prologue

ladder

epilogue

"Scandinavian tales,
like Scandinavian art
and the people themselves are
 earthy, vital 
and filled with contrasts of light and dark.

They are ghostly and terrible,
joyous and lighthearted,
realistic, sexy, poetic, comic and bizarre.
These contrasts create a
 richer woven fabric 
than any other folk or fairy lore.

Why this is, I cannot say,
but perhaps it is because
the people who produced them
have had to endure, through centuries,
extremes of climate and geography
that other cultures have not.

Their fierce winters and incredibly long nights,
the terrain itself 
which is difficult to travel through may explain it.

However it came to be,
it is a sense of extremes that gives these stories their power
 to terrify, haunt and delight."

-- Claire Booss: Scandinavian Folk and Fairy Tales