“… but what was scary with all of these sounds, was that in one moment it sounded just beside me, in the next far away. Soon it was cancelled out by wild screams under flapping wings, soon distant calls for help, before it all suddenly became silent again. I was grasped by a unspeakable anxiety. It moved cold through me for each sound, and the dark forest heightened the fear. All I saw and noticed seemed distorted, moving, alive and it was like thousands of hands and arms reached out for the lost wanderer.”
This is how it is described in ‘a summer night in Krokskogen’ in the fairy tale collection of Asbjørnsen and Moe, when a young man walks the wrong way home and finds himself in unknown ground in Oslomarka. The forested and hilly areas surrounding Oslo in Norway. It really isn’t hard to let your thoughts drift when you find yourself alone in the beautiful and mysterious nature here in Norway. If you want to put a word on it, use ‘Trolsk’. Built up from the word for Trolls, it is both a work to use on a troll being quite mean and mischievous, but it is also a word we here in Norway use for a mysterious and magical feeling. If you are in the forest in the misty morning, and the mist lies thick around you, some light barely getting through the thick trees over. You might find yourself thinking how magical and enchanted it feels. Well, that is ‘Trolsk’.
You can wander the forests and mountains in Norway, and see trolls in the mountains around you, or swear you just saw huldra dance past you with her cow tail. Or maybe even see something red in the crook of your eyes as a nisse is on its way to the barn for its Christmas porridge.
Norway is created and formed on traditions, and even if there is not many that think too much about them today, many of our holidays and traditions are formed by old belief. Big parts of our Christmas celebrations here in Norway have roots in old heathen jule celebrations from the middle ages. It all just followed us over when we adopted Christianity. Ørnulf Hodne writes: “Christmas is the holiday when the combination of Christian and pre-Christian images created the strongest folklore with the strongest power over the mind.”
There are some big changes since then though, the biggest one is that today, most people do not see Christmas season as the start of the darkest and most dangerous time of the year. Where we have to beware of Åsgårdsreia, a parade of the worst of criminals and spirits that wandered around all nights during Christmas after Lussi Long night. No, today Christmas is a much warmer time, where love and compassion for your fellow humans and miracles drive the darkness away.
So, since we have all moved along since the middle ages, and the most of us are sure Santa was always our father, or a neighbor that might have had a little too much to drink, before donning the red suit and beard for then to hand out gifts, and then take some pictures with some screaming and traumatized kids. Memories for life that.
And if any of us are out in the lake swimming, we are more inclined to think the slippery grip of our foot is some seaweed before we are sure Draugen has his slippery dead fingers around our leg.
There is really no reason to care much about the old Lore then is it? It is old and outdated.
Well, for the same reason that people through all times has been fascinated by ghost stories and myths. Of the same reason we here in Norway has started to make movies based on the fairy tales of Askeladden (Ashladd) and movies more know around the world like the Troll Hunter. Even around the world everyone are swallowing about 100 different series of people telling their own true stories of hauntings.
We love a good story. And there are so many good, wonderful and strange stories that we can find with the Norwegian nature as the stage. Ghosts in all colors are found through all of Norway. Trolls are said to have formed the mountains around us. Some families still say they are descendants of huldra and have hulder silver to prove it. Court cases against the dead that does not want to leave their old homes and aim to make sure no one else survives it either.
No, there are too many good stories here to let it all be left forgotten. And that is what my aim with this blog is. Each week there will be a new story shared. Everything from ghosts, lore creatures and now and again just cases of strange historic happenings. Now and again we might also branch out to foreign lore that will run parallel to the lore here in Norway.
I want to make more people interested, and where it is possible I will leave the sources I use. I know this blog is in English, so not everyone can read Norwegian, and that is another reason I feel that a page like this might be needed. Because there are so many good stories that you can only find in the original Norwegian language, so I want to help translate and explain the stories that interest me.
Also, it also seems like there has been some interest in Norway as well. In 2018, the University of Oslo created a myth map of Norway. Where they collected all the stories they have found from old records. Werewolves, witches, ghosts, wizards, devils and trolls. And they got an overwhelming response to their project, as after just two weeks, over 72.000 people had used the map. Sadly the map is in Norwegian, so not everyone can get much out of it, but if you for some reason are coming to Norway in the near future, you might want to check out if there is anything you should beware.
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