Fossegrimen — The waterfall fiddler who teaches you to play

The Hardanger fiddlers of nineteenth-century Telemark Telemark × August Cappelen, Foss i nedre Telemark (1852), National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design About this image ▸ Historic region and county in the inland-southern part of Norway, between the southeastern coast and the central Hardangervidda plateau. Home to Heddal Stave Church — the largest of the twenty-eight surviving Norwegian stave churches, standing nearly thirty metres tall — and to the heavy-water production facility at Vemork whose sabotage by Norwegian commandos in February 1943 disrupted the German atomic-weapons programme. The name Telemark also gives the world the modern ski-turn technique developed there in the nineteenth century. In the folklore record Telemark is the deepest vein of all — the landscape of the ballad collectors, the hardingfele legends, and the lake serpent of Seljord. Telemark Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverTroll — the monsters of the mountainsUtburd — the unbaptized child that will not restÅsgårdsreien — the storm that rides through the winter skyHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secretSjøormer — the serpents in the deep lakes and fjords played so far past their neighbours that people kept an explanation ready: the man had been to the waterfall. Torgeir Augundsson of Sauherad — Myllarguten Myllarguten × Unknown artist, portrait of Myllarguten (19th century), Nasjonalbiblioteket / National Library of Norway About this image ▸ Torgeir Augundsson (1801–1872), called Myllarguten — the Miller's Boy, after his father's trade — the most famous of Telemark's hardingfele fiddlers, born at Sauherad and playing weddings and markets from childhood. In January 1849 Ole Bull presented him at a concert in Christiania that drew some 1,500 listeners — the first Norwegian folk musician on a public concert stage. Playing that far past his neighbours demanded an explanation, and the countryside supplied one: he had bought it from the fossegrim at the waterfall — a rumor he denied flatly his whole life. The farm his concert earnings bought in Rauland was lost to debt in 1865; he died there of tuberculosis in 1872, a pauper. , the Miller’s Boy — was the most famous of them, and the rumour that he had bought his playing from the fossegrim shadowed him his whole life. He denied it flatly. The rumour outlived him: he died of tuberculosis in Rauland in 1872, a pauper.

The fossegrim lives where the water is loudest: behind waterfalls, in the rapids, under the mill-race. He is not the nøkken Nøkken × Theodor Kittelsen, Nøkken (1904), Nasjonalmuseet About this image ▸ The shape-shifting spirit of fresh water in Norwegian folk tradition — most at home in still water: lakes, tarns, and mill ponds — recorded as luring people, children above all, into drowning. He appeared as a handsome young fiddler, as a white horse that tempted children onto its back, as a drifting log, or as two pale eyes among the water lilies. The white water lily is named nøkkerose after him. The name descends from Old Norse nykr, 'water spirit.' Andreas Faye's Norske Sagn (1833), the first printed collection of Norwegian legends, placed nøkker "in most waters and rivers"; Theodor Kittelsen's 1904 Nøkken (Nasjonalmuseet) fixed the modern image — a black, lily-choked tarn and two eyes at the surface. The roaring falls belonged instead to his relative, the fossegrim. Also discussed in Nøkken — the water-spirit who pulls you underVardøger — your double, arriving a few minutes before you , who drowns you in still black lakes. The fossegrim teaches — which is a slower kind of danger. What he teaches is the hardingfele Hardingfele × Photo: Svein Skare, Universitetsmuseet i Bergen / DigitaltMuseum — Jaastadfela (1651), CC BY-SA 4.0 About this image ▸ The Hardanger fiddle, Norway's national folk instrument: a violin carrying four or five sympathetic understrings beneath the bowed strings, which ring untouched and give the sound its shimmering, slightly unearthly undertone. The body is inked with rosing scrollwork, the fingerboard and tailpiece inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and the scroll often carved as a dragon or lion head. The oldest surviving instrument, the Jaastad fiddle, bears the date 1651 and is attributed to Ole Jonsen Jaastad of Ullensvang in Hardanger; it is held by the University Museum of Bergen. The fiddle carries the dance music of Vestlandet, Telemark, and the inland valleys — springar, gangar, halling — and legend priced its mastery at a goat thrown to the fossegrim behind a waterfall. Also discussed in Tradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year , the Hardanger fiddle whose sympathetic strings ring under the bowed note, and he teaches it for a price set in advance.

The price was meat. A white he-goat kid — or a lamb, or a joint of smoked meat — carried to a north-running falls on a Thursday evening and thrown into the water. What came back depended on what you brought. A scrawny, stingy goat bought the right to tune the instrument and nothing more. A good one bought the lesson. A whole fat kid bought mastery. The fossegrim never cheated anyone; he gave exactly what was paid for. In one recorded telling the meat had to be stolen — a leg of smoked mutton lifted from a neighbour’s storehouse and carried to the falls four Thursday evenings running.

The lesson drew blood. The spirit took the pupil’s right hand and dragged the fingers across the strings until they bled raw, and again the next night, until the playing came. At the far end of the lessons the music was past bearing — the trees were said to lean toward the river, and the falls themselves to slow to hear it.

One tune was never for human feet. The fossegrim’s lay ran to eleven variations, and people might dance to only ten of them; the eleventh belonged to the spirit and his host, and, played anywhere, it set tables and benches and grey-beards and grandmothers and the babe in its cradle dancing, and would not let them stop. So the spirit kept it back.

Bergen↗ cast the bargain in bronze. At the foot of Stephan Sinding’s statue of the violinist Ole Bull Ole Bull × Mathew Brady, Ole Bull, violinist (c. 1860–1865), U.S. National Archives and Records Administration About this image ▸ Norwegian violin virtuoso (1810–1880), born in Bergen, the first Norwegian performer to win international fame, touring Europe and America for nearly five decades as a living emblem of national romanticism. In January 1849 he presented the Telemark fiddler Myllarguten at a concert in Christiania that drew some 1,500 listeners — the first time the hardingfele reached a concert stage. In 1850 he founded Det Norske Theater in Bergen, the first Norwegian-language stage; in 1852 he bought over 11,000 acres in Potter County, Pennsylvania, for Oleana, a colony for Norwegian emigrants that collapsed within two years. Stephan Sinding's bronze statue of him in Bergen, unveiled 17 May 1901, seats a fossegrim playing at his feet. — unveiled on the national day, 17 May 1901 — a small fossegrim sits half-sunk in the water with a harp, playing up at the master he is supposed to have taught.