“Have you got any curious remains about here?” inquired I; “any bauta-stones, for instance, or do you know any legends?”
“There is a bauta-stone up yonder in the field; but as for legends, old Moer can tell you a lot of stories about the hill-folk, but she is not always in the humour.”
Gamle Moer (old mother), as he called her, Anna Olsdatter Gulsvig, just then entered the room with a pipe in her mouth. An excellent portrait of her, by a Norwegian artist, hung against the wall. Her tall figure was still erect, her eye undimmed, while her face, the complexion of which years had failed to sear, preserved traces of much former beauty. A neat white cap, bound tight round with a red silk kerchief, confined her grey locks. On her bosom were two or three pairs of silver studs, and the national ornament, the sölje. The one which she wore was of the size and shape of a small saucer. It was of silver filigree-work, with a quantity of silver saucers (or bracteates), each about half an inch in diameter, hung to it. Similar ornaments have been found, I believe, in barrows; the pattern of them having probably been imported hither by the Varangian guard from Byzantium and the East; in the same way that these Northern mercenaries probably gave the first idea of the Scandinavian-looking trinkets which have been recently discovered in the tombs at Kertch.
“How do you do, Mrs. Anna?” so I accosted the old lady, propitiating her by the offer of some tobacco. “I hear you have some old stories; will you tell me one?”
“I can’t awhile now; besides, I’ve forgotten them.”
“Oh! but now do, Moer,” supplicated a little boy, her grandson. But the old lady left the room. Presently, however, she came in again. There was a look of inspiration in her clear grey eye, which seemed to betoken that my desire would be granted.
“It’s some Huldra stories ye were wanting to hear?” said she in an odd dialect; “well, I’ll just tell you one before I go and cook your dinner; you must be hungry. Let me see; yes, I once did see one of the Houge-folk.”
“Indeed! how was that?”
“Well, you see, it’s many years ago. I am an old woman now, over seventy. Then I was a lass of eighteen. It was one Thursday evening in September, and I was up at the sæter. Two other girls had come in, and we thought we would have a dance—and so we danced up and down the floor. The door was open, when suddenly I saw outside, staring fixedly at us, a little man, with brown breeches, grey coat, and a red cap on his head. He was very fat, and his face, it looked so dark, so dark. What a fright I was in to be sure, and the other girls too. As soon as we saw him, we left off dancing, you may depend upon it, directly. The next moment he was gone, but the other girls durst not go to their sæters, though they were only a few yards off. We all sat crouching over the fire for the rest of the night.” Rapt into days of old, the intelligent eye of the old lady gleamed like a Sibyl’s, as she told her story, with much animation. At the same time, she placed her hand, half unconsciously, as it seemed, on mine, the little boy all the while drinking in the tale with suspended breath and timid looks; reminding me of the awful eagerness with which Béranger, I think, describes the grandchildren listening to some old world story of grandmamma’s. A capital scene it was for a picture—the group is still before me.
“You must have been mistaken,” said I.