ployed in moving into the sæter, and he thought to himself that now he would make a good catch when they came nearer, for he had steel about him. But in this Hans made a great mistake, for the whole herd swam over the lake far from the place where he stood and fished. Only the woman who followed the animals came towards him and begged for a string of fish, and that he gave her. When Hans had got his bag full of fish and was thinking of going home, he saw smoke rising from the sæter huts on the other side of the lake, and the woman came out of one of them and shrieked with laughter at him. And that was all the thanks Hans got for his fish.
2. The Stolen Daughter of the Pastor.—One Yule Eve, as they were about to sit down to table in the Pastor's house at Hov, his daughter Amalie[1] was missing. Search was made for her round the whole farm, but nowhere was she to be found. Then they understood where she was, namely, that she had been hidden by the Jutul[2] in the Hov mountain. The Pastor therefore put on his cassock, and with the altar book in his hand he went into the church, where two men tolled the bells, while the assembled people stood and waited in the yard outside the Pastor's farm.
A girl from the neighbouring farm, Skjölland, called three times loudly "Amalie," and immediately she came springing in the midst of them. Naturally enough she looked faint, and she was also somewhat strange in her manner. Her mother wanted at once to know where she had been, but Amalie said that she was very tired and would gladly lie down. The next day she related how, on the previous evening, as she came out from the servants' room, there stood two youths by a rowan tree close to the door stone. They took her between them and led her to the east side of the barn, where they carried her deep down into the earth with them, till at last they reached a Rögovnstue.[3] As she was shaking all over, they bade her sit herself down on the hearth-stone and take
- ↑ Amalie is supposed to have died only a few years ago, never to have married, and to have been of an evil disposition.
- ↑ Jutul or giant, called Bob in the local dialect.
- ↑ Rögovnstue is literally a smoke hearth-room, a room with a central hearth and a smoke hole above it. All dwellings in Scandinavia (and elsewhere) were built on this plan, before the days of chimneys.
