Prevod
Some large lizards were darting about in the cracks of an old tree. They understood one another perfectly, for they spoke the lizards’ language. “My, how it rumbles and grumbles inside the old elf mound!” said one of them. “With all that racket, I haven’t closed my eyes for two nights now. I might just as well lie there with toothache, for I can’t sleep then either!”
“There’s something afoot in there!” said another lizard. “They’re keeping the mound raised on four red posts right up until cockcrow. They’re giving it a thorough airing, and the elf maidens have learnt new dances with plenty of stamping in them. There’s something afoot!”
“Yes, I’ve spoken to an earthworm of my acquaintance,” said the third lizard. “He’d just come up out of the mound, where he’d been burrowing night and day. He’d heard quite a bit. He can’t see, of course, poor wretch, but he knows how to feel his way and listen. They’re expecting visitors at the elf mound—distinguished visitors—but the earthworm wouldn’t say who, or perhaps he didn’t know. All the will-o’-the-wisps have been summoned to form what they call a torchlight procession, and the gold and silver, of which there’s plenty in the mound, are being polished and set out in the moonlight!”
“Who can these visitors be?” said all the lizards. “Whatever can be afoot? Listen to the humming! Listen to the buzzing!” Just then the elf mound opened, and an old elf maiden came tripping out. She had no back, but otherwise she was very respectably dressed. She was the old elf king’s housekeeper, a distant relation of the family, and wore an amber heart on her forehead. How nimbly her legs moved: trip, trip! Goodness, how she could trip along, straight down into the bog to the night-raven.
“You are invited to the elf mound, this very night!” she said. “But first, would you do us a great kindness and see to the invitations? You ought to make yourself useful, since you don’t keep house yourself! We’re expecting some very distinguished visitors, troll folk of great importance, and so the old elf king means to put on a fine show!”
“Who is to be invited?” asked the night-raven. “Well, everyone may come to the grand ball, even human beings, provided they can talk in their sleep or do just a little of the things that come naturally to our kind. But for the first banquet we must be very particular: we want only the very grandest people. I’ve argued with the elf king, for I maintain that we can’t even have ghosts. The merman and his daughters must be invited first. They don’t much care for coming onto dry land, I daresay, but they shall each have a wet stone to sit on, or something better, and then I don’t think they’ll refuse us this time. We must have all the old first-class trolls with tails, the river-man and the household sprites, and I don’t think we can pass over the grave-sow, the death-horse and the church-grim. They do belong to the clergy, of course, who aren’t our sort of people, but that’s merely their profession. They’re close relations of ours, and they’re always paying visits!”
“Excellent!” said the night-raven, and flew off to deliver the invitations. The elf maidens were already dancing on the mound, wearing long shawls woven of mist and moonlight, which looks lovely to those who like that sort of thing. Deep inside the mound, the great hall had been beautifully spruced up. The floor had been washed with moonlight, and the walls rubbed with witches’ fat until they shone like tulip petals held against the light. The kitchen was full of frogs on spits, grass-snake skins stuffed with little children’s fingers, and salads of toadstool seed, wet mouse snouts and hemlock. There was beer from the bog-wife’s brewery and sparkling saltpetre wine from the burial vault—all very substantial fare. Rusty nails and church-window glass supplied the crunch.
The old elf king was having his gold crown polished with crushed slate pencil. It was slate pencil from the top boy in the class, and that is very hard for an elf king to come by! In the bedchamber they were hanging curtains and fastening them with grass-snake spit. Oh yes, there was humming and buzzing enough.
“Now we must fumigate the place with horsehair and pigs’ bristles, and then I think I shall have done my part!” said the old elf maiden. “Dear Father!” said the youngest daughter. “May I know now who the distinguished visitors are?”
“Well, then!” he said. “I suppose I must tell you! Two of my daughters must hold themselves ready for marriage. Two of you will probably be married off. The old troll from Norway, the one who lives in ancient Dovrefjeld and owns so many rocky castles built of boulders, as well as a gold mine that’s better than people think, is coming down here with his two lads. They’re each to choose a wife. The old troll is a true, honest old Norwegian fellow, merry and plain-spoken. I’ve known him since the old days, when we drank to our friendship. He came down here to fetch his wife—she’s dead now—who was a daughter of the cliff king on Møn. He got his wife on chalk, as they say! Oh, how I long to see the old Norwegian troll! They say the lads are a pair of unruly, conceited young rascals, but perhaps that’s unfair, and no doubt they’ll turn out well once they’ve settled down. See that you knock some manners into them!”
“And when are they coming?” asked one daughter. “That depends on the wind and weather!” said the elf king. “They travel economically! They’re coming down by whatever ship will give them passage. I wanted them to come through Sweden, but the old fellow still has no leanings in that direction! He doesn’t move with the times, and I don’t like that!”
Just then two will-o’-the-wisps came bounding up, one faster than the other, so naturally one arrived first. “They’re coming! They’re coming!” they cried. “Give me my crown, and let me stand in the moonlight!” said the elf king.
The daughters lifted their long shawls and curtsied right down to the ground. There stood the old troll from Dovre, wearing a crown of hardened icicles and polished fir cones; besides that, he had on a bearskin coat and sleigh boots. His sons, however, wore their necks bare and had no braces, for they were strong fellows.
“Is that a mound?” asked the younger lad, pointing at the elf mound. “Up in Norway we call that a hole!” “Lads!” said the old man. “A hole goes in, a mound goes up! Have you no eyes in your heads?”
The only thing that surprised them down here, they said, was that they could understand the language without any trouble at all! “Now don’t make fools of yourselves!” said the old man. “People might think you weren’t quite baked through!”
Then they went into the elf mound, where there was a very grand gathering indeed, all assembled in such a hurry that you might have thought the guests had been blown together. Everything had been arranged neatly and prettily to suit each one. The merfolk sat at table in great tubs of water, and said it was just like being at home. Everyone observed good table manners except the two young Norwegian trolls, who put their legs up on the table. But then, they thought everything they did became them!
“Feet off the platter!” said the old troll, and they obeyed, though not at once. They tickled the lady beside them with fir cones they had brought in their pockets, then pulled off their boots to make themselves comfortable and gave them to her to hold. But their father, the old Dovre troll, was quite another sort. He told such wonderful tales of Norway’s lofty mountains and of waterfalls plunging down in white foam, with a roar like thunderclaps and organ music. He told of salmon leaping up against the rushing waters while the water-sprite played his golden harp. He told of bright winter nights when sleigh bells rang and lads ran with blazing torches over the gleaming ice, so clear that they could see the fish taking fright beneath their feet. Yes, he could tell a tale so that you saw and heard everything he described: it was as though the sawmills were working, as though lads and lasses were singing ballads and dancing the halling. Hurrah! All at once the old troll gave the elderly elf maiden an uncle’s smack of a kiss—a hearty kiss it was, too, though they were not related at all.
Now the elf maidens had to dance, both the ordinary dances and the stamping ones, and very becoming they were. Then came the fancy dance, or, as they called it, “stepping outside the dance.” Goodness, how they could stretch their legs! You could not tell where anything began or ended, nor which were arms and which were legs; everything flew about like wood shavings, and then they whirled round until the death-horse felt ill and had to leave the table.
“Prrrrr!” said the old troll. “That’s a fine to-do with their legs! But what can they do besides dance, stretch their legs and make whirlwinds?” “You shall find out!” said the elf king, and he called forward his youngest daughter. She was as slender and clear as moonlight, the most delicate of all the sisters. She put a white stick into her mouth and vanished completely. That was her accomplishment.
But the old troll said he would not care for that accomplishment in his wife, nor did he think his lads would like it either. The second could walk beside herself as though she had a shadow, which troll folk do not have.
The third was of quite a different sort. She had trained in the bog-wife’s brewhouse, and it was she who knew how to stuff alder stumps with glow-worms.
“She’ll make a good housewife!” said the old troll, and he toasted her with a wink, for he did not want to drink too much. Now came the fourth elf maiden, who had a great golden harp to play. When she plucked the first string, everyone lifted their left leg, for troll folk are left-legged; and when she plucked the second, they all had to do whatever she wished.
“That’s a dangerous woman!” said the old troll. But both his sons went out of the mound, for by now they were bored. “And what can the next daughter do?” asked the old troll.
“I have learnt to love the Norwegians!” she said. “And I shall never marry unless I can go to Norway!” But the youngest sister whispered to the old troll, “That’s only because she’s heard in a Norwegian ballad that when the world perishes, the rocks of Norway will still stand like memorial stones. That’s why she wants to go there: she’s so afraid of perishing.”
“Ho, ho!” said the old troll. “So that’s out! But what can the seventh and last one do?” “The sixth comes before the seventh!” said the elf king, for he could count. But the sixth did not much want to come forward.
“All I can do is tell people the truth!” she said. “Nobody cares for me, and I have enough to do sewing my shroud!” Now came the seventh and last, and what could she do? Why, she could tell fairy tales, as many as she pleased.
“Here are all my five fingers!” said the old troll. “Tell me a tale about each!” And the elf maiden took him by the wrist, and he chuckled deep inside. When she came to Goldbrand, who wore a gold ring round his waist, as though he knew there was to be a betrothal, the old troll said, “Hold fast to what you’ve got—the hand is yours! I’ll have you for my own wife!”
And the elf maiden said there was still the rest of the tale about Goldbrand, and the one about little Peter the Fiddler! “We’ll hear those in winter!” said the old troll. “And we’ll hear about the fir tree and the birch, and the gifts of the forest spirits, and the ringing frost! You’ll have plenty of storytelling to do, for no one up there can really do it yet! And we’ll sit in the stone chamber where the pine splinter burns, and drink mead from the golden horns of the old Norwegian kings. The water-sprite has given me a couple of them. And while we’re sitting there, the Garbo will come to visit and sing you all the mountain dairymaid’s songs. What merry times we’ll have! The salmon will leap in the waterfall and strike against the stone wall, but it won’t get inside! Yes, you may be sure it’s a fine place, dear old Norway! But where are the lads?”
Yes, where were the lads? They were running about in the fields, blowing out the will-o’-the-wisps, who had come along so obligingly to make a torchlight procession. “What a way to go gallivanting!” said the old troll. “Now I’ve chosen a mother for you, you can each choose an aunt!”
But the lads said they would rather make a speech and drink to friendship; they had no desire to marry. And so they made speeches, drank to friendship, and balanced their glasses on their fingernails to show they had drained them. Then they took off their coats and lay down on the table to sleep, for they were not in the least bashful. But the old troll danced round the room with his young bride and exchanged boots with her, for that is grander than exchanging rings.
“Now the cock is crowing!” said the old elf maiden who kept house. “We must close the shutters, so the sun doesn’t burn us in!” And then the mound closed.
But outside, the lizards ran up and down the cracked tree, and one said to another, “Oh, how I liked that old Norwegian troll!” “I liked the lads better!” said the earthworm. But then, he could not see, poor wretch.
