Scandinavian Folklore: Nisse

Hello from the Eastern Iowa Airport, where the Internet is free, and the accessibility is wonderful. I will be MIA for the majority of the day in transit to Toledo, OH and then Monroe, MI for the Midwest Institute for Intercultural and International Education (or MIIIE, as that's much less of a mouthful!) Over the next few days I'll check out Rosetta Stone, read some books, and get moving on the troll book's next scenes. I think. Oh, and attend a conference.

Yesterday was one of *those* days, where the interruptions flowed fast and furious. For Pete's sake, we had a bomb threat at school, which we took seriously, because on Monday, there *was* a bomb that blew up a pop machine at the student apartments. Not a lot of opportunity for my job yesterday, let alone the next kewl scene of the troll story.

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However, I can't let the day pass without talking to you about the nisse. My last post was serious, and some of you are missing your folklore fix.

Many cultures have small and helpful household faeries. For the Norwegians, those helpful faeries were the nisse, little red capped men reminiscent of David the Gnome. In exchange for porridge or new clothes, they would usually do farm chores, like bringing in grain, or taking care of animals.

In our troll story, while the trolls are busy doing troll things, the nisse help them maintain their cover as Iowa farmers.

I suppose next time we'd best have a conversation about the nix, although I'm not using the nix in my story. I'll also round out the collection by chatting about the Silver Mother.

Originally published at Writer Tamago. You can comment here or there.