Stedssagn — local legends, told as warnings

A stedssagn always begins with here. Not a Troll Loose pencil drawing: a horse gallops through the night air drawing a sledge; the jutul sits at the reins in a heavy coat while a smaller man in a hat stands on the runners behind him, and far below lie a village and a church spire. Inscribed "Jutulen og Johannes Blessom." Adolph Tidemand, Jutulen og Johannes Blessom (before 1856), Nasjonalmuseet NG.K_H.B.08021 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 mountainsSoria Moria — the shining castle always out of reachNorske eventyr — the folk tales almost lost foreverHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secretBytting — the changeling left in the cradleVardøger — your double, arriving a few minutes before youTradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year somewhere in the mountains, but the exact 2.4-kilometre gash of Jutulhogget, on the border of Alvdal and Rendalen, where — the story goes — one giant hewed the gorge to turn a river into his neighbour’s valley, until the other woke, hurled his axe across the valley and split the digger’s skull. The canyon is the giant’s cut, and Jutulhogget means just that: the giant’s hew. (Geologists now date the gorge to a meltwater flood roughly ten thousand years ago. The giants were the older explanation, and for centuries the only one anyone needed.)

A stedssagn is a place-legend: a short story fixed to one feature of the landscape — a rock, a waterfall, a meadow, a ruin, a bend in a river. Unlike the wandering wonder-tales of princesses and trolls, which travelled district to district with no fixed address, a sagn stayed put. It was told as report, not as entertainment, and it almost always carried a warning.

The warnings were practical, dressed as legend. A boulder sitting alone in a field was a troll caught by sunrise, and you did not try to move it. A meadow where livestock kept dying belonged to the De underjordiske Kittelsen's Andersnatten — the dome-topped Eggedal mountain dark against a pale dusk sky over the lake, a spruce fringe in the foreground and a bird perched on the tallest tree; from a Nasjonalbiblioteket postcard reproduction. Theodor Kittelsen, Andersnatten (1903), postcard reproduction, Nasjonalbiblioteket The hidden folk of Norwegian tradition — also called vetter, tusser, or huldrefolk — who lived a parallel life under the mounds, rocks, and ground of the farm, with cattle, weddings, and music of their own. Unwitting offence — scalding water thrown out without a warning shout — explained sudden sickness; offerings of beer and food at the mound and the farm tree (tuntre) kept the peace. Nearest of them to the household was the gardvord, the farm's guardian — sometimes identified with the first clearer of the ground, buried in the mound at the farm's edge. Their most-told origin legend — Eve hiding her unwashed children from God, who decreed that what was hidden should stay hidden — enters the record in the collecting era opened by Andreas Faye's Norske Sagn (1833). Also discussed in De underjordiske — the neighbors living under your hillBytting — the changeling left in the cradle and went unfarmed. A landslip that had wiped out a farm was remembered for generations as the work of something living above the slope — and the fear was earned: Ramnefjellet at Lovatnet in the western fjords sheared its face into the lake twice, in 1905 and again in 1936, and drowned the shore villages both times.

Some of the best are about things gone into the water. In Lake Mjøsa Otto Sinding's 1877 painting from the shore of Lake Mjøsa — a man drawing his rowboat onto the sand at the water's edge, the lake calm under a soft evening sky. Otto Sinding, Landskap ved Mjøsa (1877), National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Norway's largest lake — 369 km², 117 km long, up to 449 m deep — with Hamar, Gjøvik, and Lillehammer on its shores. Its serpent legend is among the oldest documented sjøorm traditions in Norway: the Hamarkrøniken, an anonymous 16th-century town chronicle, records a huge serpent off Helgøya, shot with a crossbow by one of the bishop's men, its stranded carcass burned. Olaus Magnus (1555) independently records a serpent seen in Mjøsa in 1522 as a portent of King Christian II's banishment. The lake also holds the søsterklokkene (sister bells) legend of Ringebu Stave Church — the votive bell that broke through the ice on its way to Christiania and sank; a later raising nearly succeeded, but the rope broke, and the bell is said to lie there still. On the trip Lake Mjøsa is the water of the reunion. The Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) drive south down the Gudbrandsdalen on Day 5 to Lillehammer on the lake's shore, where the Ungdommene (the Youngsters) have already arrived a day ahead and spend Day 5 on Storgata and at the Olympic Park. Day 5 ends with the reunion dinner, and the reunited family spends Days 6–7 beside the lake — Øyer Church up the valley, old-town Storgata, and Maihaugen — before the drive south. Lake Mjøsa Also discussed in Sjøormer — the serpents in the deep lakes and fjords , a church bell broke through the ice while it was being hauled to Christiania A hand-coloured 1814 aquatint of Christiania from across the water — the small grid-planned capital along the far shore under green hills, travellers pausing on a country road in the foreground. John William Edy, City of Christiania (1814), Boydell's Picturesque Scenery of Norway — National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Capital of Norway from 1624 to 1925 — the rebuilt town that King Christian IV laid out west of the medieval Oslo after the fire of August 1624 destroyed the old city. Christian founded the new town on a grid plan beneath Akershus fortress, named it for himself, and ordered the surviving Oslo burghers to move into it. Christiania was the capital's name through the four-hundred-year night, the brief war of 1814, the constitutional Eidsvoll moment, the ninety-one-year personal union with Sweden, and the first two decades of fully independent Norway after 1905. In 1877 the spelling was modernised to Kristiania; in 1925 the city formally returned to the medieval name Oslo. The Kvadraturen district preserves Christian IV's grid intact today. On the trip Days 1–2 in Oslo bring both groups through Christiania — Christian IV's seventeenth-century planned grid, still visible today as the Kvadraturen district just below Akershus fortress. Also discussed in The 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedThe Constitution That Saved a Nation — five radical weeks at Eidsvoll, 1814800,000 Norwegians Leave — the century that built a Second NorwayThe Quiet Revolution — how Norway won its independence without a warWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayNorske eventyr — the folk tales almost lost foreverUtburd — the unbaptized child that will not rest and sank; the next spring it was nearly raised, but the rope broke and it went down for good — a sign, people said, that it was not to be moved — and it is said to be down there still. Lakes across the country were believed to cover drowned churches whose bells rang under the surface before a death in the parish above.

The earliest of these to reach paper were written down by parish priests and travelling officials as curiosities. The historian Gerhard Schøning entered local legends into his journal beside descriptions of antiquities, churches and farms as he crossed Gudbrandsdalen A nineteenth-century Johan Gørbitz painting of the Gudbrandsdalen at Fåvang — a farm road with horse and travellers winding past log buildings, the valley falling away below. Johan Gørbitz, Fra Fåvang i Gudbrandsdalen (before 1858), National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Long inland valley running about 230 kilometres northwest through the central Norwegian highland from Lake Mjøsa toward the Dovre mountain pass, the central traffic artery between Oslo and Trondheim across both medieval and modern eras. The Gudbrandsdalsleden pilgrim road to Nidaros runs along the valley; Lom Stave Church and several other surviving stave churches stand on its slopes; Lillehammer sits at its southern entrance. The dialect spoken in the valley is one of the most distinctive in modern Norwegian. On the trip The Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) drive the length of the Gudbrandsdalen twice — north up the E6 on Day 3, on the long road from Oslo to Trondheim, and south again on Day 5 to the reunion in Lillehammer, the town at the valley's southern entrance. Gudbrandsdalen Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposed on a royal commission in the 1770s. Most were never written at all, and lasted only as long as the people who could stand at the rock and tell you what it was.

You can still walk to a great many of them. Trolltunga sells the troll as a brand name now, and the gorge at Jutulhogget has a signposted viewpoint — but the gorge was a sagn for centuries before it was a trailhead, and the warning came first.