When the Girl Rescues the Prince

When the Girl Rescues the Prince: Norse Fairy Tale “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”

In the second century AD, the Roman writer Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis interrupted the winding plot of his novel, Metamorphoses, or Asinus Aureus (a title used to distinguish the work from its predecessor, Ovid’s Metamorphoses) to tell the long story of Cupid and Psyche—long enough to fill a good 1/5 of the final, novel-length work. The story tells of a beautiful maiden forced to marry a monster—only to lose him when she tries to discover his real identity.

If this sounds familiar, it should: the story later served as one inspiration for the well-known “Beauty and the Beast,” where a beautiful girl must fall in love with and agree to marry a beast in order to break him from an enchantment. It also helped inspire the rather less well-known Norse “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” where the beautiful girl marries a beast—and must go on a quest to save him.

I like this story much more.

“East of the Sun, West of the Moon” was collected and published in 1845 by Norwegian folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe, and later collected by Andrew Lang in his The Blue Fairy Book (1889). Their tale beings with a white bear deciding to knock on the door of a poor but large peasant family. So poor that when the bear asks for the youngest daughter, promising to give the family a fortune in return, the maiden climbs up on the back of the polar bear, and heads north.

I must admit that when I first read this story, I missed all of the questionable bits, because I could only focus on one bit: she was getting to ride on a polar bear! Talk about awesome. And something easy enough for Small Me, who rarely even got to ride ponies, to get excited about.

In the far north, the peasant girl and the bear enter an ice cave, finding a castle within. I must admit, I’ve never quite looked at such ice caves the same way again: who knows what they might be hiding, underneath that snow. During the day, the girl explores the palace, and only has to ring a bell for anything she might want.

And every night, a man comes to her in her bed—a man she never sees, always in the darkness.

Eventually, all of this gets lonely, and the girl wants to return home—thinking of her brothers and sisters, not to mention her parents. The bear allows her to leave—as long as she doesn’t talk to her mother en tête-à-tête. That, too, is a twist in the tale. In most versions, mothers are rarely mentioned: the dangers more usually come from the sisters, evil, jealous, concerned, or all three.

In this version, the mother is very definitely on the concern side, convinced that her daughter’s husband is, in fact, a troll, if not Satan himself or at least a sex offender. A possibility that should have occurred to you when he showed up to your house as a talking polar bear, but let us move on. She tells her daughter to light a candle and look at her husband in the dark. Her daughter, having not studied enough classical literature to know what happened to her predecessor Psyche after she does just that, lights the candle, finding a handsome prince.

Who immediately tells her, awakening when three drops of hot wax from the candle fall upon his shirt, that if she had just waited a little longer, they would have been happy, but since she didn’t, he now must marry someone else—and go and live east of the sun and west of the moon.

This seems, to put it mildly, a bit harsh on everyone concerned. Including the someone else, very definitely getting a husband on the rebound, with a still very interested first wife. After all, to repeat, this version, unlike others, features a concerned mother, not evil sisters trying to stir up trouble. Nonetheless, the prince vanishes, leaving the girl, like Psyche, abandoned in the world, her magical palace vanished.

Like Psyche, the girl decides to search for help. This being an explicitly post-Christian version—she does not exactly turn to goddesses for assistance. But she does find three elderly women, who give her magical items, and direct her to the winds of the cardinal directions. The North Wind is able to take her east of the sun and west of the moon. Deliberate or not, it’s a lovely callback to the Cupid and Psyche tale, where Zephyr, the West Wind, first took Psyche to Cupid.

Unlike Psyche, the girl does not have to complete three tasks. She does, however, trade her three magical gifts to the ugly false bride with the long nose, giving her three chances to spend the night with her husband. He, naturally, sleeps through most of this, but on the third night he finally figures out that just maybe his false wife is giving him a few sleeping potions, skips his nightly drink, and tells his first wife that she can save him if she’s willing to do some laundry.

No. Really.

That’s what he says: he has a shirt stained with three drops of candle-wax, and he will insist that he can only marry a woman who can remove the stains.

Trolls, as it happens, are not particularly gifted at laundry—to be fair, this is all way before modern spot removers and washing machines. The girl, however, comes from a poor peasant family who presumably couldn’t afford to replace clothes all that often and therefore grew skilled at handwashing. Also, she has magic on her side. One dip, and the trolls are destroyed.

It’s a remarkably prosaic ending to a story of talking bears, talking winds, and talking… um, trolls. But I suppose it is at least easier than having to descend to the world of the dead, as Psyche does in one of her tasks, or needing to wear out three or seven pairs of iron shoes, as many of the girls in this tale are told they must do before regaining their husbands. In some ways, it’s reassuring to know that a prince can be saved by such common means.

In other ways, of course, the tale remains disturbing: the way that, after having to sacrifice herself for her family, the girl is then blamed by the prince for following her mother’s instructions—and forced to wander the wide world for years, hunting down her husband, and then forced to give up the magical golden items she’s gained on the journey just for a chance to speak to him. (The story does hurriedly tell us that she and the prince do end up with some gold in the end.)

But I can see why the tale so appealed to me as a child, and continues to appeal to me now: the chance to ride a talking bear, the hidden palace beneath the snow, the chance to ride the North Wind to a place that cannot possibly exist, but does, where a prince is trapped by a troll. A prince who needs to be saved by a girl—who, indeed, can only be saved by a girl, and doing something that even not very magical me could do.

No wonder I sought out the other variants of this tale: “The Singing, Springing Skylark,” collected by the Grimms, where the girl marries a lion, not a polar bear, and must follow a trail of blood, and get help from the sun, the moon, and the winds, and trade her magical dress for a chance to speak with the prince; “The Enchanted Pig,” a Romanian tale collected by Andrew Lang, where the girl marries a pig, not a bear, and must wear out three pairs of iron shoes and an iron staff, and rescue her prince with a ladder formed from chicken bones; “The Black Bull of Norroway,” a Scottish variant where the girl almost marries a bull, and can only flee from a valley of glass after iron shoes are nailed to her feet; “The Feather of Finist the Falcon,” a Russian variant where the girl must also wear out iron shoes in order to find her falcon—and her love.

These are brutal tales, yes, but ones that allowed the girls to have adventures, to do the rescuing, and to speak with animals and stars and winds and the sun and the moon. Among my very favorite fairy tales.

Mari Ness lives in central Florida.

NORROWAY CHIHIRO FIC

http://purple.mytica.net/story/haku/whitetowernote.php

THREE NIGHTS TALES: BOHEMIAN ANALOGUES

Mary Bisby, on "The Singing, Skipping Skylark":

The girl finds her husband locked in battle, but when she lifts the spell on him the dragon, now transformed into a princess, seizes him and flies away on a griffin to make him her husband. The girl, bereaved again, journeys around the world until she finds them, and she trades the bride her sun and moon gifts in exchange for two nights in the prince’s bedroom. The first night she sobs out her story to him, but the princess drugs him so that he does not wake and hear her. The second night he does not take the drugs, hears his wife’s voice, and returns home with her on the back of the griffin.

The heroine's misfortunes (her husband being taken away by a dragon-princess) are not of her own making, but due to chance or ill-luck. How she deals with these trials is the strongest sign of her character.

a story that often suggests a theme of liberty and imprisonment.

Due to the nature of her husband's enchantment, coupled with her travels around the world and the isolation of her location, the heroine is aware that she is alone and that no one can help her during her quest. The isolation forces her to confront her circumstances, which reveals that in order to be successful in disenchanting her husband, she must rely on herself; she must use her knowledge to the best of her ability.

In “Das singende, springende Löweneckerchen,” the heroine must face her husbands adversary to rescue him. In order for her husband to be released from the spell, the girl must follow certain steps of advice given to her by the southwinds. She never questions their advice and never second guesses her own actions. This obedience allows her to successfully carry out the task of freeing her husband from battle with the dragon; however, she must bargain with the evil princess in order for her husband to be restored to her, and to do so, she uses the gifts she received from the sun and moon. In strategically giving up these treasures, she tells the evil princess that in exchange for the golden dress and magic cupcakes what she wants: “Laßt mich eine Nacht in der Kammer schlafen, wo der Bräutigam schläft.” Negotiating shows the capability and determination of the heroine while giving her the advantage in the situation -- she knows that the evil princess cannot refuse because her desire for the gifts is so great. The gifts received by the heroine help her gain control of the situation and allow for her to have the power in bargaining.
The heroine in the Grimms' lark tale continues to bargain with the evil princess and is ushered one last time into the room in which her husband sleeps. The prince pretends to sleep, and once he hears the story of his wife, he jumps up: the spell is broken. “Jetzt bin ich erst recht erlöst, mir ist gewesen wie in einem Traum, denn die fremde Königstochter hatte mich bezaubert daß ich dich vergessen mußte.” The heroine's husband was enchanted---there was no possibility of him escaping or aiding the heroine throughout her quest. She had to remove the spells herself. The determination of the heroine releases her husband not only from his curse but also from his entrapment but the evil princess. There was one moment in which the heroine believed she could not save her husband, but her persistence is eventually rewarded. The Grimms seem to portray that a woman cannot simply marry a husband. In this tale, the quest is not the marriage, but the heroine's opportunity to prove herself worthy of marriage. She must show that she is amiable and deserving of a prince for a husband. The quest ends after they flee the kingdom of the evil princess and arrive home.

(“Now I am truly free. It was like I was in a dream, for the foreign princess bewitched me so that I would forget about you.” Grimms, “Löweneckerchen.”)

She discovers that he has become engaged again to another princess, and only by gaining access to hs bedroom does she regain him. He tells her at the end of the tale, "'Now I am truly redeemed, it was like a dream, because the strange princess had enchanted me that I must forget you, but G*d has just at the right hour taken the bewitchment from me." He is not at any fault for his infidelity, but his wife's devotion proves the sacred bond of love which unites them.


ON A BOHEMIAN FOLKTALE VS. THE DUKE OF NORROWAY
MICHAELA DRAZKOVÁ

In terms of motifs, fairy tales share the following analogies:
(1) The motif of the number three which is a stable feature of composition of traditional fairy tales. In the text itself, the author works with the number three while composing motifs thus we can mention a motif of three obstacles, tasks or visits in “The White Snake” where the main character Běla tries to make her husband remember her but she has only three attempts during three nights and eventually she succeeds for the third time. In “The Black Bull of Norroway” we can also find three obstacles, tasks or visits till the female protagonist gains her lover. Both of the noble men are tricked into marriage with selfish, dishonest and proud as a peacock women. The girls use three things they received before from supernatural beings to win over the two evil women. What is more, in Jacobs’ tale there are depicted three sisters and then three visits of three brothers of the bull.

Like Běla, even the main heroine of Jacobs’ tale overcomes intrigues and deception because the dishonest woman would do almost anything in order to manage to marry her daughter to the prince. But love, purity of a soul and thoughts, seems to be stronger than anything else. The motif of love is obvious in acts of both heroines who are dying for love and suffer.

In both fairy tales there always occurs a kind of fight between two women, one of which is good and the other evil. The evil one wants all the treasure for herself - (5) the motif of rapacity - thus she is easily corruptible. The heroine girls offer presents, which were given to them by supernatural beings, to the greedy women in order to spend some time with their lovers.

But for the coincidence these two couples would not be together - (7) the motif of coincidence. After two nights full of girls’ moaning to which their lovers do not respond, both noble men are asked whether they know who cries in their chambers. So the men realize they were tricked and do not drink their sleeping drinks anymore. 


Eine andere Art von Zwangsschlaf findet ihren Ausdruck regelmäßig durch einen Schlaftrunk, der verabreicht wird, und zwar in dem Motivzusammenhang der vergessenen Ehefrau des Typs 425 A. Dort hat die junge Frau ein Verbot übertreten, infolgedessen wird der Mann ihr entrückt, und er hat sie vergessen. Am Ende sucht sie sich dem Schlafenden wieder ins Gedächtnis zu rufen durch die nächtliche Schilderung ihrer Suchwanderung oder durch die Anrufung des gemeinsam Erlebten. In den ersten beiden Nächten vernimmt der Mann nichts; denn seine jetzige Braut reicht ihm, nachdem sie der ersten Frau gegen eine Kostbarkeit die Nacht verkauft hat, abends einen Schlaftrunk. Nur die Diener tragen ihm am Morgen eine verworrene Kunde zu von der nächtlich klagenden Frau. Am dritten Abend meidet er den Trunk, vernimmt selbst die Klage, die Erinnerung kehrt ihm zurück, und das Paar hat sich damit wiedergefunden.

Schläferische Taubheit, vernehmendes Wachsein gegenüber den Erinnerungsworten sind in dieser Weise ganz sachlich verknüpft - der Sinn dieses Ablaufs aber scheint doch verborgener zu sein. Mit unwiederbringlichen Kostbarkeiten erkauft sich das junge Weib die Nächte von der zweiten Braut - statt auf eine praktische Weise entweder selbst dem Manne aufzulauern oder ihm in Gestalt von Worten oder Zeichen Kunde von sich zu übermitteln, ein Dienst, den sie ja ebenfalls leicht hätte erkaufen können. Auch sollen es ohnehin die Diener gewesen sein, die ihm den Hinweis auf die Klagende gegeben haben. lhre absonderliche, dem Anscheine nach umständliche oder unzweckmäßige Verfahrensweise muß auch einen sachlichen Grund haben, und der liegt eben darin, daß der Appell an den gemeinen Tagesverstand des Mannes sein Ziel nicht erreichen würde, was in der oben Seite zitierten irischen Fassung auch klar zu Tage liegt. Die Frau muß versuchen, durch die Nacht den Zugang zu seinem auf jeden Fall, ob mit oder ohne Trunk, schlummernden Gedächtnis zu finden, muß suchen, die in umnachtete Tiefe abgesunkene Gemeinsamkeit der Erinnerung wieder ins Tagesbewußtsein zu heben. Indem die zweite Braut, die dämonische Gefährtin in der Entrückung, den Mann absichtlich in Tiefschlaf versenkt, verhilft sie sogar dazu, den sinnvollen Vorsatz der ersten Frau zu verwirklichen. Auch die horchenden Diener könnte man als eine Teilkraft im Helden selbst auffassen, als ein Bild für sein Ahnungsvermögen, insofern sie dem im Tiefschlaf scheinbar gehörlos Versunkenen eine erste ferne Witterung vermltteln von dem, was in ihm aufdämmern will. - In dieser Szenerie wäre daher der durch den Trunk hervorgerufene Zwangsschlaf alles andere als ein Verschluß für das Miterleben, sondern vielmehr ein Zauberschlaf, der gerade zum Aufschließen der verkapselten Erinnerung verhilft.

Sehen wir uns veranlaßt zu behaupten, daß die Suchwanderin notwendigerweise die Verbindung zum Nachtbewußtsein ihres Mannes herzustellen sucht, dann erinnern wir uns daran, daß die Nacht für das Märchengeschehen uberhaupt eine bedeutsame Rolle spielt. Gewiß geht in den Märchen vieles auch unterm Tageshimmel vor, und wir haben schon gesehen, daß dies nicht etwa bedeutet, es verliefe das Geschehen in leibhaft-nüchterner, alltäglicher Weise. Auch im Sonnenschein, gerade auch am hohen Mittag vermag das Geschehen unter den Spiegel des Bewußtseins hinabzutauchen. Aber symbolisch für diese Nachtseite der Natur ist eben auch die Erdennacht, in die das märchenhafte Erzählen manches höchst Wichtige hineinlegt.