Huldra — the girl in the forest with a secret

From the front she is a young woman in skirts — handsome, calm, often willing. From behind she carries a cow’s tail, and in some tellings a back that is hollow and bark-stripped like a rotted tree-trunk. That is the whole danger of the huldra: she keeps her back to a wall or a spruce and does not turn, and the man talking to her in the clearing does not see what he is talking to until she walks away.

She belongs to the lonely working places: the high summer pasture, the charcoal-burner’s kiln in the slow dusk, the edge of the winter logging camps where men spent weeks without women. She drives a small herd of fine cows and calls them with the lokk, the high herding-song that carries across a valley, and a man who followed the song could walk into the forest after her and never come out. The crueller stories were about the ones who did come out — slow, listless, hard for their families to recognise as the men who had left.

The name descends from the Old Norse hylja, to hide, and a same-sounding word, huld, could also mean gracious or gentle — a fitting double sense for beings one did not name aloud carelessly. It named her whole people: the huldrefolk, who hold dances inside the hollow hills. A man who joined one came home to find that a single night underground had cost him years above it.

Marry her, and her tail drops off at the altar the moment she is churched into a Christian congregation — but she loses her beauty with it and keeps a Troll A gigantic troll head rises out of the forest under a pale moon, fir trees growing along its crown and one single eye glinting. Theodor Kittelsen, Skogtroll (1906), Nasjonalmuseet The supernatural mountain-dweller of Norwegian folketro — sometimes gigantic, like the valley-striding jutul, sometimes small — living inside mountains and deep forest. Legends set the troll against the church: it hurls boulders at church buildings and flees the sound of church bells. Sunlight turns a troll caught above ground to stone. Andreas Faye's Norske Sagn (1833, expanded as Norske Folke-Sagn in 1844), Norway's first legend collection, put the tradition on paper; Asbjørnsen and Moe's Norske Folkeeventyr (1841–44) fixed the man-eating troll of the tales in print — "De tre bukkene Bruse" was first printed in 1843. Theodor Kittelsen (1857–1914) gave the troll its modern visual form; his Skogtroll (1906) is in the Nasjonalmuseet. Also discussed in Troll — the monsters of the mountainsStedssagn — local legends, told as warningsSoria Moria — the shining castle always out of reachNorske eventyr — the folk tales almost lost foreverBytting — the changeling left in the cradleVardøger — your double, arriving a few minutes before youTradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year ’s strength. A husband who treats her badly learns this the way the stories tell it: she takes up a horseshoe glowing from the forge and straightens it in her bare hands, without changing her face.

Theodor Kittelsen Theodor Kittelsen's 1891 self-portrait — the painter in a round cap and blue jacket, red-bearded, meeting the viewer's eye. Theodor Kittelsen, Selvportrett (1891), Nasjonalmuseet Norwegian painter and illustrator (1857–1914), born in Kragerø, who more than any other artist fixed the visual identity of the country's folklore beings. Erik Werenskiold brought him into the illustrated Asbjørnsen folktale editions in the early 1880s. A stay at the Skomvær lighthouse on outer Lofoten (1887–89), where his brother-in-law served as assistant keeper, fed Troldskab (1892). His plague-hag drawings, begun after an encounter with an old woman on the island of Skåtøy, were published as the book Svartedauen in 1900. The same year, at Lauvlia in Sigdal, he painted his Soria Moria pictures; the national collection bought them at once. Nøkken (1904) — two pale eyes in a black lily-pool — is held by the Nasjonalmuseet; Da Huldra forsvant (1908) paints her vanishing. Also discussed in Pesta — an old woman walking from farm to farmDraugen — the drowned man who never came homeNøkken — the water-spirit who pulls you underNorske eventyr — the folk tales almost lost foreverSoria Moria — the shining castle always out of reach painted her vanishing into the fog in 1908, in Da Huldra forsvant. But the country people did not keep her in a painting; they kept her in the church at Seljord A late-1930s photograph of the whitewashed medieval stone church at Seljord, its churchyard gravestones and dry-stone wall in front — the church where legend hangs seven invisible huldra tails. Unknown photographer, Seljord kirke (c. 1935–1950), Mittet collection, National Library of Norway Village and municipality in Telemark, on lake Seljordsvatnet — a parish unusually rich in recorded folklore. The lake serpent, Seljordsormen, entered the written record in 1750, when Gunleik Andersson Verpe of Bø reported it overturned one of his boats; the priest Hans Jacob Wille described it in his 1786 Beskrivelse over Sillejords Præstegield. In 1989 the municipality took the serpent, gold on red, as its coat of arms; a sonar expedition in August 2000 found nothing it could identify. The medieval stone church (c. 1150–1180) carries the legend that seven huldra tails — invisible to a Christian eye — hang inside, fallen from huldra brides wed there. Magnus Brostrup Landstad, parish priest 1839–1848, and Olea Crøger gathered most of the ballads in Norske Folkeviser (1853) here. Seljord, Telemark Also discussed in Sjøormer — the serpents in the deep lakes and fjordsÅsgårdsreien — the storm that rides through the winter sky in Telemark August Cappelen's 1852 painting of a dying primeval forest — a lone wind-shaped pine crowning a chaos of moss-grown boulders and fallen trunks, dead snags on the skyline, thin threads of water dropping through the rocks, all against a fading yellow evening sky. August Cappelen, Utdøende urskog (1852), National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design 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 foreverFossegrimen — the waterfall fiddler who teaches you to playTroll — the monsters of the mountainsUtburd — the unbaptized child that will not restÅsgårdsreien — the storm that rides through the winter skySjøormer — the serpents in the deep lakes and fjords , where seven cow-tails are said to hang from the rafters — one for each huldra who married a local man and was baptized out of the woods.

She still makes appearances. In summer, some departures of the pause at the Kjosfossen falls while a dancer in a red dress performs the huldra legend in the waterfall spray, to a folk tune played over speakers. Worth keeping an eye on the mist.