Fairy Tales

THE BOG KING’S DAUGHTER

THE STORKS TELL THEIR young so many fairy tales, all from the bog and the marsh. They usually adapt the stories to age and apprehension. The youngest ones are satisfied if they say, “cribble crabble paddle waddle,” which they think is super. But the older ones want a deeper meaning, or at least something about the family. We all know one of the two oldest and longest stories that the storks have preserved—the one about Moses who was placed in the waters of the Nile by his mother. He was found by a princess, given a good upbringing, and became a great man even though we don’t know where he’s buried. That’s a well-known story!

The other story is not well known, maybe because it’s more a domestic story. This story has been passed from stork mother to stork mother for a thousand years, and each of them has told it better and better. And now we shall tell it best of all.

The first stork couple who experienced it and told about it had their summer home on a Viking log house by Vildmosen in Vendsyssel. That’s a great bog in Hjørring County, close to Skagen in Jutland, if we are to give a precise description. It’s still an enormously big bog. You can read about it in the Hjørring county description. It was once a sea bottom, but it heaved itself up. It stretches for miles in all directions, surrounded by damp meadows and ponds, peat bogs, cloudberry plants, and stunted trees. There’s almost always a fog hovering over the bogs, and seventy years ago there were still wolves there. It really deserves its name, “Wild Bog,” and you can imagine how wild it was, how much bog and water there were a thousand years ago! But for the most part, you saw the same things then that you see now. The reeds are the same height and had the same long leaves and purplish brown feathery flowers that they have now. The birch stood there with white bark and its fine airy leaves as it does now, and as far as living things that came there are concerned—well, the fly carried the same cut to his black funereal outfit as he does now, and the stork’s colors were white with black and red stockings. In contrast, the people had a different cut to their clothes then than now, but it happened the same for all of them, peasant or hunter—everyone—who walked onto the quagmire a thousand years ago, as it does today. They fell through and sank down to the bog king, as they called him, who rules in the great bog kingdom. You could also call him the swamp king, but we think it’s better to say bog king. And the storks called him that too. Very little is known about his reign, but that’s probably for the best.

Close to the bog, right by the Lim fjord, lay the Viking’s log house with a cellar of stone, a tower, and three floors of logs. The storks had built their nest at the top of the roof. The mother stork was lying on her eggs and was certain that all would go well.

One evening stork father was out later than usual, and when he came home, he looked ruffled and uneasy.

“I have something quite terrible to tell you,” he said to mother stork.

“Don’t do it!” she said. “Remember that I’m brooding. I could take injury from it, and that would affect the eggs.”

“You have to know about it,” he said. “The daughter of our host in Egypt has come up here. She dared to make the trip, and she has disappeared!”

“The one who’s related to the fairies? Oh, tell me! You know that I can’t stand being kept waiting when I’m brooding.”

“You see, mother, she came to believe what the doctor said, like you told me. She believes that the white water lilies here might help her sick father, and she flew here in swan-skin with the two other swan-skin princesses, who fly up here every year to bathe and be rejuvenated. She came, and she is gone!”

“You’re so long-winded,” said stork mother. “The eggs can catch cold! I can’t stand being kept in suspense!”

“I keep alert, you know,” said stork father, “and this evening, as I was walking in the reeds where the swamp can support me, three swans came flying. There was something about the flying style that told me: pay attention—these are not really swans— they are just swan-skins! You have a feeling about it, mother. Like me, you know what is real!”

“Of course,” she said, “but tell me about the princess. I am tired of hearing about swan-skins.”

“Well, here in the middle of the bog, you know, it’s like a lake,” said stork father. “You can see a little of it if you get up. By the reeds and the green quagmire there’s a big alder stump. The three swans landed on that, flapped their wings, and looked around. One of them threw off her swan-shape, and I recognized the princess of our house in Egypt. She sat with no other cape than her long black hair. I heard her ask the other two to take good care of the swan-skin while she dove under the water to pick the flower she thought she saw. They nodded and then rose up and took along the empty swan-skin. ‘I wonder what they are going to do with that,’ I thought, and she must have asked them the same thing because she got an answer, right in front of her eyes. They flew up in the air with her swan-skin. ‘Dive down,’ they shouted, ‘you’ll never fly in swanskin again, never see Egypt! Stay in the wild bog!’ and then they tore her swan-skin in hundreds of pieces so that the feathers were flying everywhere like in a snow storm. And the two wretched princesses flew away.”

“That’s ghastly!” said stork mother. “I can’t stand hearing about it—tell me what happened next!”

“The princess moaned and cried! The tears rolled down onto the alder stump, and then it moved—because it was the bog king himself! The one who lives in the bog. I saw how the stump turned, and then it wasn’t a stump any longer. Two long mossy branches reached up, like arms. The poor child was frightened and ran away into the quivering quagmire, but the bog can’t bear me, much less her, and so she sank right down. The alder trunk sank with her, for it was he who was pulling her down. Big black bubbles rose, and then there was no trace left. Now she is buried in the wild bog. She’ll never bring the flower back to Egypt. Oh, you wouldn’t have been able to stand the sight of this, mother!”

“You shouldn’t tell me things like this at such a time! It can affect the eggs. The princess will take care of herself, I’m sure. I suppose some one will help her. Now if it had been you or me, or one of ours, it would have been all over!”

“Well, I’ll keep a close eye on it,” said stork father, and he did.

And a long time passed.

Then one day he saw a green stalk shoot up deep from the bottom, and when it reached up to the surface of the water, a leaf grew out, wider and still wider. Close by there was a bud, and when the stork flew over it one morning, it opened in the strong rays of the sun, and right in the middle of it lay a lovely child, a little girl. She looked as if she had just gotten out of her bath. She resembled the princess from Egypt so much that at first the stork thought it was her, who had become little again. But when he thought about it, he realized it was more likely that she was the child of the princess and the bog king. That’s why she was lying in a water lily.

“She can’t remain lying there,” thought the stork, “and there are already so many of us in my nest. But I have an idea! The Viking’s wife doesn’t have any children, but she wishes she had a little one. Since they say I bring the little ones, I might as well do it for once! I’ll take the child to the Viking woman. That will make her happy.”

And the stork took the little girl and flew to the log house. He pecked a hole with his beak in the pig bladder window, laid the child at the Viking woman’s breast, and flew home to stork mother and told her about it. Indeed the children listened too, for they were old enough to hear it.

“You see, the princess isn’t dead. She has sent the little one up here, and I’ve placed her.”

“It’s what I said from the beginning,” said stork mother. “Now think a little bit about your own! It’s almost time to travel. Every now and then I feel a tickle in my wings. The cuckoo and the nightingale have already left, and I heard the quails saying that we will soon have a good tail wind. Our kids will manage the maneuvers just fine, if I know them.”

Well, how happy the Viking woman was when she woke up in the morning and found the lovely little child at her breast! She kissed and patted it, but the child cried terribly and flailed her arms and legs. She didn’t seem at all happy. Finally she cried herself to sleep, and the sight of the sleeping child was the most beautiful thing you could imagine. The Viking woman was so happy and light-hearted, and it occurred to her that now perhaps her husband with all his men would return just as unexpectedly as the child had come. So she and the others got busy to have everything ready. They hung up the long, colored tapestries that the woman and her maids had woven themselves with the representations of their idols: Odin, Thor, and Freya. The slaves had to scrub the old shields that decorated the walls. Cushions were placed on the benches and dry firewood piled in the fireplace in the middle of the hall so the fire could quickly be lit. The Viking woman worked too so that in the evening she was very tired and slept well.

When she woke up towards morning, she was totally aghast because the little child was gone. She leapt up, lit a pine tar torch, and looked around. There, lying by her feet when she stretched them out in bed, lay not the little child, but a big hideous frog. She was disgusted, took a big pole, and was going to kill the frog, but it looked at her with such strange sad eyes that she couldn’t do it. Once again she looked around. The frog uttered a faint, pitiful croak. The woman gave a start and sprang from the bed over to the shutter and opened it. The sun came out at the same time and cast its rays right into the bed onto the big frog, and all at once it was as if the beast’s wide mouth pulled together and became little and red. The limbs stretched out and turned into small, lovely shapes. It was her own lovely little child lying there, and not an ugly frog.

“What’s this?” she said. “Have I dreamed a bad dream? It’s my own lovely fairy child lying there!” And she kissed it and pressed it to her breast, but it scratched and bit and acted like a wild kitten.

The Viking didn’t come home that day or the next, although he was on his way. The wind was against him, and blew towards the south for the sake of the storks. A tail wind for one is head wind for another.

After a few days and nights it was clear to the Viking woman what was happening with her little child. The child was bewitched. During the day it was as lovely as a fairy but had an evil, wild disposition. At night, in contrast, it was an ugly frog, quiet and whimpering, with sorrowful eyes. There were two natures that shifted back and forth, both internally and externally. It was because the little girl that the stork had brought had her mother’s exterior during the day combined with her father’s disposition. At night she resembled her father in her bodily shape, but her mother’s mind and heart were evident within. Who could break this black magic spell? The Viking woman was sad and worried about it, but she still loved the poor little creature, whose condition she didn’t dare tell her husband about. Now that he would soon be home, he would undoubtedly, as the custom was, lay the child outside on the highway to be taken by whomever wanted it. The kind woman didn’t want that to happen and decided that her husband should only see the child by daylight.

One morning the whistling of stork wings was heard over the roof. More than a hundred stork couples had rested there that night after the big maneuvers. Now they flew upwards to start heading south.

“Everyone ready!” came the shout. “Wives and children too!”

“I’m so light,” said one of the young storks. “There’s crawling and creeping way out in my legs as if they were full of living frogs. Oh, how lovely it is to be traveling abroad!”

“Stay with the flock,” said father and mother, “and don’t chatter too much, it saps your breathing.”

And they flew off.

At the very same moment a horn was heard across the heath. The Viking had landed with all his men. They turned towards home with rich booty from the Gallic coast, where the people, like in Wales, prayed in their fright:“From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us!”1

They turned towards home with rich booty from the Gallic coast.

Now what life and merriment there was in the Viking house by the wild bog! The mead vat was brought into the hall. The fire was lit, and horses were slaughtered. This was going to be a real feast! The sacrificial priest sprayed the horse blood on the slaves as a consecration. The fire crackled, the smoke drifted up to the ceiling, and soot dripped from the beams, but they were used to that. Guests were invited, and they received good gifts. Intrigues and deceitfulness were forgotten. They drank and threw gnawed bones in each other’s faces—that was a sign of being in a good mood. The skald—he was a kind of musician who was also a warrior—had been with them and knew what he was singing about. He sang a ballad in which they heard all about their heroic deeds and remarkable events in battle. After each stanza he sang the same refrain:“Cattle die, kinsmen die,

one day you die yourself;

I know one thing that never dies—

the dead man’s reputation.”²

And then they all pounded on their shields and hammered with their knives or bones on the table. They made a lot of noise.

The Viking woman sat on the cross-bench in the open banquet hall. She was wearing a silk dress and gold arm-rings and big amber beads. She was wearing her best clothes, and the skald also mentioned her in his song. He talked about the golden treasure she had brought her rich husband. And the Viking was truly fond of the lovely child. He had only seen it in daylight, but he liked her wild disposition. He said that she could become a formidable valkyrie who would conquer a warrior. Her eyes wouldn’t blink when a practiced hand, in jest, cut off her eyebrows with a sharp sword.

The mead vat was emptied, and a new one brought in. They drank copiously. They were people who could hold their liquor. In those days the saying was: “The herds know when it’s time to go home and give up grazing, but a foolish man will always forget the size of his stomach.”³ They knew that, all right, but do as I say, not as I do! They also knew that “love turns to loathing if you sit too long on someone else’s bench,”⁴ but still they stayed. Meat and mead are good things! They had a good time, and at night the slaves slept in the warm ashes, dipped their fingers in the greasy soot, and licked them. It was a glorious time!

The Viking went out on a raid again that year although the fall storms had started. He traveled with his men to the coast of Wales, which was just “over the pond,” he said. And his wife remained at home with her little girl, and the fact was that she soon cared more for the poor frog with the gentle eyes and deep sighs than the lovely girl who scratched and bit her.

The raw, damp autumn fogs that gnaw leaves, which they called mouthless, spread over the forest and heath. Featherless birds, as they called the snowflakes, were flying one after the other. Winter was coming. The sparrows commandeered the storks’ nest and commented in their way on the absent owners. And where was the stork couple with all their children now?

The storks were in Egypt, where the sun was shining warmly like a lovely summer day here. The tamarind and acacia trees were flowering everywhere. The crescent moon of Mohammed shone brightly from the domes of the temples, and there were many pairs of storks resting on the slender towers after their long trip. Big flocks of them had nests next to each other on the enormous columns and broken arches of temples and forgotten ruins. The date palm lifted its umbrella roof high up, as if it wanted to be a parasol. The greyish white pyramids stood like shady outlines against the clear sky towards the desert, where the ostrich knew it could use its legs, and the lion sat with big wise eyes and watched the marble sphinx that lay half buried in the sand. The waters of the Nile had receded, and the entire riverbed was crawling with frogs, and for the stork family this was the most beautiful view in the whole country. The young ones thought that it was an optical illusion, so incredible did they find everything.

“This is what it’s like here, and it’s always like this here in our warm land!” said stork mother, and the little ones’ stomachs tingled.

“Is there more to see?” they asked, “are we going to travel further into the country?”

“There’s nothing more to see!” said stork mother. “On the fertile side there’s only trackless forest where the trees grow into each other and are entangled with prickly vines. Only the elephants with their thick legs can find their way through there. The snakes there are too big for us, and the lizards are too lively. And if you go into the desert, you’ll get sand in your eyes at best, and at the worst you’ll get into a sand storm. No, it’s best here! There are frogs and grasshoppers! I’m staying here, and so are you!”

And they stayed. The old storks sat in their nests on the slender minarets and rested, but still were busy grooming their feathers and rubbing their red stockings with their beaks. Then they lifted their necks, greeted each other solemnly, and raised their heads with the high foreheads and their fine, smooth feathers. Their brown eyes shone so wisely. The little female storks walked solemnly through the succulent reeds, glanced at the other young storks, made acquaintances, and with every third step, swallowed a frog, or walked around with a little snake dangling from their bills. They thought it looked becoming, and the snakes were tasty. The young male storks quarreled with each other, flapped their wings at each other, pecked with their beaks, even drawing blood, and then one got engaged and another got engaged, the young females and the young males. This was what they lived for, after all. They built nests, and then came new quarreling, since in the hot countries everyone is so hot tempered. But it was all fun and brought great joy to the old storks. One’s own children can do no wrong! The sun shone every day, and every day there was plenty of food. There was nothing to do but enjoy oneself. But inside the rich palace of the Egyptian landlord, as they called him, there was no enjoyment.

The rich, powerful master lay on a couch, all of his limbs stiff. He was stretched out like a mummy in the middle of the big hall with the colorfully painted walls. It looked like he was lying in a tulip. Relatives and servants stood around him. He wasn’t dead, but it couldn’t really be said that he was living either. The water lily flower from the northern land, the one that had to be sought and picked by the one who loved him best, the one that could bring deliverance, would never be brought. His beautiful young daughter, who had flown away over sea and shore in the shape of a swan, far towards the north, would never come back. “She is dead and gone,” the two returning swan maidens had reported. They had constructed a whole story between the two of them, and it went like this:

“All three of us flew high up in the air. A hunter saw us and shot his arrow. It hit our young friend, and slowly she sank like a dying swan down into a forest lake, singing her last farewell. We buried her there on the bank under a fragrant weeping birch. But we have taken revenge. We tied smoldering tinder under the wing of a swallow that nested under the eave of the hunter’s reed roof. It flared up. The house went up in flames, and he was burned to death. The flames lit up the lake all the way to the weeping birch, where she now lies, earth in earth. She’ll never come back to Egypt.”

They both cried, and when stork father heard the story, he chattered his beak so it rattled: “Lies and fabrication!” he cried. “I would like to stab them in the heart with my beak!”

“And break it off,” said stork mother. “Then you’d look really attractive! Think about yourself and your family first. You should keep out of everything else.”

“But I’ll sit up on the edge of the open dome tomorrow when all the wise and learned men gather to talk about the sick man. Maybe then they’ll come a little closer to the truth.”

And the wise and learned men gathered and talked a lot, talked widely about things that the stork couldn’t get anything out of—and nothing came out of it for the sick man either, or for his daughter in the bog. But we may as well listen a little bit, since there’s so much to listen to anyway.

Indeed, the right thing is to hear and know what happened before this, so we can follow the story better. We should at least know as much about it as stork father does:

“Love brings forth life! The highest love brings forth the highest life! His life’s salvation can only be won through love!” is what was said, and it was exceptionally wise and well said, the learned ones assured each other.

“That’s a lovely thought,” stork father said right away.

“I don’t quite understand it,” said stork mother, “but that’s not my fault. It’s the idea’s fault. But it doesn’t make any difference because I have other things to think about.”

And then the learned men had talked about love in one way and another, and the difference between the love between lovers and that between parents and children; between the light and growing things, how the sun kisses the mud and that causes sprouts to shoot forth—it was so long-winded and technically explained that it became impossible for stork father to follow along, much less repeat it. He became quite pensive about it, partly closed his eyes, and stood on one leg for a whole day afterwards. Scholarship was very difficult for him to bear.

But stork father had understood one thing. He had heard both the common people and the most distinguished speak from their hearts. It was a great misfortune for thousands of people, and for the whole country too, that that man had taken ill and wouldn’t recover. It would be a joy and blessing if he could regain his health. “But where does the flower grow that can bring him back to health?” They had all asked that, searched in long articles, in the twinkling stars, in wind and weather, searched all the roundabout methods that could be found, and finally the learned and wise, as already mentioned, found the answer: “Love brings forth life, the life of the father,” and in this they were saying more than they realized themselves. Then they repeated this and wrote it up as a prescription : “Love brings forth life,” but how the whole thing was going to be worked out, they didn’t know. Finally they agreed that the help must come through the princess—she who loved her father with all her heart and soul. They also finally figured out how it should be done. That was more than a year and a day ago now. At night when the new moon had set, she was to go to the marble sphinx by the desert, brush away the sand from the door in its foot, and go through the long hallway that led to the middle of one of the big pyramids. One of antiquity’s great kings lay there as a mummy, surrounded by splendor and magnificence. She was to lean her head next to the king, and it would be revealed to her how she could revive and save her father.

She had done all of that, and learned in a dream that she had to bring home a lotus flower from the deep bog in Denmark, the first flower to touch her breast in the deep water. The place was described precisely, and this flower would save her father.

And that is why she flew in the swan-skin from Egypt to the wild bog. Stork father and stork mother knew all this, and now we know it more clearly than we did before. We know that the bog king pulled her down to himself and know that she is dead and gone for those at home. Only the wisest of all of them still said, like stork mother, “She will take care of herself,” and they waited for that because they didn’t know what else to do.

“I think I’ll filch the swan-skins from those two wretched princesses!” stork father said. “Then they can’t get back to the bog and do any more harm. I’ll hide them up there until there’s a use for them.”

“Where will you hide them there?” asked stork mother.

“In our nest by the bog,” he said. “I can carry them with our youngest children, and if they get too heavy for us, then there are enough places on the way where we can hide them until the next trip. One swan-skin was enough for her, but two are even better. It’s a good thing to have lots of traveling clothes in the northern countries.”

“No one will thank you for it,” said stork mother, “but you’re the boss. Nobody listens to me except in brooding season!”

In the Viking house by the wild bog, where the storks flew towards spring, the little girl had been named. They had called her Helga, but that name was much too sensitive for a nature such as the one the lovely girl had. That became clearer month after month, and as the years passed, and the storks made the same journey—in the fall towards the Nile, in spring toward the bog—the little girl became a big girl, and before you knew it, she was a lovely maiden of sixteen. She had a beautiful shell, but she was hard and rough to the core, and wilder than most in that hard, dark time.

It was a pleasure for her to spatter the steaming blood of the butchered sacrificial horse with her white hands, and with savagery she bit the head off the black hen that the priest was going to butcher. She told her foster father in complete seriousness:

“If your enemies came here and threw a rope over the beams of the roof and tore it off your bedroom while you slept, I wouldn’t wake you if I could. I wouldn’t hear it, that’s how the blood is still rushing in that ear that you boxed years ago! I remember!”

But the Viking didn’t believe her. He was, like the others, fooled by her beauty. He didn’t know how Helga’s soul and skin changed. She sat on her horse as if grown to it, without a saddle, as it galloped at full speed. She wouldn’t jump off even if it started fighting with other angry horses. She often jumped out from the face of the cliff into the fjord with all her clothes on and swam in the swift currents out to meet the Viking as his ship sailed towards land. She cut the longest lock from her lovely, long hair and braided herself a bowstring. “Self made is well made,” she said.

The Viking woman was strong in both will and spirit as women of those times and custom were, but she acted like a gentle, anxious woman towards her daughter. Of course she knew that it was black magic that swayed the dreadful child.

It was as if Helga, out of pure sadistic pleasure, would often sit on the edge of the well when her mother stood on the balcony or walked out in the yard. She would flail her arms and legs around and let herself fall into the narrow, deep hole. There, with her frog nature, she would plop under the water and crawl out again as if she were a cat. Then she would walk into the hall dripping water so that the green leaves that were spread on the floor turned over in the stream of water.

But there was one thing that held little Helga: the twilight. Then she became quiet and a little thoughtful. She would listen and obey. A kind of inner feeling drew her to her mother then, and when the sun sank and the transformation, outer and inner, followed, she sat there still and sad, crumpled together in her frog shape. The body was now much bigger than a normal frog, and just for that reason the more gruesome. She looked like a pitiful dwarf with a frog head and webbing between her fingers. There was something so sad about the eyes that looked out. She had no voice, just a hollow croak like a child who sobs in its dreams. Then the Viking woman would take her in her lap. She forgot the ugly appearance and only looked at the sad eyes and said more than once: “I could almost wish that you were always my mute frog child. You are more awful to look at when the beauty turns outward.”

And she wrote runes against sorcery and sickness and cast them over the miserable child, but there was no improvement.

“You wouldn’t think that she was once so small that she lay in a lily pad,” said stork father. “Now she’s a grown person and looks just like her Egyptian mother whom we never saw again! She didn’t take care of herself, as you and the learned thought she would. I have flown for years now hither and yon across the bog, and there was never a sign of her. Well, I can tell you that in those years when I came up here a few days before you, to repair the nest and mend this and that, I have flown continually across the open water the whole night, as if I were an owl or a bat, but to no use. And we didn’t have any use for the two swan-skins either. The children and I dragged them up here from the land of the Nile, and that was hard enough. It took us three trips. Now they have lain for many years in the bottom of the nest, and if there’s ever a fire here, if the house burns, then they are lost!”

“And our good nest would be gone!” said stork mother. “You think less about that than you do about that feather-suit and your bog princess! You should just go down to her and stay in the mud! You are a poor father for your own children, as I’ve said from the first time I laid eggs. Just so we or the children don’t get an arrow in our wings from that crazy Viking girl! She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She should realize that we have lived here longer than she has. We never forget our duty. We pay our rent every year: a feather, an egg and a young one, as is only right. Do you think I dare to go down there when she’s outside, like I did in the old days, and like I do in Egypt, where I’m like a friend to them—without forgetting who I am—and even peek in the pots and pans? No, I sit up here and am irritated with her, that hussy—and I’m irritated with you too! You should have left her lying in the lily pad. Then she would be gone!”

“You are much more worthy of respect than one would think from your talk,” said stork father. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

And he made a jump, two heavy flaps of his wings, stretched his legs out behind him and flew, sailing away, without moving his wings. He was pretty far away when he gave a powerful wing flap. The sun shone on the white feathers, with the neck and head stretched out in front. He was flying fast and high.

“He is still the handsomest of them all!” said stork mother, “but I won’t tell him that.”

That fall the Viking came home early with his booty and captives. Among these was a young Christian priest, one of those men who persecuted the idols of the northern countries. There had been a lot of talk lately in the halls and among the women about the new religion that had already spread widely in the south, even reaching up to Hedeby by Slien⁵ through the missionary Ansgar. Even young Helga had heard about the belief in the white Christ, who in love had given himself to save them. But for her it was, as they say, in one ear and out the other. She only seemed to have a sense of the word love when she sat in her shriveled frog shape in her closed-up room. But the Viking woman had listened and felt herself strangely affected by the stories and legends that were going around about the son of one true God.

The men who had come home from their raids told about the magnificent temples of costly chiseled stone that had been raised for the one whose message was love. They had brought home a pair of large, gilded vessels, artistically carved and of pure gold. Each of them had a peculiar spicy fragrance. They were censers that the Christian priests swung in front of the altar where blood never flowed, but wine and consecrated bread were transformed in his blood—He who had given himself for as yet unborn generations.

The young captured Christian priest was brought down into the deep, stony cellar of the log house with his feet and hands bound with ropes of hemp. He was handsome. “He looks like Balder,”⁶ said the Viking woman, and she was touched by his suffering. But young Helga wanted them to pull a rope through his hamstrings and tie him to the heels of the wild oxen.

“Then I would let the dogs out. Whee! Away across the bogs and thickets to the heath! It would be fun to see, even more fun to follow him on the trip!”

The Viking did not want him to suffer that death, but since he had denied and persecuted the high gods, he would be offered to them tomorrow on the blood stone in the grove. It would be the first human sacrifice there.

Young Helga asked if she could be allowed to spatter the idols and the people with his blood. She sharpened her shiny knife, and when one of the big, ferocious dogs, of whom there were enough of there, ran by her feet, she stuck him in the side with the knife. “I wanted to test it,” she said, and the Viking woman looked sadly at the wild, evil-natured girl. And when night came and the characters of beauty in body and soul shifted in her daughter, she spoke warmly and sincerely to her from deep in her sorrowing soul.

The ugly frog with the troll body stood in front of her, fastened the brown sorrowful eyes on her, listened, and seemed to understand with human thought.

“Never, even to my husband, have I spoken of how doubly I suffer because of you!” said the Viking woman. “There is more pity in my heart for you than I could have believed myself. A mother’s love is great, but there was never love in your heart! Your heart is like a cold clump of mud. From where did you come to my house?”

Then the pathetic creature trembled strangely. It was as if the words touched an invisible bond between body and soul, and big tears appeared in its eyes.

“Hard times will come for you one day!” said the Viking woman. “And it will be terrible for me also! It would have been better if you had been set out on the highway and had the cold of night lull you to death.” And the Viking woman cried bitter tears and went away angry and sad, behind the loose skin curtain that hung over the beam and divided the room.

The huddled-over frog sat alone in the corner. She was silent, but every once in a while from inside her came a partly stifled sigh. It was as if a life was being born in pain deep in her heart. She took a step forward, listened, then went another step and with her clumsy hands grasped the heavy bar that was shoved across the door. Slowly she moved it and quietly pulled the peg that was set in over the latch. She grasped the lit lamp that was standing in the room. It was as if a strong will gave her the strength. She drew the iron peg out of the closed trapdoor and sneaked down to the captive. He was sleeping. She touched him with her cold, clammy hand, and when he awoke and saw the hideous creature, he shivered as if at a dreadful vision. She drew her knife, cut the ropes that bound him, and motioned to him to follow her.

He spoke holy names, made the sign of the cross, and when the creature remained unchanged, he said these words from the Bible:

“‘Blessed is he who considers the poor! The Lord delivers him in the day of trouble.’ Who are you? Why this form of an animal and yet full of acts of compassion?”

The frog beckoned and led him through an empty hallway behind sheltering hides out to the stable and pointed at a horse. He swung himself onto the horse, and she also leaped up and sat in front holding onto the horse’s mane. The captive understood her, and at a rapid pace they rode a path that he never would have found out to the open heath.

He forgot her awful shape and felt that the Lord’s mercy and compassion were working through this monster. He recited pious prayers and sang hymns, and she trembled. Was it the power of the prayer and the song that affected her, or was it a shiver from the cold in the morning that would soon come? What was it she felt? She lifted herself high in the air, wanted to stop the horse and get off, but the Christian priest held her as tightly as he could and sang a hymn loudly as if it could loosen the spell that held her in the hideous frog shape. The horse ran on, and the sky became red. The first ray of the sun shone through the cloud and with the clear flood of light came the transformation. She was again the beautiful young girl with the demonic evil nature. He held the most beautiful young woman in his arms and, terrified at this, he sprang from the horse and stopped it. He thought he had met another wicked wile of witchcraft. But with one jump young Helga was also on the ground. The short child’s dress she was wearing reached only to her knees. She pulled the sharp knife from her belt and rushed at the surprised priest.

“Just let me get you!” she screamed. “Let me get you, and my knife will be in you! You are as pale as hay, you beardless slave!”

She lunged towards him. They wrestled in battle, but it was as if an unseen power gave the Christian strength. He held her tightly, and the old oak tree close by seemed to come to his aid by ensnarling her feet in its roots that were partly loosened from the ground when they slid under them. There was a spring close by, and he splashed the fresh water over her breast and face, prayed for the unclean spirits to leave her, and blessed her as in Christian custom, but the water of baptism does not have any power where there is no inner flood of faith.

But in faith too he was the strong one. More lay in his act than man’s strength against struggling evil power, and it was as if it captivated her. She dropped her arms and looked with a wondering gaze and paling cheeks at this man who seemed to be a powerful wizard, strong in magic and the black arts. Those were dark runes that he read, and he drew symbols in the air. She would not have blinked if he had swung a gleaming axe or a sharp knife towards her eyes, but she did so when he drew the sign of the cross on her forehead and breast. Now she sat like a tame bird with her head bent on her chest.

Then he spoke to her gently of the act of love she had shown towards him in the night when she came to him in the shape of the ugly frog. She had cut his bonds and led him out to light and life. She was also tied, he said, tied with stronger bonds than had bound him, but she also would come to light and life with his help. He would take her to Hedeby, to the holy Ansgar. There, in that Christian place, the enchantment would be broken. But he didn’t dare have her sit in front of him on the horse, even if she sat there willingly.

“You must sit behind me on the horse, not in front. Your magical beauty has a power that comes from evil. I fear it—and yet the victory will be mine in Christ!”

He bent his knee and prayed so piously and sincerely. It was as if the quiet forest was consecrated thereby to a holy church. The birds started singing as if they belonged to the new congregation. The wild curled mint wafted as if it wanted to substitute for the ambergris and incense. He preached aloud the words from Holy Scripture: “To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And he spoke to her about “creation waiting with eager longing,” and while he talked the horse, that had carried them at such a furious pace, stood still and pulled at the big blackberry vines so that the ripe juicy berries fell down in little Helga’s hand, offering themselves for refreshment.

She patiently allowed herself to be lifted onto the horse’s back, and sat there like a sleepwalker, who neither wakes nor wanders. The Christian man tied two branches together with a cord of fibers in the shape of a cross. He held it high in his hand, and they rode through the forest that became denser and denser. The road went deeper and deeper and finally disappeared altogether. The black-thorns stood like barriers, and they had to ride around them. The spring did not become a running stream, but rather a stagnant bog, and they had to ride around it. There was restoration and refreshment in the fresh forest air, and there lay no less power in the gentle words that resounded with faith and Christian love in the heartfelt desire to lead the possessed one to light and life.

They say that raindrops hollow out the hard rock. Over time the waves of the sea polish the angular stones until they’re round. The dew of grace that fell over little Helga hollowed out the hardness and rounded the sharpness. But she didn’t recognize that, didn’t know it herself. Does the seed in the earth, when it’s dampened by life-giving moisture and the warm rays of the sun, know that it hides growth and a flower within itself?

He bent his knee and prayed so Piously and sincerely.

Just as the mother’s song roots itself unnoticed in the child’s mind, and the child repeats the single words without understanding them until they become clearer with time, so was the word working here, with the power to create.

They rode out of the forest and over the heath and then again through trackless woods, and towards evening they met a band of robbers.

“Where did you steal that beautiful girl from?” they shouted. They stopped the horse and pulled the two riders off, for there were many of them. The priest had no other weapon than the knife he had taken from little Helga, and he thrust with it to all sides. One of the robbers swung his axe, but the young Christian luckily jumped aside, otherwise he would have been struck. The axe flew deeply into the neck of the horse so the blood flowed out, and the animal fell to the ground. Little Helga, who awoke from her long, deep trance, threw herself over the gasping horse. The Christian priest stood in front of her to defend her, but one of the robbers swung his heavy iron hammer against his forehead so that it smashed, and blood and brains sprayed all around. He fell to the ground dead.

The robbers grabbed little Helga around her white arm, but just then the sun set. The last ray of sunshine disappeared, and she was changed to a hideous frog. The whitish green mouth stretched across half her face. The arms became thin and slimy, and a wide hand with webbing stretched out like a fan. The robbers dropped her terrified. She stood as a hideous monster in their midst and in the manner of a frog, she jumped into the air, higher than her own height, and disappeared in the thicket. The robbers thought that this must be Loki’s evil trick,⁷ or secret black magic, and they hurried from that place terrified.

The full moon was already risen. It gave radiance and light, and out from the thicket crept little Helga, in the pitiful shape of the frog. She stopped by the corpse of the Christian priest and by her murdered steed. She looked at them with eyes that seemed to cry. The frog head gave a start as when a child bursts into tears. She threw herself over first one and then the other. She took water in those hands that grew larger and more hollow with the webbing and poured it over them. They were dead, and dead they would remain! She understood that. Soon the wild animals would come and eat their bodies. No! That must not happen! So she dug in the ground as deeply as she could. She would dig a grave for them, but she had only a hard tree branch and both her hands to dig with, and between her fingers the webbing soon ripped and blood flowed. She realized that she would not be able to do it. So she took water and washed the dead man’s face, and covered it with fresh, green leaves. She brought big branches and laid them over him, shook leaves in between them, and took the largest stones she was able to lift and laid them over the dead limbs. Then she stuffed moss into any openings, and thought that the burial mound was strong and safe, but during this hard work the night passed. The sun came up and little Helga stood there in all her beauty, with bleeding hands and with tears on the rosy youthful cheeks for the first time.

During the transformation it was as if the two natures were fighting within her. She trembled and looked around as if she were waking from a troubling dream. She ran to a slender beech tree and held onto it for support, and then suddenly she climbed up like a cat to the tree top and clung to it. She sat there like an uneasy squirrel, sat there the entire long day in the deep forest loneliness, where everything is still and dead, as they say—dead? Well, there were a couple of butterflies fluttering around each other, in play or dismay. There were some ant hills close by, each with several hundred little creatures scurrying back and forth. Countless mosquitoes were dancing in the air, swarm after swarm. They chased past crowds of buzzing flies, ladybugs, dragon flies, and other little flying creatures. The earthworms crept out of the damp ground. The moles pushed up earth. Yes, as a matter of fact it was quiet, dead all around, as it’s said and understood. No one paid any attention to little Helga except the jays that flew shrieking around the tree top where she sat. They hopped on the branches towards her with bold curiosity. A blink of her eyes was enough to chase them off again, but they didn’t get any wiser to her, nor she to herself.

When evening was near, and the sun started to sink, the transformation summoned her to new action. She let herself slide down the tree, and as the last ray of light disappeared she stood there in the frog’s crouched shape with her hands’ torn webbed membranes, but the eyes now shone with a beauty that they didn’t have before when she was in beauty’s form. They were the mildest, gentlest eyes of a young girl that shone out from the frog’s mask. They witnessed to the deep spirit and the human heart. The beautiful eyes burst into tears and cried the heart’s heavy tears of release and relief.

The cross of branches, tied together with the fiber cord, and the last work of the priest who was now dead and gone, was lying beside the raised grave. Little Helga picked it up, and the thought came by itself—she planted it among the stones that covered him and the murdered horse. With the sad memory tears burst forth, and in this frame of mind she scratched the same sign into the earth around the grave, fenced around it so neatly—and as she formed the sign of the cross with both hands, the webbing fell off like a torn glove, and when she washed herself in the water of the spring, and wondered at her fine, white hands, she again made the sign of the cross in the air between herself and the dead man. Then her lips moved, and her tongue moved and that name that she most often had heard sung and spoken on the ride through the forest came audibly from her mouth. She said it: “Jesus Christ!”

Then the frog skin fell. She was the beautiful young girl, although her head bowed in fatigue. Her limbs needed rest, and she slept.

But her sleep was short. She was awakened at midnight. In front of her stood the dead horse, so radiant and full of life. Its eyes were shining, and radiance shone out from its wounded neck. Right beside him was the murdered Christian priest. “More handsome than Balder!” the Viking woman would have said, but yet he appeared luminous.

Then the frog skin fell. She was the beautiful young girl.

There was a seriousness in the big, gentle eyes; a righteous judgment, such a penetrating glance that it seemed to illuminate into every corner of her heart. Little Helga trembled from it, and her memory was awakened with a power as if on the Day of Judgment. Every good done for her, every loving word spoken to her became as if living in her again. She understood that it was love that had sustained her in these days of trial, in which the offspring of soul and clay was fermenting and striving. She acknowledged that she had only followed feelings and impulses and not done anything for herself. Everything had been given to her. Everything had been guided somehow. She bowed her head, humble and humiliated, shameful in front of him who could read each fold of her heart, and in this moment she perceived the blaze of the Holy Spirit in a flash of purification’s flame.

“You child of the bog,” the Christian priest said. “From earth, from the soil you were taken—from the earth you will again be resurrected! The sunlight that is incarnate in you will return to its creator—not a ray from the sun, but from God! No soul will be lost, but temporal time is long. It is life’s flight into eternity. I come from the land of the dead. One day you too will travel through the deep valley into the luminous mountainous country where mercy and perfection live. I can’t lead you to Hedeby for a Christian baptism. First you must shatter the shield of water over the deep bog bottom and drag up the living root of your conception and cradle. You must fulfill this deed before you can be consecrated.”

And he lifted her up on the horse and handed her a gilded censer like the one she had seen in the Viking house. There was a fragrance so sweet and strong coming from it. The open wound in his forehead shone like a radiant diadem. He took the cross from the grave and lifted it high in the air, and they flew away through the air, over the whispering forest, over the mounds where Viking kings were buried sitting on their horses. And the powerful figures rose up, rode out, and stopped on their mounds. The wide golden bands with gold clasps shone on their foreheads in the moonlight. Their capes whipped in the wind. The great snake—the lind-snake—that broods over treasure, lifted its head and looked after them. The dwarves peered out from mounds and furrows. They swarmed with red, blue and green lights. It looked like sparks in the ashes of burning paper.

Over the woods and heath, rivers and ponds they flew, up towards the great wild bog. They floated over it in a vast circle. The Christian priest lifted the cross high. It shone like gold, and from his lips came the chanting of the mass. Little Helga sang along as a child follows its mother’s song. She swung the censer, and there was a fragrance of the altar so strong and miraculous that the reeds and rushes of the bog bloomed because of it. All sprouts shot up from the deep bottom. Everything living arose. A profusion of water lilies spread out as if it were a woven carpet of flowers, and lying on it was a sleeping woman, young and beautiful. Little Helga thought she was looking at herself, her mirror image in the still water, but it was her mother she saw, the bog king’s wife, the princess from the land of the Nile.

The dead Christian priest commanded that the sleeping woman be lifted onto the horse, but it sank under the weight as if its body was only a shroud flying in the wind. But the sign of the cross strengthened the mirage, and all three rode to firm ground.

Then the rooster crowed in the Viking house, and the visions dissolved in fog and were carried away in the wind, but standing there facing each other were the mother and daughter.

“Is it myself I see in the deep water?” asked the mother.

“Is it myself I see in the shiny shield?” exclaimed the daughter and they moved closer to each other. Breast to breast, they embraced. The mother’s heart beat strongest, and she understood why.

“My child! My own heart’s flower! My lotus from the deep waters!”

And she clasped her child in her arms and cried. The tears were a new life and baptism of love for little Helga.

“In the shape of a swan I came here and then threw it off,” said the mother. “I sank down through the swirling marsh mud, deep down in the morass of the bog where it was like a wall closing around me. But I soon perceived a fresher current, and I was drawn deeper and ever deeper by some power. I felt sleep pressing on my eyelids, and I fell asleep. I dreamed. It seemed that I was once again in Egypt’s pyramid, but in front of me was the rocking alder stump that had startled me on the surface of the bog. I observed the cracks in the bark, and they lit up in colors and became hieroglyphics. I was looking at a mummy case. It burst, and from it stepped the thousand year old king, the mummy figure. He was black as pitch, glistening black like the forest snails or the greasy black mud. The bog king or the mummy of the pyramid? I didn’t know which. He threw his arms around me, and I felt I had to die. I didn’t perceive life again until I felt a warmth on my breast. There was a little bird sitting there flapping his wings, chirping and singing. It flew from my breast high up towards the heavy darkness above, but it was still tied to me by a long green ribbon. I heard and understood its notes of longing: Freedom! Sunshine! To the Father! Then I thought about my father in the sunlit land of home, my life and my love! And I loosened the ribbon and let it flutter away—home to father. Since that time I haven’t dreamed. I slept a deep and heavy sleep, until this hour when the sounds and scents lifted and released me!”

The green ribbon tied from the mother’s heart to the wings of the bird—where was it fluttering now? Where was it left lying? Only the stork had seen it. The ribbon was the green stalk, the bow the shining flower, cradle for the child who now had grown so beautiful, and who once again rested by her mother’s heart.

And as they stood there with their arms around each other, stork father flew in circles above them and then flew to his nest, fetched the swan-skins that had been hidden there for years, and threw one to each of them. The skins folded around them, and they lifted from the earth as two white swans.

“Let’s talk!” said stork father. “Now we understand each other’s language, even if the beak of one is different from that of the other! It is the luckiest thing imaginable that you came tonight because tomorrow we would be off, mother, the children, and I. We’re flying south. Well, look at me! I’m an old friend from Egypt, you know, and so is mother. But it’s in her heart rather than her neb. She always thought that the princess would take care of herself. The children and I carried the swan-skins up here. Oh, how happy I am! And how fortunate it is that I’m still here. We’ll be off at daybreak. A big flock of storks. We’ll fly in front, you can follow us. Then you won’t get lost. The children and I will also keep an eye on you!”

“And the lotus blossom I was to bring,” said the Egyptian princess, “flies by my side in the shape of a swan. I have my heart’s flower with me, and that’s the solution! Homeward! Homeward!”

But Helga said that she couldn’t leave Denmark before she saw her foster mother, the dear Viking woman, one more time. Helga thought of every good memory, every kind word, each tear, that her foster mother had cried. At that moment it was almost as if she loved that mother the best.

“Yes, we must go to the Viking house,” said stork father. “Mother and the children are waiting there, you know. How their eyes will pop and how they will chatter! Well, mother doesn’t say so much. She speaks briefly and to the point, but she means it all the more. Now I’ll just rattle a bit with my beak so they’ll know we’re coming.”

So stork father rattled with his beak, and he and the swans flew to the Viking hall.

Everyone there was still sleeping soundly. The Viking woman hadn’t gone to sleep until late at night. She lay worrying about little Helga who had been missing for three days along with the Christian priest. She must have helped him escape. It was her horse that was missing from the stable, but by what power had this occurred? The Viking woman thought about all the miracles that were said to be connected to the white Christ, and with those who believed in him and followed him. Her shifting thoughts took form in a dream. It seemed to her that she still sat awake on her bed, thinking. Outside was a brooding darkness. A storm was coming. She heard the sea rolling in the west and east from the North Sea and the Kattegat. The monstrous serpent that encircled the world in the depths of the sea shook with spasms.⁸ The night of the gods, Ragnarok, as the pagans called it, was approaching. The end of time when everything would perish, even the gods. The Gjallarhorn sounded, and the gods rode over the rainbow, clad in armor, to fight their last battle. Ahead of them flew the winged valkyries, and the procession ended with the figures of the dead warriors. The whole sky was lit around them like the northern lights, but darkness conquered there. It was a terrible time.

Next to the frightened Viking woman sat little Helga in her dreadful frog shape. She also was trembling and pressed herself up against her foster mother, who took her in her lap and held her tightly with love, no matter how dreadful the frog shape seemed. The air echoed with the sounds of clashing swords and clubs; whistling arrows like a storm of hail flew over them. The hour had come when earth and sky would break, the stars fall, and everything be destroyed in Surt’s fire. But she knew that a new earth and sky would come. Wheat would wave where the sea now rolled over the barren sands. The unmentionable God would rule, and Balder rise up to him, the gentle, dear one, released from the realm of the dead. He came—the Viking woman saw him. She knew his face. It was the captured, Christian priest. “White Christ!” she called aloud, and as she did so she pressed a kiss on the forehead of her hideous frog-child. Then the frog skin fell, and little Helga stood there in all her beauty, gentle as never before and with radiant eyes. She kissed her foster mother’s hands and blessed her for all the care and love she had granted her through the days of trials and troubles. She thanked her for the thoughts she had ingrained and awakened in her mind, thanked her for speaking the name she repeated: White Christ! And little Helga arose as a powerful swan, the wings spread wide with a whistling sound like a flock of birds flying away.

With this the Viking woman awoke. Outside she could hear the same strong flapping of wings. She knew it was the time when the storks departed. That was what she was hearing. She wanted to see them again before they flew, and tell them good bye! She got up and went out on the balcony, and she saw stork upon stork on the side roof and around the farm. Over the tall trees flocks were flying in great circles, but straight ahead of her, on the edge of the well, where little Helga had so often sat and frightened her with her savagery, two swans were now sitting. They looked at her with wise eyes, and she remembered her dream, and it still consumed her completely, as if it were reality. She thought about little Helga in the shape of a swan. She thought about the Christian priest, and all at once felt a great joy in her heart.

The swans flapped their wings and bowed their heads as if they also wanted to greet her, and the Viking woman stretched out her arms towards them, as if she understood that. She smiled through her tears and tumbling thoughts.

Then all the storks arose chattering with flapping wings for their trip south.

“We won’t wait for the swans,” said mother stork. “If they want to come along, they must come. We can’t stay here until the plovers leave! There’s something really lovely about traveling as a family, not like the chaffinches and sandpipers where the males fly by themselves and the females too. It’s strictly speaking not decent! And what kind of formation are those swans making?”

“Everyone flies in his own way,” said stork father. “The swans diagonally, the cranes triangularly and the plovers in curves like a snake.”

“Don’t mention snakes when we’re flying,” said stork mother. “It just gives the children inclinations that can’t be satisfied!”

“Are those mountains down there the ones I have heard about?” asked Helga in her swanskin.

“Those are thunderclouds drifting below us!” said her mother.

“What are those white clouds that are so high?” asked Helga.

“Those are the always snowcapped mountains you see,” said her mother, and they flew over the Alps, and down towards the blue Mediterranean.

“Africa’s land! Egypt’s strand!” the daughter of the Nile in her swan-skin shouted with joy, as she saw her native soil from high in the air. It appeared as a whitish-yellow wavy stripe.

The birds saw it too and sped up their flight.

“I smell the Nile mud and the wet frogs!” said stork mother. “There’s tickling in me! Now you’ll taste something! And you’ll see the African storks, ibis, and cranes. They all belong to our family, but are not as pretty as we are. They act distinguished, especially ibis, for the Egyptians have spoiled him. They mummify him, and stuff him up with spicy herbs. I’d rather be stuffed with living frogs and so would you! And you will be! Better to have something in your tummy when you’re alive than be made a fuss of when you’re dead! That’s my opinion, and I’m always right!”

“Now the storks have come!” they said in the luxuriant house by the Nile, where the royal gentleman was stretched out in the open hall on soft leopard skin cushions. He lay not living but not dead, hoping for the lotus blossom from the deep bog in the north. Relatives and retainers stood around him.

And into the hall flew two magnificent white swans that had come with the storks. They threw off the dazzling feather covers, and there stood two beautiful women as alike as two drops of dew. They bent over the pale, shrunken old man, and threw back their long hair. And as little Helga leaned over her grandfather, his cheeks grew rosy, his eyes regained their luster, and life returned to the stiff limbs. The old man rose up healthy and rejuvenated. His daughter and granddaughter embraced him in their arms as if they were giving him a morning greeting after a long heavy dream.

There was joy in the entire court and in the stork nest too, but there it was mostly because of the good food. The place was teeming with frogs. And while the learned ones quickly wrote a hasty story of the two princesses and about the flower of health that was such a great occurrence and blessing for house and country, the stork parents told the story in their way and for their family. But not until everyone was full, because otherwise they would have other things to do than listen to stories.

“Now you’ll become something!” whispered stork mother. “Nothing else is fair!”

“And what should I become?” said stork father, “and what have I done? Nothing!”

“You’ve done more than any of the others! Without you and the children the two princesses would never have seen Egypt again, or cured the old man. You’ll become something! You’ll definitely get a doctor’s degree, and our children will inherit it and then their children and so on! And you already look like an Egyptian doctor—in my eyes!”

The learned and wise ones explained the basic idea, as they called it, that ran through the whole course of events: “Love brings forth life!” It could be explained in different ways. “The warm sunbeam was Egypt’s princess who went down to the bog king and from their meeting the blossom sprang forth—”

“I can’t repeat the words exactly,” said stork father, who had listened from the roof and was telling about it in the nest. “What they said was so complicated, and it was so wise that right away they received high rank and gifts, even the cook got a big medal, but I think it was for the soup.”

“And what did you get?” asked stork mother. “They certainly didn’t forget the most important one, which is you? The learned men only talked about everything! But you will get your reward too, I’m sure.”

Late at night when the peace of sleep was resting over the rich and happy house, there was one who was still awake, and it wasn’t stork father, even though he stood up in the nest on one leg, sleeping watch. It was little Helga who was awake. She leaned out from the balcony and looked at the clear sky with the big shining stars, bigger and clearer in their radiance here than she had seen them in the north, but yet the same. She thought about the Viking woman by the great wild bog, about her foster mother’s gentle eyes and the tears she had shed over the poor frog-child who was now standing in radiance and starry splendor in the lovely spring air by the waters of the Nile. She thought about the love in the pagan woman’s heart, the love that she had shown a pathetic creature, who was an evil animal in human form and in animal form nasty to see and touch. She looked at the shining stars and remembered the radiance from the forehead of the dead, when they flew over the woods and swamps. Strains rang in her memory, words she had heard spoken when they rode away, and she had sat there as one possessed. Words about love’s great source: the greatest love that encompassed all things.

Oh, how much had not been given, won, and gained! Little Helga’s thoughts encompassed, day and night, her entire sum of happiness, and she looked at it like the child who turns quickly from the giver to the given—all the lovely gifts. She was completely absorbed in the increasing bliss that could come, would come. She had been brought to always greater joy and happiness through miracles, and one day she lost herself so completely in that that she didn’t think about the giver any longer. It was her youthful daring spirit making its rapid spring, and her eyes were alight with it. But she was torn from her thoughts by a loud noise down in the courtyard below her. She saw two powerful ostriches running hurriedly in tight circles. She had never seen this animal before, such a large bird and so clumsy and heavy. The wings looked like they were clipped, and the bird itself looked like it had been injured. She asked what had happened to it, and for the first time she heard the legend that the Egyptians tell about the ostrich.

His kind had once been beautiful with large, strong wings. Then one evening the forest’s other powerful birds had said to it, “Brother, should we fly down to the river tomorrow and drink, if God wills it?” And the ostrich answered, “I will it!” The next morning they flew away, first high up towards the sun, God’s eye. They flew always higher and higher, with the ostrich way ahead of the others. He flew proudly towards the light. He trusted in his powers, not the giver of them. He did not say, “If God wills it.” So a punishing angel drew the veil away from the flaming rays, and in that instant the ostrich’s wings were burned, and it sank miserably to earth. He and his kind will never be able to rise up again. He runs in fright, rushes around in circles in a narrow space. This is a reminder for us humans in all our thoughts and with each act to say, “God willing!”

And Helga bent her head thankfully and looked at the chasing ostrich. She saw his fear and his foolish joy at the sight of his big shadow on the wide sunlit wall. And gravity sank its deep roots in her mind and thoughts. A life so rich, so full of blessings had been given and won—what would happen? What would still come? The best: “God willing!”

Early in the spring, when the storks headed north again, little Helga took her golden bracelet, carved her name inside it, and beckoned to stork father. She placed the bracelet around his neck and asked him to take it to the Viking woman. She would understand from it that her foster daughter was alive and happy and remembered her.

“It’s heavy to carry,” thought the stork, when it was placed around his neck, “but you can’t throw gold and honor on the road. Now they’ll know up there that the stork brings good fortune!”

“You lay gold, and I lay eggs!” said stork mother. “But you only lay once, while I do it every year! But neither of us gets any appreciation! That hurts!”

“We are aware of it, mother,” said stork father.

“Well you can’t decorate yourself with that,” said stork mother. “It gives neither a fair wind nor a meal!”

And then they flew away.

The little nightingale who sang in the tamarind bush would soon fly north too. Little Helga had often heard it up there by the great bog. She would send a message with it. She knew the language of the birds which she learned when she flew in the swan-skin and had often talked to the stork and swallows since then. The nightingale would understand her, and she asked it to fly to the beech forest on the peninsula of Jutland where the grave of rock and branches was raised. She asked it to request all the small birds there to stand guard over the grave and sing a song and yet another.

And the nightingale flew away—and time flew too!

One autumn day an eagle on a pyramid saw a stately caravan of richly laden camels. There were expensively dressed, armed men on snorting Arabian horses, shining white like silver and with red, trembling nostrils, whose manes were big and thick and hung down between their delicate legs. Rich guests, a royal prince from Arabia, handsome as a prince should be, came to the proud house where the stork nest stood empty. Those who lived there were in a northern country, but they would soon be back. And it so happened that they returned that very day, when there was so much joy and happiness there. There was a wedding party, and little Helga was the bride, dressed in silk and jewels. The bridegroom was the young prince from Arabia. They sat at the head of the table between mother and grandfather.

But she didn’t look at the bridegroom’s brown, manly cheek, where a black beard curled. She didn’t look at the ardent dark eyes that were fastened on her. She looked out and up at the twinkling, sparkling stars shining down from the sky.

Then came the rushing sound of strong wings in the air. The storks were coming back, and the old stork couple, no matter how tired they were from the trip, and how much they needed to rest, flew right down on the railing by the veranda. They knew what the celebration was for. They had already heard at the border that little Helga had had them depicted on the wall. They were part of her story.

“That was very thoughtful,” said stork father.

“It’s not much,” said stork mother, “It was the least she could do!”

When Helga saw them, she got up and went out on the veranda to clap them on the back. The old stork couple curtsied with their necks, and the youngest children watched and felt honored.

And Helga looked up at a gleaming star that was shining more and more clearly, and between it and her a figure moved, clearer even than the air and therefore visible. It swayed quite close to her. It was the dead Christian priest. He too came on her day of celebration, came from heaven.

“The glory and splendor there surpasses anything known on earth,” he said.

And little Helga, asked so sweetly and sincerely, as she never had begged for anything before, if she could for just a single minute look in—just cast one glance into the heavenly kingdom, to the Father.

And he lifted her up in glory and splendor, in a stream of tones and thoughts. And there was light and sound not just outside of her, but inside too. Words cannot describe it.

“Now we must return. You are missed!” he said.

“Just a glance yet,” she asked, “only a single short minute!”

“We must get back to earth. All the guests are leaving!”

“Only a glance—the last!”

And little Helga stood on the veranda again, but all the torches there had been put out, and all the lights in the banquet hall were out too. The storks were gone, and there were no guests to be seen, no bridegroom. Everything had vanished in three short minutes.

Then Helga felt afraid. She walked through the big empty hall, and into the next chamber. Foreign soldiers were sleeping there. She opened the side door that led to her room, but when she went in there, she was standing outside in the garden. It wasn’t like this here before! The sky was glimmering red. It was almost dawn.

Only three minutes in heaven, and an entire earthly night was gone!

Then she saw the storks. She called to them, spoke their language, and stork father turned his head, listened and came closer.

“You speak our language!” he said. “What do you want? And why have you come here—a foreign woman?”

“But it’s me! It’s Helga! Don’t you know me? Three minutes ago we were speaking together over there on the veranda.”

“You’re mistaken,” said the stork. “You must have dreamed all of it.”

“No, no!” she said and reminded him of the Viking log house and the great bog, and the trip down there!

Then stork father blinked his eyes. “That’s an old story that I heard from my great, great, great grandmother’s time! Of course, there was such a princess from Denmark here in Egypt, but she disappeared on her wedding night many hundreds of years ago and never came back. You can read it yourself on the monument in the garden. There are both swans and storks carved on it, and on top you’re standing there yourself in white marble.”

That’s how it was. Little Helga saw it and understood and fell to her knees.

The sun shone forth, and as in days of old when the frog skin fell because of its rays, and the lovely creature came to light, so now by the baptism of light rose a beautiful figure clearer and purer than the air—like a beam of light—to the Father.

Her body fell to dust. A withered lotus flower lay where she had been standing.

“That was a new ending to the story,” said stork father. “I hadn’t expected that! But I liked it quite well.”

“I wonder what the children will say about it?” asked stork mother.

“Well, that’s the most important thing, of course,” said stork father.

NOTES

1 Prayer attributed to Celtic monks of the eighth and ninth centuries, but unverifiable.

2 Stanza from Sayings of the High One (Hávamál); from Poems of the Elder Edda, translated by Patricia Terry, revised edition, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.

3 From Hávamál, Terry translation.

4 From Hávamál, Terry translation.

5 Ansgar the missionary received permission to build a church in Hedeby by the Slien River in Schleswig in 850.

6 A god of Nordic mythology, Odin’s son. At the instigation of the evil god Loki, the beautiful and good Balder was killed by a sprig of mistletoe, the only thing that could hurt him.

7 Loki is the trickster figure of Nordic mythology.

8 The Midgard serpent, which encircles the world and is destined to fight Thor at Ragnarök (the end of the world of gods and men).