Alluring Fossegrimen, Sirens, and David

Murder will out

Kittelsen. The Nix, 1904. Section.

King David of the Bible committed adultery and stated, "As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay ... because he did such a thing and had no pity."

Nathan said to David, "You are the man! You struck down Uriah ... with the sword of the Ammonites. [2 Samuel 12:6-9, passim]

David did not deserve to live after that, on his own word. Still many hail him! Besides, the king took to ritual-magical use of hyssop to live on anyhow. [Psalm 51:7]

Murder by stealth is something too.

Airy Beings Abound Too

Birgit Herzberg Johnsen (now: Birgit H. Kaare) writes about supernatural beings in the Norwegian tradition:

Many of the legends are connected with the sea. There are many about the sea monster . . . Otherwise there are tales about various creatures of the sea, the most common being about the sea ghost, Draugen. He is considered to be the ghost of someone who has drowned or the personification of all who have died at sea. Draugen is [very often] described as a headless fisherman dressed in oilskins. He sails the seas in half a boat and wails when someone is about to drown.

In inland lakes and rivers lives the river sprite or Nixie. He ... tries to lure people into the water with him. Like Draugen, he also gives warning of when someone is about to drown. He represents what is dangerous and unpleasant about water ...

Specifically Norwegian traditions are legends about the spirit which plays the fiddle, (Fossegrimen), who lives in waterfalls and who can teach would-be fiddlers how to play ...

Great numbers of mythical creatures inhabit the mountains and forests, and legends about landmarks created by troll exist all over the country. Sometimes the trolls themselves remain standing in stone ... The pixies, (haugfolket), or the subterraneans, (de underjordiske), undoubtedly play the biggest role in Norwegian legend. They consist of a large group of supernatural beings (vetter). They have many names ... Legend has it that these people are the descendants ofthe children that Eve hid from God ... Another legend tells that those who live underground were angels whom the Lord had expelled from paradise.

Those who live underground are usually considered as being of a lesser order than humankind, and they are envious of the people who are able to live out in the sunlight (i solheimen). They are often smaller than humans, and they dress in blue or grey. Their world is much like the world of humans ... they live underground or inside mountains, and many legends tell how one can hear them from inside the mountain or about coming across them above ground, seeing their flocks or similar stories. Henrik Ibsen used material from such legends in his "Peer Gynt". The huldre-people can enter into our world and so can the things they own ...

Of the house spirits which follow the clan or the farm, the gnomelike nisse is the focus of a rich tradition of stories. He fights nisser from other farms ... [◦Link]

A question is how we can profit from such beings. Some write books about them. The Americanised guru Paramahansa Yogananda writes in chapter 43 of his Autobiography of a Yogi that his resurrected guru Yukteswar communicated many ideas to him, more or less by thought transference, while in a hotel in Bombay:

"The ordinary astral universe ... is peopled with millions of astral beings who have come, more or less recently, from the earth, and also with myriads of fairies, mermaids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods and spirits, all residing on different astral planets in accordance with karmic qualifications."

To derive as much benefit as possible from tales of supernatural beings of folklore, one may consider they represent repressed sides to humans, each in their own particular ways. That may be termed a psychoanalytical angle. In such a light, the alluring wood siren, the hulder, represents erotic attraction fairly often, because young sirens are presented as attractive females. Norwegian hulders, however, have a cow's tail, which they seek to hide in meetings with humans. Moreover, hulders in Norway have a hollow back in many tales, but not all of them. Tips:

• A hollow back spells not substantial enough to count.

• The cow's tail means something animalistic is involved, possibly repressions, and so on. The expression "Thinking with one's behind (buttocks)" - (projecting, etc.) reminds of low-levelled mental functioning anyhow.

These are not absolute truths or verities; only suggestions to follow up tentatively, ad lib. In some legends the hulder is stout and able-bodied, a fine wife and mother - so people did not conceive of these being in the same ways in places far apart. Take that into account too.

What is more, the folklore of such beings goes a long way back in history. Sirens appear in Homer's Odyssey. It is a poem from the 9th or 8th century BCE.

Sirens and other reaked-out beings, like nixies and the like, are rather often made use of for substantial entertainment nowadays, such as in movies.

And the main thing is to enjoy oneself! Alluring Fossegrimen, Sirens, and David