Look to the Light; A Folklorist’s Notebook for February

Dawn in southern New Hampshire, the first week of February.

The light is returning. Every day the afternoon seems to last longer and that’s a reason to celebrate. Imbolc was officially the first of February, but this is the season of returns. With the cold weather and persistent snow, it might be hard to believe that we are headed to spring, but look to the light when you despair. It is coming. In my neck of the woods, maple sugaring has begun, the time of year when the shifting temperatures between day and night get the sap flowing that will be boiled down to maple syrup. I’ve got a bit in my beard from adding it to my oatmeal this morning, which puts it in my mind. The Abenaki people of the area have a story that the syrup once ran straight from the trees, without needing to be boiled down, but people got fat and lazy lying on the ground with syrup dripping straight into their mouths. Gluskabe, the helper (and trickster) god, saw that something must be done to help the people and watered down the sap.

This is the week of February vacation for Massachusetts schools and should be a time of rest and recharging for me, but I’ve had so many ideas running through my head, that it’s taken longer for me to give myself a break. I’ve been rereading John Colarusso’s Nart Sagas from the Caucasus, which I believe had its moment of fame because the independent women of the Circassian people likely fueled the Greek imagination, giving them Amazons. Any template for strong, independent women in past is a thing to celebrate and the stories of the Narts do have remarkably independent women, by the standards of many of the human women in Greek myth. The word Amazon itself, says Colarusso, is a rendering of a female name from one of these tales, not a word denoting the lack of a breast.

People Like Horses with Personality

Rostam sleeps while his horse Rakhsh fights off a lion, a painting in gouache on paper, from a tale in the Shahnameh. Dated to 1515. Made in Tabriz. Part of the British Museum's collection.

I watched a bit of Disney’s Tangled earlier in the week and was struck by the personality of the horse Maximillian. It has such personality and agency that I was reminded of Rakhsh, the Iranian hero Rostam’s horse, which actually helps Rostam fighting dragons and protects him from lions. (Rakhsh means lightning, a terrific name for a horse!) That made me think of a refrain from a ballad about Sigurd, the dragon slayer, about his horse Grani. In working on an English adaptation of it for people who didn’t know the story, I was struck that the refrain was about the horse carrying the gold and not the hero who slew the dragon to get the gold. Why would the writer have done that? And then I looked at Maximillian, the horse in Tangled, and I got it. People like horses with personality.

I finished a draft of lyrics based on the Norwegian ballad “Margit Hjuska” yesterday and made a preliminary video with questionable sound. The song is one of a series of ballads about young women being stolen by a troll or a mountain king. It is thought of as a variant of “Little Kjersti,” another ballad that also exists in a number of forms. Add these to “Sir Mannelig” and you see a trend of stories about creatures bent on taking human spouses against their will. I was struck also though that Margit’s particular Mountain King husband seems more like an abusive and controlling spouse than a supernatural terror. He reminds Margit of their children and how they need their mother to come home (and not leave the mountain again.) Human relationships seem remarkably stable over the ages.

Highlighting my Catoblepas

I’ve been working on my wall sculpture this week, the Catoblepas, trying to get the paint right to make his features visible from the floor. I take on art projects without having learned the prerequisite skills to complete them. This coupled with a stubborn streak of perfectionism means that I sometimes work on a project for a very long time before I feel it’s right. My Catoblepas could be ready to hang next week or in a year, if the past tells me anything. (Hopefully closer to next week) The Catoblepas is a fantasy creature from medieval bestiaries based on earlier Greek writings. The name of the animal comes from the Greek word meaning “to look downward” and indeed, the Catoblepas was said to have a neck that did not support the weight of its head. It literally always looked down. But this is a good thing because the stare of Catoblepas was thought to kill. My Catoblepas will stare directly at the main entrance of my home, greeting all comers. Don’t tell my friends. It can be our inside joke.

I love bestiaries, but I came across the Catoblepas as a kid playing Dungeons and Dragons, which has also been on my mind. I’ve been curious about how playing D&D as a child colored my expectations of folklore, gave me the expectations that folkloric beasts met the modern standards of scientific taxonomies. (They don’t.) This has swirled around my brain with another project I have wanted to pursue, of creating a linguistic tree documenting the spread of all creatures with a name related to the word goblin.

I had hoped to write a more cohesive piece for the blog this week, but clearly, I’m a bit scattered. I think that brings me back to the opening of this post, about the return of the daylight and the coming of a fresh solar year in March. The winter that started in 2020 may feel like it is lingering, but it cannot hold. The trees will wake back up and everything else will eventually fall into place for a more civilized spring and summer to come.

The Farmer from the Barrow: an Unusual Christmas Story

My Christmas eve recording of the traditional Norwegian Christmas carol "Haugebonden."

A farmer and a gnome meet on a cold evening on Christmas eve and get into an argument. It sounds unusual, perhaps a joke, but it isn’t. The peasant is gathering Christmas greens to decorate his home when he hears a voice singing in the woods, and then he sees him, the haugebonde, a Scandinavian farm spirit I picture as a bearded little fellow with a red hat, dancing in his magic grove. Thus begins the traditional Norwegian Christmas carol, “Haugebonden.”

“Haugebonden” delighted me before I knew what it was about. The melody arrested me at once, put me under its spell, you might say. But learning the story, old and rooted in folklore, with verses that confused me, much as many old Christmas carols did when I was a child and did not understand all the words, I became enamored. The peasant runs into this supernatural being and it turns out that not only do they know each other, but they get into an argument about the proper way to celebrate Christmas eve.

Author Ian Cumpstey, who has published several books of English translations of Scandinavian ballads and maintains the blog Balladspot, recently told me that this sort of supernatural occurrence on Christmas eve or Christmas night is actually common. "I can think of quite a few ballads where there is a troll that comes knocking on the door at Christmas, or a troll tells a story of how they visited "the Christian country" at Christmas and it's not just in ballad stories of course," Cumpstey said. It occurs to me that this practice finds its way into many English tales, from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to A Christmas Carol to the Dr. Who Christmas specials. Christmas in Christian tradition is full of miracles and visitations as well, with its angels and stars and magi.

The haugebonde of the song (the final -n in the song title indicates the definite article in English) is upset because the peasant's boys are partying loudly. The little fellow has tried repeatedly to set the lads straight about quiet respectful cheer, but they throw things at him and poke him and are not at all respectful in the way a human should be with one of his fairy neighbors. If it were not for his long-standing relationship with the peasant, the haugebonde warns, magical mayhem would occur! In another unusual turn, the peasant recalls the many years the haugebonde lived on his ship and how in all that time the haugebonde never paid him any rent. The haugebonde complains that the peasant never asked him for rent and in the final section of the song informs the peasant that his ship is full of presents which he describes in detail.

To my knowledge, mine is the first recording of “Haugebonden” in English. I’ve heard many renditions of it in Norwegian, but I could not even find an English translation of the song and the particular version of the carol’s lyrics I’d found were in the northern Telemark dialect and therefore were fairly impenetrable to me. I put out general calls on social media for help from Norwegian speakers and bothered Scandinavian friends, but had no luck. I finally had to reach out to universities and a school of folk performance to find a knowledgeable and friendly translator and found that in the scholar, Håkon Asheim, from the Ole Bull Academy, a Norwegian folk music college in Bergen, Norway. He translated the song for me and helped me understand the context of lyrics to allow me to understand the story. I have not run this piece by him, so any inadvertent errors are solely my own.

Harald Wiberg's illustration of the helpful farm protector from Astrid Lindgren's The Tomten.

The haugebonde is a creature whose name roughly translates to “the farmer from the barrow,” but the figure in the song is less a Tolkien barrow wight and more a Norwegian jultomte, a Christmas gnome. And like the tomte of the Astrid Lindgren’s books, this creature lives on the farm for many generations, looking after the animals while the farmer is asleep. The closest thing to compare the phenomenon to for Americans may in fact be garden gnomes, but we might also know the Grimms’ tale, “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” about elves who make shoes at night for a cobbler who was kind to them. But these elves do not like to be seen, and tomte are generally private creatures, and given to being grumpy and fickle. The haugebonde of the song seems a creature in this line as well by his complaints about how Christmas eve should be celebrated.

The word haugebonde suggests to me an even older set of beliefs than the belief in little people. The notion is that the haugebonden is the spirit of the man who first settled the farm. He has remained to look after the farm. This may sound spooky, and I suspect that it could have been spooky at one time. Some of the haugebonde’s threats, of silencing the farmer’s lads or of making the house shake, are likely reflections of that folklore tradition. But even tomtes are persnickety creatures endowed with supernatural powers and physical strength greater than a man. I think that the friendship between the man and the haugebonde takes on an even lovelier hue in this light. The haugebonde has put up with all manner of indignities, having beer mugs and bowls thrown at him, because he is friends with this man.

Swedish nisses, another word for tomte, in a 1909 illustration by John Bauer.

The maritime element of the song at first seemed a leap to me, but we know that the Scandinavians have always been mariners, and even farmers may have had cause to do some fishing during the year. Asheim told me that there are versions of the song that include more details of the haugebonde’s work on the peasant’s ship, such as helping save it when it was damaged at sea. There are stories of ship tomtes (skeppstomte) guardian spirits that care for the well being of the ship and function much as the tomtes that live on farms. The Norwegian Wikipedia article on the topic suggests that "Haugebonden" may have started as a nautical ballad and evolved the farmhouse elements in Telemark.

A klabautermann, a kind of ship tomte, from Buch Zur See, 1885.

The last part of the song is all about gifts the haugebonde has left in the ship for the peasant. These range from a valuable cup and bowl, to fancy Christmas clothes and a tablecloth. The cup seems magical, in that fourteen (plus one) can get drunk from it. There is a river dam with mills on it, each mill built with whale bones holding up iron roofs. The mills in particular made me think of “Herr Mannelig,” but the entire gift section recalls that ballad. “Haugebonden'' is a rather long song with verses that are sometimes repetitive, and I did not set words for all of the gift verses, favoring the ones I thought would make the most sense to the general listener. I will make Asheim’s entire English lyrics available for the sake of folklorists and curious readers. The gifts section also refers to the haugebonde’s wife and daughter by name (Maalfrid and Ingeri.) I’ve retained the daughter’s name, but not the wife’s, simply because the lyric scanned more easily without it. I also did not mention that the song takes place in a rose grove, which is shorthand for a magical location in some Scandinavian ballads (cf. “Herr Mannelig”). Two of the gifts in the song (the cup and a bowl) also seem, in their history, to have served as weregild, payment for murders committed, but I have not confirmed that with Asheim or other expert.

Many months and much work have gone into making it possible for me to be able to sing a Norwegian folk song in English with my seven-string lyre. Getting a literal translation was the beginning of my work, which involved adapting the words to fit the rhythms of the song. The words I sing are my own, but they are based on Asheim’s translation and I tried to be as truthful to them as I could. I also needed to arrange the song to play on my archaic instrument. Lyres have no fret boards and are limited (without retuning strings) to a single pitch per string. My lyre sometimes requires that I simplify a melody or accompaniment for this reason. In arranging the song I received guidance and feedback from my music coach, Tobin Eckian, but much of what I did was experiment on the lyre until it sounded right.

I discovered “Haugebonden” last summer while looking for new melodies to work out with my lyre and fell in love with it. The recording I heard was made by four performers, British and Norwegian, with tight, gorgeous harmonies playing bouzouki, mandolin and a Hardanger fiddle used in Norwegian folk songs. My first impression of the arrangement was that I was hearing American Appalachian music with harmonies and instrumentation that would be at home on an Alison Krauss album. Two of the performers, Janice Burns and Jon Doran, have since released a collection of English folk songs with tight, lovely harmonies, and I am a fan of their sound. As much as I love this particular version of the song, I cannot reproduce the harmonies of a quartet and my lyre requires certain allowances. That said, I also discovered that there are many, many versions of “Haugebonden” and I don’t think I do it a disservice to make it my own. There are already starker acapella versions and a pop version with an accordion, and even what I suspect to be an all-girl college acapella group version. The version that most stuck with me the most and that I found I could sing the best was by the Norwegian folk singer Arve Moen Bergset. Bergset’s performance with the group Bukenne Bruse in 2009 became a teaching tool in following the Norwegian words to set the English lyrics and developing the music. Bergset has been performing since he was a boy soprano and has produced many renditions of songs I admire. With this breakthrough, I felt I would have a performance to share and I have worked on bringing together my arrangement with my words for a few months! I hope you enjoy it. Special thanks to everyone who contributed to it.

A Roundup of Mythology News; Folklorist's Notebook

An avenging Medusa, Abenaki Folklore, a new Beowulf, a fascinating take on Norse Mythos, and the 2020 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Louise Glück.

I am happily researching a few projects that will take more time to develop into posts, but I wanted to try to share a bit of my research methods and the excitement of the chase with you, so here are some of the topics I’ve been working on!

Abenaki Folklore

I discovered on Columbus Day that I could text my zip code to a number and a chatbot would tell me which native peoples lived in my area. All the groups in Southern New Hampshire spoke an Algonquian language and seemed to have had an affiliation with the Abenaki Tribe, which was also the easiest to research quickly online. The Abenaki people would have ranged from present day Quebec though most of New England, part of New York state, as far south as Delaware. The name Abenaki stems from the place name Wabanahkik, which means the “Dawn Land.” Not only do I find it a beautiful name, but it immediately forces me to alter my perspective, which considers the US to be of the West. But a people who developed their identity as the easternmost dwelling people before the coming of the Europeans are appropriately the people of the Dawn Land.

Researching the folklore of native peoples presents a few new challenges, political and logistical. The first is that I don’t have reliable sources to turn to. It isn’t a mainstream topic of study in the US. Wikipedia has the greatest amount of material, but I have come to find that Wikipedia, at least when researching unusual folklore related texts, sometimes heads off in directions that don’t have the best support. Picking books from Amazon by authors who do not have a university background is no better, but again, this isn’t a mainstream topic of study for American universities. I ordered two texts, one of is a history, by a scholar of native heritage at Amherst College, another is by authors who have no other publication, but it just looked appealing. Lisa Tanya Brooks’s Our Beloved Kin; A New History of King Philip’s War (Yale, 2018) should tell me quite a bit that I can trust is well-researched, but it’s a heavy book for me to read during the school year, particularly when I am reading other texts. I also bought Seven Eyes Seven Legs; Supernatural Stories of the Abenaki, by Tsonakwa and Yolaikia, (Kiva, 2001). This book was a shot in the dark, but I love what I’ve read so far. It is a visually beautiful book and the stories force me into a different perspective, which I also love. I hope that I will find some other sources to try to verify what I’ve read here, but I can’t see the authors benefitting terribly by fraudulently claiming to write from an Abenaki perspective so I expect I will share some of the ideas and stories that I’ve enjoyed.

Rydberg’s Norse Myths

I am also reading a book of Norse Mythology by the 19th Century Swedish novelist, poet and mythologist, Victor Rydberg. A few years ago, I read a fascinating and somewhat head-spinning essay by Rydberg about Freya’s famous necklace, the Brisingsamen. Rydberg is an unusual scholar with unusual theories, and again, it is difficult to research the methods that allowed him to come to many of his conclusions. I must add though, that Rydberg’s Norse Myths address problems that have always bothered me about Norse Myths; centrally, that there aren’t enough stories and the stories that exist are fairly narrowly focused on Thor, Loki and Odin. Rydberg may have arrived at a lusher set of tales by mixing later materials together with the old reliables, but there may be reason to suspect that later heroic tales were based on earlier mythological versions. I just feel the need to understand the logic that led him to do it. I’ve corresponded with the translator of Rydberg’s Our Fathers’ Godsaga, William P. Reaves, who maintains the prolific germanicmythology.com and I hope that he, or his website, can help direct me to the sort of information I seek. As with the Abenaki folklore text I am reading, Rydberg is worth reading. Even if Rydberg’s research methods would not be supported today by scholars, I suspect that they will be an interesting case study in mythology.

Avenging Medusa

Sculptor Luciano Garbati's Medusa, recently installed outside a Manhattan Courthouse.

There was an interesting story recently that really suits the original purpose of Practical Mythology, in that it is a mythological tale being used to address a modern purpose. A park across from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse apparently now has a seven-foot tall statue of a nude Medusa holding the severed head of Perseus (her killer in Greek Myth) and a sword. The statue, which plays upon a version of the tale in which Medusa is cursed with snakes for hair after being raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple, turns Medusa into an avenger for women who have suffered violence at the hands of men. The story has gotten good play (a post in Newsweek) and it was hard for me to think of a way I could turn it around as a fully researched piece as quickly as I’d like. Curiously, I also think that because I hadn’t before heard the version of the story where Medusa was raped, I needed time to adjust to seeing one of the first monster villains I can remember from childhood as the hero. I identified with Perseus after watching Clash of the Titans, but I logically understand sculptor Luciano Garbati’s purpose, and I’m happy for women who are happy to see themselves in a Medusa who turns the tables on men trying to kill her.

Nobel Prize for Poetry

I have been poring through an anthology of American poet, Louise Glück's work after she was announced the 2020 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and heard that mythology was a common theme in her work. I have found several poems on the topic that I like and I have a post planned when I finish reading -- yes, I’m trying to read everything she wrote and, yes, that feels a bit crazy now that I write it. One of my favorite finds so far is a poem about the writer's life, “The Mountain,” which plays on the myth of Sisyphus, and feels about right some days.

A New Translation of Beowulf

Most Beowulf scholars would be afraid to approach Maria Dahvana Headley in a bar.

I have read through most of Maria Dahvana Headley’s lively and irreverent Beowulf and found passages I like, and passages I don’t like. I've been dragging my heels a bit because I wrote several pieces on Beowulf in August and September, and I feel a greater responsibility when I write on the topic from having studied the text for so many years. On the whole, Headley's isn’t a Beowulf for me, but then, I don’t particularly need a new Beowulf, and someone else surely does. Seamus Heaney’s translation was an accessible entry point for many new readers who would not have read the poem otherwise, but Heaney was not the most accessible text for the teenagers I taught. If I were teaching the text today, I would find some way to bring Headley into the classroom. I think she could very well be the right voice for a teenage reader.

Christmas Tomtes and Other Scandinavian Folksong

Harald Wiberg's illustration of the helpful farm protector from Astrid Lindgren's The Tomten.

Finally, I have been working on several folksongs with my seven-string Kravik-style lyre. This is a monthslong process as I am learning to play and sing with the lyre and also developing songs for it that require a bit of finagling sometimes because of the limited number of strings. I am also dedicated to singing these songs in a language my listeners will understand, which means that I usually have to adapt lyrics from literal translation. My current focus is a Norwegian Christmas song called "Haugebonden." I had to pester some people in Norway to find a kind folklorist to translate its archaic Telemark dialect for me, but now I have to make the lyrics match up to the rhythm of the song and make reasonably good enough sense for an English-speaking audience to follow. A haugebonde is a kind of helpful spirit that dwells on a farm. The word, mound farmer, or farmer from under the mound, comes from the belief that he is spirit of the first farmer who cleared the land. The tradition is similar enough to that of the tomte that a haugebonde may today be visualized as a little man with a beard and red hat, a sort of gnome or fairy that protects the farm. It is a very sweet song and I hope to be able to perfect it to record it before Christmas this year. That might be a stretch as I have had a hard time finding a way to play it in a key that allows me to sing it. This, again, is a result of playing an archaic instrument. But hope abounds and I made some progress with my teacher this week. So hopefully I will debut my first song here by the end of the year!