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And now a troll has creeped me out:

“Now a troll lived in the mountains there in those days, and had been desirous of the girl ever since she had begun to herd her father’s cows, when she was but small. One day, when the girl was scarcely grown up, it spoke to her father, saying that if it could have the girl, then it would do what it could for her father and her folk.”

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@norwegianfolktales The idyllic life on a pre-industrial farm! You spend all day threshing with flails, then come and eat your porridge for supper. Afterwards you have to wash up. Which is quite straightforward:

"Erik and Jens took a couple more spoons of porridge, then they glanced at each other, wiped their spoons on their shirt sleeves and replaced them on the spoon rack on the wall."

"He went to just below the saeter-meadow knoll again, and there he sat down and began to play his fiddle again. He played all the notes and melodies he knew, and the longer he played, the more sombre the notes became, and the wilder his playing grew. He played so that the birds on the mountain tops around quieted and the leaves on the trees hung still, listening. He played so that the neck in the waterfall fell silent. He played so that the blood spurted from his nails – he played until the strings broke."

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"There was once upon a time a young boy who inherited a small mountain farm from his parents. He held his father’s farm so dear that he thought to himself that he would live here all his life. But often, when he looked out over his small plots of land, he wished that they might grow into large rolling fields and meadows. And when he looked at his two solitary cows, he wished that he could own a whole herd. And when one evening he took the time to properly consider the small, grey buildings, he wished that they were large and fine, both those for the crops and those for the livestock and those he lived in himself. Yet there was one thing he was wholly certain of, and that was that he would never trade away or sell his father’s farm – no, not for all the goods or gold in the world. After all, it was here that he had been born and raised - and round about stood the quiet forest and the mighty mountains, and the view down to the broader settlement and its sparkling river was so pleasant and so beautiful. And just below his best field lay the bluest of blue mountain lakes, blinking at him, reflecting the surrounding mountains."

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Penultimate text in this amusing collection, and what a wedding it describes:

“Was that not a bridal procession coming straight out of the mossy mountain wall? Two gleaming white horses came first. On one sat a bride so fine and proud, and both bride and horse were bedecked in silver and gold. On the other sat the bridegroom, small and thin, dark-skinned, and clothed magnificently. After these two white horses came two wild brown stallions with handsome groomsmen in the saddle. Afterwards came carriages and horses in a long, long column. And fiddle players played such a beautiful melody. A strange thing was that the horses all limped as one on their left forelegs; indeed, it suited the tempo of the beautiful melody so well that Erik nearly guffawed. Yet at the same time he shuddered quite uncannily, for he suddenly saw what appeared to be a church down in the field, close by the river. The procession halted in front of the church, and small bells began to peal, and they sounded like fine cowbells. The procession dismounted their horses and climbed out of their carriages and assembled themselves beautifully. Then the fiddle players started playing the melody at full volume. And when now the procession went up the church steps to enter the church, Erik began to laugh so that it echoed in the mountains, for – look at that – the bride and the groom and the kitchen master and the groomsmen and the fiddlers and all the others limped. Some limped on their right leg, others on their left, and some on both legs; it was a strange sight, how they limped away from each other and towards each other. And yet they all kept time with the music. And each woman bore a tail like a cow’s tail, which also swayed back and forth in time. Or perhaps they were merely the girls’ beautiful long plaits.”

(First draft – please excuse any mess.)

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And now the final text, which sounds a little less than Norwegian:

They rode away like the wind, both by night and by day, through forest and over river and water. And when they rode through the forest, a road formed for them between the trees, and when they rode over a river or water, bridges formed for them. And the people of the great kingdom bowed themselves in the dust before their mighty king.

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All in all, I have translated ~17,000 words in a little more than two weeks, which suggests I feel a certain affinity with the tone of the original. Also, the language has undergone relatively minor changes in the last hundred years, which means that these texts present as recent rather than old (like Asbjørnsen & Moe), which helps.

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