Nøkken — The water-spirit who pulls you under

The white water-lilies on a Norwegian lake are called nøkkerose — the nøkken’s rose — and where they grew thickest, the old people said, the nøkken was closest. He is the spirit of fresh inland water: the lake, the slow river, the mill pond, the black tarn up in the forest. What he does is drown you.

He has no fixed shape. He surfaces as a handsome young man with a fiddle across his knee, or a pale horse standing patient at the bank, or a log that floats and then moves against the current. His own body, when anyone sees it, is a drowned man’s — waterlogged, hair like algae, eyes holding a little light beneath the surface.

He rarely chases. He uses music. The tune carries over the water, and the safe distance shrinks a step at a time as the listener leans toward it; there is no struggle at the end, because the listener walks himself in. The horse works differently. There is room on its back for however many children climb on, and once they are up they cannot get back down — it walks unhurried into the deep, the water closes over them, and the surface goes flat.

He gives warning of his own work. A cry comes off the water at one spot, sharp and carrying, like a loon; and at that spot, later, someone drowns. The defence against him was iron Iron against the hidden folk × Hans Gude, En signekjærring, Norske folke- og huldre-eventyr (1879) About this image ▸ Iron against the hidden folk is among the best-attested protective motifs in Norwegian folk belief. A knife or open scissors laid as a cross in or over the cradle guarded the unbaptized child from being switched — the fear at the heart of Asbjørnsen's changeling tale En signekjerring (Norske Huldreeventyr og Folkesagn, second collection, 1848). The same knife or open scissors under the pillow turned back the mare. Against the nøkken one threw a needle or knife into the water with a recorded charm — Nøkk, nøkk, nål i vatnet; jomfru Maria kasta stål i vatnet — the Virgin Mary's name folded into the older iron-magic. The logic was consistent: such beings could not cross or touch steel, so the metal sealed the vulnerable openings — cradle, bed, waterline. Also discussed in Mare — the creature behind the word nightmareBytting — the changeling left in the cradle and a name. You threw a knife or a sewing-needle into the water and said the line children were taught — Nøkk, nøkk, nål i vatnet; jomfru Maria kasta stål i vatnet, needle in the water, the Virgin Mary cast steel in the water — and if you could shout his true name across the surface, he had to let go.

The still water was the dangerous water. The white roar of a waterfall belonged to a different spirit, the fossegrim, who taught the fiddle rather than drowning the fiddler. The nøkken kept the quiet lakes, and the quiet lakes were the ones that took children.

The parson Andreas Faye Andreas Faye × Christiane Schreiber, Portrait of Andreas Faye (1861), Rektorgalleriet, Universitetet i Agder About this image ▸ Norwegian parson, historian and folklore collector (1802–1869), a teacher in Arendal and from 1833 parish priest at nearby Holt. His Norske Sagn (Arendal, 1833) was the first published collection of Norwegian legends and is counted as the beginning of folklore study in Norway; a revised, expanded second edition appeared in 1844 as Norske Folke-Sagn. Faye recorded rather than retold — a documentary register that drew a scathing anonymous review from the historian P. A. Munch. But the collection awakened the interest that Asbjørnsen and Moe's folktale volumes of 1841–44 built on, and it became Theodor Kittelsen's sourcebook: Kittelsen drew Pesta from Faye's Black Death chapter for Svartedauen (1900). Also discussed in Pesta — an old woman walking from farm to farmDraugen — the drowned man who never came home set him down in the first printed collection of Norwegian legends in 1833 — a passing notice that he was found in most waters and rivers in the country — though the belief was far older than the page. Theodor Kittelsen Theodor Kittelsen × Theodor Kittelsen, Selvportrett (1891), Nasjonalmuseet About this image ▸ 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 homeHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secretNorske eventyr — the folk tales almost lost foreverSoria Moria — the shining castle always out of reach painted him in 1904 and painted almost nothing: a black pool choked with lilies, and two pale eyes at the surface, already close to the bank.