In October of 1999 an eager group of scouts met up with a journalist from the local newspaper. They had slept outside without a tent at Røverkollen in the cold October night, and this Aker’s Newspaper wanted to make and article about. However, the three young boys had a lot more to tell than just a normal forest trip.
They had seen something in the twilight hours that morning.
They had seen a ghost.
Røverkollen (robber knollen) is a hill 404 meters above the sea, that lies on the border between Oslo and Nittedal municipality in Lillomarka. Once it was called ‘the poor man’s Finse’ by the locals. Because when the rich people went to the ski resorts and high mountain hotels, the workers went to Marka. Quoted from Bård Alsvik’s texts from the city archives: “With a good portion of fantasy, the mountain plateaus are recreated on hills and knolls, where workers from eastern Aker and Oslo took in the Easter sun.”
While many stories have been told through the ages of how there was robbers living at Røverkollen, it is probably the old burial mounds that keeps most people interested. A burial mound is the same as a tumulus but is made of stones without any loose mass like earth. These graves were usually far away from people, and on high places with a view, so the one buried could have the best possible view. In the area around Røverkollen 4 of these burial mounds have been found, and they are dated back to the bronze age. They are marked on some maps with an R rune, that means that it is an ancient monument.
This was where the scouts spent the night.
They had put up a gapahuk or lean-tos as it is called in English. Simple shelters you can make from what nature has available, and with it’s three walls it will protect from wind and rain.
The open side was directed towards the bonfire, and it had probably been a cozy night, maybe even some ghost stories around the fire before the went to bed for the night.
In the early hours of the morning it became colder, and Bjørnar was the first one out of the sleeping-bag. Thinking he should try and get the fire going again.
Suddenly he became aware of something, and there, just a few meters away from him, an old woman stood. She was dressed in a grey robe and had long grey hair. The two kids still in the lean-to had also woken up now and could see her clearly as well. None of them had seen where she had come from at all.
When she realized the boys had seen her, she quickly run up the hill on seconds. The terrified boys soon noticing that even if there was frost on the ground from the cold night, the old woman hadn’t left any prints at all.
There was no more sleep for the boys that morning, and before dinner time they started to pack together to get down from the mountains again.
On the trip down again, they met a man walking his dog and he had seen where they had come from. He wondered if they had really dared to sleep up at Røverkollen. His dog had become so afraid and weird when they walked there and would stick to his owner’s side as they walked past. After all it was said that there was a ghost there.
An old lady with long grey hair.
It isn’t just Røverkollen that can offer up stories of grey ladies here in Norway. By Bostad in Malvik located in Trønderlag, there is a tarn (mountain lake) named Banntjønn. Tjønn means tarn, and bann means child, and a lot of tarns has this name. Either because it is a smaller tarn, and a bigger tarn is close by, making it a child of that greater tarn.
Or it can be because there is a sad story about a child drowning in the tarn.
Even if the tarn is mostly overgrown today, people still experience encounters close to it. In the book ‘Våkenetter’, a collection of ghost stories from Trønderlag, Magnar and Kjetil Herjaune tell their story. Many years ago, they drove down E6, the main highway of Norway. It was around half past 5 in the afternoon and it was a clear winter evening in November.
An idyllic setting for all ghost stories, dark and starry skies. New snow as far as the eyes could see. Then suddenly they saw a woman a little ahead walking at the side of the road. She wore a grey robe, that hung after her in the snow.
They became quite curious about this, because there was just this feeling that something was not right with this woman leaning forward as she walked. When they finally came up beside her, and tried to see more, some bikes come from the other direction and for a moment blinded them.
When the bikes were gone, the woman was as well. Worried she might have fallen and stumbled into the forest they get out to look for her. However, there was no tracks after her, not even in the fresh snow where she had walked earlier.
Sure of what they had seen, the two of them often told of what they had seen on the clear winter night, and one time there was an elderly man that meant he knew what they had seen. The stories said a woman from around the area had ended up pregnant outside of marriage, and she ended up drowning the child in the tarn.
After that she is supposed to have been found out and decapitated, or she lived the rest of her life with guilt over what she had done. It is hard to know, since no one has been able to find any proof a woman did drown her child there. The myth still says she shows herself there, the eleventh month each year. Where she walks restless along the road by the tarn. Weighted down by her guilt and despair over what she had done.
Here in Norway we have lot of stories where the lead ghost of the story is a grey lady, and it is not just out in the wild that these specters reside. In Stein mansion in Buskerud there is also a story about a grey dressed woman.
The first time she showed herself, was when there were new owners in the start of the 1900s. His first night in his new home, Johannes Solberg woke suddenly. Bent over him was a woman dressed in grey clothes.
It is horrible enough having someone in your room at night but imagine it. Instead of sneaking around and making sounds that will make you wonder and fear what is there or not there, this ghost just decides to get right in there. Right in his face, and she just stood there, not moving at all.
The next day he went to the boss of the workers at the property to make them secure the home better, as he must have been sure it was so bad an insane woman had just been able to sneak into his room. However, the head of the workers knew who it was, and answered quite easily: “Oh, that is Mrs. Fougner. And it won’t help to close the doors with her, she comes and goes as she will.”
Over time the family got used to the extra Mrs. Of the house, and it is said that his wife Olga often met her. She had her hold the door open for her, or she had to wait her turn to use the room the old lady already used.
She was also seen outside of the mansion, and towards some church ruins that was located close to the property. Some wagons on their way towards the mansion would suddenly stop, as the horse for some reason those around could not see, did not want to continue.
Her name was supposed to have been Anne Elisabeth Anker Krohn (1809-1896). She married a much older man named Gabriel Fougner. He used much of his time building the property, and it is said she would never forgive him for using stones from the church ruins to build a wall.
Anne was seen through the 1900s, and the grandchild of Johannes and Olga Solberg says he had never seen her before one New Years Eve. Even if people had seen her in the same room as he was in before. He and his fiancé were retiring for the evening and walked up to the second floor. The time of electric lights had come now, and the entire hallway was bright and warm. Thanks to this, both saw her clear as day when she came through the locked door of a bedroom. She wore a floor-length dress, and a veil that brushed over the floor behind her. The man was quite pale after the sight and was in no doubt over what he had seen, since his grandmother had often told him about what could be seen in the mansion.
This story also has some animals that seems to sense a lot more than the human eyes can, as the horses that didn’t want to get too close to the mansion, the grandson also had a dog, and one night it just didn’t want to go up to the second floor. In the end it ran into the living room and hid under a couch. No one saw the grey woman at the time, but I can imagine everyone were quite sure what had scared the dog.
There are many Grey women around in Norway, and triple that if you look around the world. With one search on Wikipedia you will get 5 different ladies. From England, Scotland, New Zealand, Malt and America. And let us not begin on ladies of other colors, we would have had to make this post at book length then. Most mansions probably feel like they don’t have the right status before they can toss a colored lady ghost into their lore to scare their guests with. There are already hundreds of stories with colored ghosts, and I imagine we will make hundreds more in the centuries to come.
So, if you travel to Røverkollen a cold October night, or to Banntjønn a winter evening in November, or if you think you are safely inside a room in a mansion. Who knows? You might get to see one of these grey women. Let us just hope, that it isn’t in the middle of the night, and when you open your eyes, someone stares right back at you.
Sources:
Saugstad, Even. (2017) Mystikk og Overtro i Oslomarka. Oslo. Frie Fuglers Forlag.
Døhlen, Cherri. (2004) Inn i det ukjente – spøkelser og gjenferd i Norge. N.W.Damm og søn AS.
Leinum, Anne.S. (2000) Våkenetter – Spøkelseshistorier fra Trønderlag. Stjørdal. Midt Norge Forlag.
Great content! Super high-quality! Keep it up! 🙂