‘The milk maid at Saasetra (shieling name) left her three year old girl alone as she was milking. The girl was supposed to sit there and play while waiting, but when the milk maid returned, the girl was gone. It didn’t help no matter how long they looked, the girl remained gone. Many years later, when the girl would have become an adult, her mother’s brother met a bridal procession.
The bride rode first on a big black horse. She stopped and greeted. “You probably don’t recognize me, but we are related.” She said, and told him it had been her that had disappeared at Saasetra when she was small.
“Is it you, and you are getting married?” He asked. Her husband rode after her, so she and her uncle saw a man with a nose that went as far down as the horses tail.
The two of them spoke for a while. Then her uncle wished her well and continued walking.
“Curse you uncle, you could have saved me!” The girl said. Then first did he realize what was happening, but it was too late and she was gone when he turned to look after her.’
(Translated from Huldra og annen trollskap page 21)
Little is known of the fate of the women or men that are taken into the mountain or underground by Hulders. Usually we hear better stories on how it ends for the men. Where they live in riches for the reset of their lives, and if old friends are able to talk to them, they will praise their new lives and let it be known they do not regret ever once following the beautiful woman that appeared before them. And while Huldra is often michivious and sometimes maybe even desperate, it never seems to bad for those men that are able to get her in the end.
It is a whole other story for the milk maids that meet the male hulder, Hulderkallen. Often an older man, with long nose and just an all over ugly visage. Sometimes he will pretend to be the lover of the lonely milkmaid at the shieling, and come suddenly to her and say they have to get married right away, and as he puts his spell on her, she sits there to let his kin dress her up for a wedding where they are. Most stories tells of how her real lover somehow find out, sometimes from a faithful dog running to get his mistress help from the horrible fate. Once the valiant hero arrives, he will shoot over the building, the iron in the shots scaring the underground people away in terror, and most of the time they will leave the wedding crown on her, usually in gold or silver, and a lot of families in Norway is still supposed to have hulder silver around from such stories, where the fair maiden was saved and lived happily ever after.
While mostly as stories of warning. For the girl to not sleep around before marriage, and for the men to not sleep outside of marriage, or to remember to make honor on the woman they fooled around with, it is clear that women got it a lot worse in this. There are a few stories of women being able to save themselves as the men did, and would usually need a man to save them. While the men had to stand against temptation and hold firm.
Women would often come out of it all either insane or with ugly deformed children fathered by another man than she was married to. It might not be a too far stretch to imagine that as stories of changelings, these are used to explain children not seen as normal, as underground people in Norway were also known to change out their children with healthy human children, which was called bytting.
‘The underground people took a milk maid underground, but she got out of the mountain again. Many evening before the girl disappeared, they saw something outside her window, but it was impossible to see what it was. They grabbed for a gun and an axe each time, but it disappeared as fast as it came. Then the girl disappeared, and they looked for her through the summer, but did not find her. Finally a day a man saw her, and he was quick to toss his knife over her, and she was free from the hulder people.
The girl had been treated good, cause she had become thick and fat in the time she was taken. But a part of the hulders had remained, because the day they returned from the shieling when autumn came, she rolled like a ball of yarn down the steepest hills. And frivolous she remained all her days.’
(Translated from Huldra og annen trollskap page 40)
The male hulder also has a lot in common with the worst sort of stalkers we have today. That will repeatedly court a woman, and then grow vengeful when she keeps declining him. In the 1800’s, there was a girl at Andøy in Nordland that was tending to some cows. She met a man that started too quickly to talk about marriage. She was already engaged to another man, and didn’t want to hear any of it. The man didn’t give up though, and he would return many times and ask her again. He was even so honest he told her where he was from and wanted her to come and visit him sometime. However, no matter how hard he tried, she would hold firm and always say no. Then when she and her fiancé was taking a shortcut over a mountain, she became vary and saw that the man was coming behind them, slowly closing in on them. She asked her fiancé if he could see him, but he couldn’t.
The man caught up to them, and he spoke to her again about marriage and she answered him the same as she had always done. However, this time he became really mad, and he told her that she would not stand as a bride with anyone else either. They barely got down from the mountain and to where they were going before the girl fell ill, and travel home again. She became weaker and weaker, and in the end a wise neighbor woman realized what had happened and asked everyone that came to lay their hands on her, hoping it would save her from the curse. It did not help though, and later the girl would die with horrible pains.
The girl does all right in this story, she declines all his advances, and keeps true to her fiancé, yet she still ends up dying.
Another story with a similar male hulder is about Randi Zakriheien from Nordland as well. She even went home with him a lot of times, and would get lavish gifts, that would turn to dirt once she took them outside the mountains. He forced her to sleep with him and in the end she had to promise to marry him. She did her best to postpone it, and as she went to get help, two local men took her to a priest to get her help. He could do nothing for her, and neither could the next priest they asked. It got so bad that when they rowed to get to the next priest a follow of hulders came up in a boat beside them and only Randi could see them, while the men could only hear the oars and bashing of the waves under the boat. The hulders tried to take her away, but the men was quick, and tied her to the boat so she wouldn’t be taken away. They tried pushing the boat over, but one of the men shot over the sides of the boat until the hulders let them be.
The next priest could not help either, but after that they heard of the priest from Rodø, that was even supposed to be able to use the black book. On the way to him, the hulders still floated beside them, and Randi would even speak to them as they went along.
Once they arrived at Rodø, the priest waited for them, and knew what their business was. He made the sign of the cross on Randi, and locked her in his room. During the night he put her at the foot end of his bed to protect her. He must have been bad at his art though, cause as he fell asleep, the hulders came and took her away.
After looking for a good while, they find her under the floor of a barn, dressed as a bride and almost half dead. This time the priest read verses over her better, and kept her in his bed for 3 nights. Then she was completely saved from the underground people. She could not see them again, and the priest could inform that she had 3 children with the hulder before becoming free from him. She later got married, and was free from them forever.
The idea of a priest deciding to keep a woman in his bed for 3 days straight is probably one of the most unsettling things in this entire story. And one can wonder how good he was at his job when most other stories ends a lot better with someone tossing iron over the fair lady. The bedroom didn’t really seem needed.
Still, it is one of the many stories of how poor women often didn’t fare too well with the hulder man, and would be at his mercy until she was saved or died or worse, was caught in the mountain with him forever.
In a lot of stories, huldra don’t need to bring the man to the mountain with her to become happily married. A lot of stories says that healthy and long families hail from a man marrying a hulder and bringing her to live a Christian life instead. All over Norway there are different versions, but most of them go the same. A man falls in love with a beautiful woman he meets in the mountain, and takes her to get married. Sometimes he notices her tail, and other times he don’t before they stand there to be wed. But once they both say their ‘yes’, the tail will fall off her, and she will be nothing but a beautiful human woman, and the man has a hardworking and strong wife to help him in life. Most of the stories will have the man for some reason be mean and cruel to his wife after, and often lazy, leaving her to do most of the work. Until she one day has enough, and often she will take a horse shoe in her hands, and easily unbend it before him. Telling him how lucky he is that she loves him, cause she could do the same to him if not. After this show of power, the man will shape up, and they will live a long and happy life together.
Huldra herself is usually seen, and today used, in this way. She wants a man, and she will take the man she wants as passionately as she can. She is brass, she is much stronger than the man, and in many cases also smarter. She is a power house, and she does what she wants. So while old stories might use her as a warning to how women should not fare, she has in modern Norway become more of a feminist symbol. In 1994, hulderprisen (the hulder prize) was made by a magazine, and the prize goes to free and independent women, in the spirit of huldra. The first winner of the prize was Bishop Rosemarie Køhn, and she gave these thoughts on the hulder:
‘I think huldra represents a sort of dream of freedom, a dream that women can also have power and authority. In real life, woman has through the centuries been kept down. Huldra is free from all of this.’
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