A legend belongs to a genre of folk narrative that purports to relate true accounts of inexplicable episodes encountered by friends, family, or even the raconteur. Regine Normann's Legends from Arctic Norway follows Kari Aronste on her summer holiday, revisiting her childhood home in the north. She is reunited with her circle of family and friends, who on every occasion recount such odd events for one another. Moreover, we also read of how, from time to time, circumstances force these people into action, employing their knowledge of the hidden world to overcome the uncanniness of their daily lives.
The mysteries of the north are manifold. We read of the hidden tusse folk, who live in mounds close by the human settlements, and aid their farmers and fishermen. The cunning folk possess skills that allow them to manipulate circumstances and folk through their use of plants, animals, and above all words. Alongside these settled folk, the shamanistic Sámi folk possess even greater knowledge, which allows them even to manipulate physical objects at a distance. And of course, there are the dead, who never really leave this world at all: the restless dead, the vengeful dead, and the sea-dead draug, who shall never find peace in consecrated ground.
Regine Normann has spun a narrative around all of these uncanny stories. Through it she relates the lives of people who, but a hundred years ago, lived in the small settlements of the wind-swept fjords north of the Arctic circle. Yet she also demonstrates how the world of the stories and the real world are not really separate at all. The uncanny world of the legends is one with our world.
Death was never so dead that a touch of life didn’t linger in the clay, giving it the power to drift around the neighbourhood, spreading dread and fear of darkness.
– The Churchyard on Kalvøya
If you like your folklore cold and dark, this is a book for you.
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