Fairy Tales

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,