How Svartisen Was Formed
In an old time, when folk couldn’t read, and had never heard of the ice age, some thought that Svartisen had been formed by the enchantments of the Finn-folk. Legends grew up about how this might have taken place, and travelling men carried them on their tongues during their casual voyages along the coast for food for them and theirs.
One stormy, coal-black evening in the pouring rain, a boat crew that had been fishing for herring was granted shelter in the labourer’s cabin at our place. I knew well that on such evenings legends and tales were shared in the warm cabin, and through the storm and the pouring rain, I crept in there, even though I was not allowed.
I was given a wonderful thrashing when I came back. But when the sobbing and the worst of the stinging had subsided, my grandmother laid a soft blanket upon the iron-studded travelling chest that stood by her bed, and asked me to sit there and relate to her the legend I had just heard. It was about how Svartisen had been formed at the very beginning.
There where Svartisen now spreads itself over mountains and deep valleys, it was once luscious forests and green grassy hillsides. On one of the hills, not far from the sea, lay a great farm with fields and meadows, a boathouse and tackleshed, and all kinds of glory that usually comes with prosperity.
The eldest son on the farm had fallen in love with a gorgeous Finn-girl from up on the tundra, where her father roamed about with his flock of reindeer, and he would absolutely marry her. But the boy’s parents and all his kin set themselves against the marriage. They said, like any Norwegian with a little self-respect would have said, that the Finn were a completely different people from the settled folk. Most often stunted of growth were they, cross-eyed, dark-haired, and bandy-legged. Their tongue was understood by few or even no one, and the Finn-folk moved from place to place, calling no place home.
But if the settled Norwegians held it shameful to mix blood with the nomadic folk, the Finns were just as proud. Their ancestors had once ruled over Lapland, Finnmark, and an even greater tundra, and freely wandered from sea to moor. Their great guardians, Noidus and Lapakapatapus had given them the unbreakable law that they should to time eternal keep the ancient customs and traditions in honour and respect. Never were they to change their tongue, their manner of dress, or their type of house, else their gods would forsake them and make them outlaws on the earth. And above all, they must not let themselves be lured by the settled-man’s finery and glory, and become like one of them.
When a boy was given his name, he was deeded a part of the mountain by the noajdde, the shaman, where he could at any time shoot the game he needed to feed himself and his family, and part of the river where the salmon would let itself be caught, and a fishing ground where the fish would seek his line.
But if it was a girl, when she was named, she would get one or more reindeer cows, whose offspring were hers, and which were handed over on the day she married. On top of that came her part of the inherited silver that should fall to her, besides all manner of household items and clothing.
The Finn-folk’s faithful helpers, the small noajdde’s spirits, the noajdegadze lived invisible to adult eyes out in the wilderness. Everything at the noajdegadze was arranged such that it should be an example to the upcoming generation. In their perfectly round timber-framed earthen huts, or gammer, the birch boughs that had been laid as an underlay for the soft reindeer pelts were gilded. Smoke there was from the firepit in the middle of the floor, but it had a good fragrance, and did not sting the eyes. Food was there also, of all kinds of edibles, uncooked and as sweet as honey and lovely to put into one’s mouth.
The noajdegadze were a short cubit tall. They were dressed in red or blue wadmel tunics, called gáppte, and trousers that reached from the soles of their feet to up beneath their arms. On top of the gáppte they wore a beaska, a reindeer-skin coat, and their belts were of silver or tin, wonderfully worked with strange, mystical figures. On their legs they wore komager, sewn hide boots filled with sedge for warmth, and on their heads they wore otterskin hats.
The Finns carried their small boys out into the wilderness and left them there for several days, so that the noajdegadze could imprint them with the old customs, and teach the boys the hidden knowledge that was needed if the adults were to be able to fend for themselves under the hard dominion of the settled folk.
But none of that mentioned above made any impression upon the boy and the girl. They had come together, and they should be married, and the girl wandered hopefully up to the tundra, to collect her dowry and ask her parents to come to the wedding.
But when her parents found out that she had been unfaithful to the old customs and traditions, and gone over to the settled folk, they whipped her off from their tents, and threw living embers after her, so that she would never be able to return. They did not give her her portion of the inheritance she had the right of, and not one of the reindeer cows and bucks that bore her mark did she take with her.
Poor in worldly goods, and outcast from her people, she wandered over the hill, back to he to whom she had given her heart; he would not abandon her, even if she had no more dowry than the clothes she walked and stood in.
But the way was long, and when she finally saw his farm from the heights, she stood there awkwardly; there was a crowd of folk in the farmyard, and alongside the shore lay boat by boat. What should they be holding a feast for now, just before the wedding?
First she skipped down the hill; but when she reached the farm, she was met with laughter, and gnashing dogs surrounded her on every side. Her sweetheart had betrayed her while she was away, and now held a betrothal feast with a rich settled man’s girl.
In wrath she took the road back, and did not stop before she stood at the top of the shoulder of the mountain.
The sound of the celebration reached her, there where she stood, and with quaking fingers she brought forth from the breast of her tunic a small leather pouch, full of a fine, coal-black dust, tore open the cord, and shook out the contents into the wind and the weather.
Even before the pouch was empty, it began to snow. And it snowed night and day, on farms and in the fields, valleys, forest, and mountains, and she lay hidden beneath the drifts, herself.
And the snow pressed against the snow, and that is how Svartisen was formed.
— Normann, Regine. «Hvordan Svartisen ble til, et sagn» Lørdagskvelden nr. 19, 9.5.1936 (Tidens Tegn).
