. When you go back, wait until their stew is almost ready, sizzling away over the fire. Then you rake the coals with a log and make sure some ash gets in that pot. They’ll refuse to eat it and have you give it to the dogs. Instead, you bring it here to us. We haven’t eaten anything in three days and we’ll need our strength for the next bit. We’ll explain when you come back with the stew.”
And so Lyma did exactly as her brother instructed. A few hours later, she was back at the well with the pot of fresh stew. Her brothers devoured it gratefully, caring not a whit about a little ash in it. When they had finished every last bite, the eldest sat down with his sister. “Listen up, Lyma. When the eldest Stalo finishes his fresh meal that I assume is cooking right now, he’ll head off to bed and fall into a sleep so sound that nothing could wake him – not a rooster crowing directly in his ear, not even a witch’s spell. Everyone says you can hear him snoring from a mile off. Once he’s out, slip into his room and steal his iron mantle (a piece of clothing worn around the shoulders like a very short cape), the one he uses as armor. Put it in the fire until it is glowing red hot, then come back here for the next set of instructions.”
Promising to do as her brothers asked, Lyma hurried back toward the Stalos house. Meanwhile, the Sodnos brothers shimmied down the tree and got to work on their part of the plan. While they had been waiting up in that tree for their sister to come to the well the first time, they had seen the Stalos drive some of their reindeer in from the pasture. These had been tied to the wall of the house to be ready for the next day’s dinner (the giants like to eat human flesh but they do have a varied diet).
Thus it was that the two Sodnos brothers crept through the underbrush to where the beasts had been tied. Silently, they grabbed some of the reindeer by their antlers, waking and terrifying the unfortunate animals. They screamed and kicked and thrashed about wildly, sounding for all the world like a royal rumble had broken out between all of the reindeer. The ruckus was so loud that even the eldest Stalo was awoken by it, a thing that had never happened before. It’s hard for me to believe that these reindeer are somehow louder than anything else he’s ever slept through before, but that’s what the story says. Regardless, he woke up, heard what was happening, and called to the youngest brother. “Go separate those assholes before they kill each other. Tie them up away from each other so they’ll shut the fuck up and I can get my beauty rest.” And without another word, the eldest Stalo fell right back to sleep and was snoring again almost immediately.
Grumbling, the youngest Stalo did as he was told. He shuffled through the house and out the front door. The Sodnos were waiting for him. As soon as he stepped outside, Stalos was stabbed through the heart by one of the Sodnos. With a quiet groan, the youngest giant collapsed to the earth in a spreading pool of his own blood. It was far too quiet a sound to wake the sleeping Stalos and so the brothers were able to drag the corpse away from the door and reset. The Sodnos riled up the reindeer again, causing an even bigger ruckus than before. Once again, it was enough to awaken the supposedly unwakeable eldest Stalos.
“What the fuck, bro? I thought I told you to quiet those damned reindeer down before they break something.” Cursing to himself, he yelled at his middle brother. “Dammit, our kid brother is apparently a useless sack of shit, so hows about you go and deal with this bullshit.” And with that, he turned over and went back to sleep. Realizing that he didn’t have much choice, the second Stalos brother got up and headed out to deal with the reindeer and give his younger brother a piece of his mind. Again, the Sodno brother was waiting for him. As soon as the middle giant stepped outside, he was stabbed through the heart and collapsed to the ground with a soft groan. He too bled out in the spot where his brother had died and was dragged away to join his corpse.
The brothers reset again and once more riled up the reindeer. The clamor was even louder than the first two times and again the eldest Stalos woke with a frustrated roar. He yelled at his two brothers to take care of shit, but of course they didn’t respond. He covered his head with a pillow and tried to ignore the noise, but it was no use. Throwing back the sheets, he got out of bed. “Fuck this and fuck you two. I don’t know how I ended up with two such incompetent brothers, but I guess if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” Stretching with a great yawn that shook the rafters, he shuffled towards the door.
Both of the younger Stalos brothers had come out the front door, but there was no guarantee that the eldest would do the same. After getting the reindeer fighting each other, the two Sodnos brothers had split up – one at the front door and one at the back. The eldest giant habitually wore his iron mantle whenever he left the house, so he reached out for where he’d left it beside the bed. Only it wasn’t there. Muttering more curses at his brothers for moving his shit, Stalos went looking for it. He finally found it hanging over the fireplace in the kitchen. Sleepily, he reached for it and yelped as it burned his hand. Blowing on his scorched fingers, Stalos decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. He didn’t really need it anyway, so he headed for the back door with nothing but a walking stick.
The younger Sodno was waiting for him. Apparently only the elder Sodno had a sword, but the younger was just as deadly. He swung his club with all his might at Stalos’ head, connecting so hard that the giant’s skull cracked. Down he went with a crash and he never moved again. His armor wouldn’t have helped him even if he’d had it on (though it would have protected him from a stab to the heart). Leaving the eldest where he had fallen, the Sodnos bros stripped the younger two Stalos and quickly put on the dead men’s clothes. I have to imagine that they were unbelievably bloodsoaked by now, but the story just kind of ignores that detail. Now disguised, they waited for the dawn.
The giant brothers were dead but the job wasn’t quite done. The ogress was still here in the house and, if the rumors were true, she knew where the Stalos’ treasure was hidden. As the first rays of the sun broke over the horizon, the youngest Sodno tromped upstairs to the old woman’s room dressed as her dead son. As is often true of old people, she was already awake and dressed before the sunrise. She’d seated herself in her usual place by the window to knit. The youngest Sodno crept into her room softly, crouched low, and crawled over to his “mother” to lay his head on her lap.
For a time, he just sat there silently pretending to enjoy the moment. Then, very quietly, he whispered “Tell me, mother dearest, where did my eldest brother hide his riches?” The ogress snorted but didn’t look up from her knitting. “What a strange question, son of mine. Surely you know the answer to that.” “I used to but my memory is so, so bad. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.” She sighed. “He dug a hole under the doorstep and buried it there.” He let the silence return for a while more before breaking it again. “And, uh, where did my second eldest brother hide his?” “Seriously? You don’t know that either?” “I used to but after falling on my head, I can’t seem to remember anything.” “You really should work on your memory. Maybe do some sudoku or something. He hid it behind the oven of course.”
Again there was silence. And then “You know, I’m almost afraid to ask this but my brain is just mush lately. Do you know where I hid my own riches?” At this utter bullshit, the ogress flew into a rage. She was very much a believer in using pain as punishment (hey, she may be a mother but she’s also a man-eating monster). She screamed that if she could find a stick, she’d beat some sense back into her youngest son. Luckily for Sodno, no suck beating stick was handy and he managed to talk her temper down. Still exasperated, she told the young man that he had hidden his treasure beneath the very place that she herself was sitting.
About that time, Lyma spoke up. She had snuck in unseen and unnoticed during the screaming match and was now kneeling in front of the fire. “Dear mother, do you know who you’ve actually been talking to this morning?” The old woman jumped at the young woman’s voice and then her heart dropped as she understood what she was being asked. Her answer was very quiet. “It is a Sodno, I suppose.” Lyma smiled a wide, wicked smile. “You have guessed correctly. So what are you gonna do about it?”
In answer, the old ogress reached for the iron cane that she typically used to beat her victims to death with (again, cannibal monster). It wasn’t in its usual place because Lyma had taken some initiative and moved it. “Where the fuck is my iron cane, you wicked girl?” Lyma gestured at the fireplace, which she had already lit with a roaring fire. “It’s right over there.” I’m assuming the old lady’s eyesight must be as bad as Mister Magoo’s given that she hadn’t noticed that the man in the bloodstained clothes wasn’t actually her son or, apparently, that there was a fire in the fireplace. She leapt for the iron cane and, as you might expect, she caught fire. Her clothes burst into flames and in just a few minutes, she had burned completely to ash. That’s not how that works, but maybe ogres are especially flammable.
With their sister’s help, the Sodno brothers dug up the stolen treasure in their three separate hiding places. With said riches in tow, the three siblings herded all of the reindeer, including the ones that had belonged to the giants, and drove them home. With their newfound wealth, the Sodnos were the richest people in all of Sapmi and they lived happily ever after.
This story is a bit of a weird one. It feels more like two stories that have been stitched together. You’ve got the same villains in both, kind of, but the father Stalos is the star in the first and the sons in the second with the ogress playing second fiddle in both. You could easily break these up and lose nothing in the doing, but it’s still interesting to see how two different groups deal with the same deadly threat. And so, with the families either saved or avenged, 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 little jerk is the boy who teased the sky.
This story comes from Lappsike Eventyr og Sagn or Lappish Adventures and Legends by Just Knud Qvigstad, a Norwegian historian, in 1927. Once, long ago, there lived two brothers who made their living herding reindeer. On this particular day, they headed out together to find their herd and check them all over. They started before the dawn and, as the sun started to rise, the youngest sang a joik – an often improvised song unique to the Sami people that was deeply personal or spiritual and often dedicated to a person, animal, or landscape. The intent is not to sing about the person or place, but to evoke or depict that entity through song (sort of how you might paint a mountain, not paint about a mountain). “The sun man is shining, it shines on all that is cold, melting snow and ice and to all beings granting life.”
His older brother was shocked by this. “Bro, you shouldn’t mock the gods like that!” It doesn’t seem exactly irreverent to me, but maybe joiking is too familiar to be done to a god. The story doesn’t clarify which god, but most likely he’s singing about Beaivi, goddess of the sun and mother of humanity. It’s possible that Qvigstad made god male based on his own Christian sensibilities (the original story says that he is mocking God’s creation, but the text of the joik makes it clear that the song is for the god itself) or that, like in some Sami groups, the sun god from this story was male. Either way, the younger brother wasn’t concerned about his brother’s clutched pearls. He went right on joiking, adding more and more improvised verses to his song.
It seems that the sun didn’t much care for this depiction as it was soon snowing so densely that the face of the sun couldn’t be made out through the wall of white. Unable to see in this snowstorm, the brothers pitched their tent and sought shelter inside. The storm blew for many days and so the brothers were forced to hole up in their makeshift camp. When it finally passed and they were able to get moving again, it was night and the moon was hanging huge and low overhead. And, sure enough, the younger brother just couldn’t help himself. “Little moon-blood, la la, like a fool in a ring blinking in the dark night, na na. Look, he can freeze! The sun, he will forget.” Again, the story doesn’t say but the moon god was usually Mano, Manna, or Aske (and it’s one of the few places we’ve encountered where the moon is male rather than female).
The elder brother was apprehensive at this new affront to the gods and asked his little brother to stop but, like younger siblings throughout time, this just egged him on to joik harder. Soon enough, a dense fog had risen from the night, blanketing everything in soft, impenetrable mist. Given that they were traveling through the mountains, it would be foolhardy in the extreme to continue so the brothers again pitched their tent and made camp. It took three more days for the fog to finally clear, which the elder brother used to berate his younger brother. “See what happens when you insult the gods?”
It was again night when the brothers were finally able to move again, and the bright stars were twinkling overhead. Yeah, you can probably guess what comes next. That’s right – having learned absolutely nothing from the divine retribution the last two times, the younger brother again joiked about the sky, specifically the stars. My best guess for this one is Boahjenasti, the North Star and the nail that holds the sky in place but I’m not sure. “Stars jot, stars trot, ya ya, twinkle and wink, ya ya.” The stars were done fucking around. Rather than sending some inconvenience to slow their travel, they sent a fucking fireball to blast one of the poor, innocent reindeer pulling their sleighs, leaving a smoking corpse to fall to the snow. That beast didn’t have anything to do with this, but I guess the gods aren’t quite willing to kill a human for this indignity quite yet.
The elder brother was horrified at this absolutely supernatural event and undeniable proof of celestial wrath. “Brother, seriously you need to stop right the hell now. How are you not getting this? “If you keep joiking the gods, catastrophe is going to strike!” Defiant and headstrong, the younger brother refused to admit that his brother had a very, very good point. “Well sure, I lost the reindeer pulling my sleigh to a freak accident, but you still have one to pull yours so I don’t know what you’re complaining about. I’ve seen worse.” I don’t know what this young man has seen that is worse than a star burning livestock to death with a fireball from the heavens.
They continued on their way, although now the younger brother was forced to pull his own sleigh. They traveled throughout the day and, towards evening, the elder brother stopped and set up camp. He let his reindeer wander to graze while he waited for his younger brother to catch up. He lit a fire and started cooking the evening meal to pass the time. His baby brother finally appeared right about the time that the food was ready, so they sat down to eat together.
About that time, the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights appeared in the sky overhead. This is most likely Guopvssahasat, the embodiment of the Northern Lights. Again, the younger brother couldn’t seem to help himself. He joiked about the shimmering lights overhead. “The Northern Lights dance, lip lip lip, a well-fed mouth, lip lip lip. A hammer against the head, lip lip lip, an ax in your back, lip lip lip.” Okay, that one seems a little meaner than the others. The elder brother tried desperately to shush his brother, begging him to stop before something terrible happened, but the younger brother refused to be silenced. He began to dance around, joiking even louder. Above, the Northern Lights undulated and danced wildly and then there was an ear-shattering crash against the snow as though someone had turned the earth into a drum.
The elder brother wanted no part of this. He turned over his sled and crawled underneath to hide and to make it clear that he did not approve. With a deafening crack, the lights struck like a whip and simply unmade the younger brother, burning his body so thoroughly that there wasn’t even ash to mark where he had been. No trace of him was ever found. Alone and with a heavy heart (and probably a guilty ‘i told you so’ on his lips’), the elder brother continued on towards the herd in the morning. And that is why, ever since, the Sami have believed it dangerous to mock the Northern Lights. So if you ever get the chance to see them, maybe be respectful about it.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Instagram as MythsYourTeacherHatedPod, on Tumblr as MythsYourTeacherHated, on Blusky as MythsPodcast, and on Mastodon as MythsYourTeacherHated. 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 headed to ancient China for tales of the strange and unusual. You’ll see that spirits are not easily impressed, that magical kings require a lot of support, and that you should always check your drinks for tiny fish. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll discover that you should always check the Yelp reviews before checking into a strange hotel. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.