by Alexa Takayama
When I think of April, one of the things I think of is all the melting snow coming down from the mountains. I was poking through my list of mythological creatures to try to decide on what to write on this month, and I settled on the Fossegrim—a waterfall-dwelling water spirit that takes the form of an old man and likes to play stringed instruments.
Fossegrim originates from Scandinavian folklore, namely in Norway and Sweden. Fossegrim literally means “waterfall lord*”. He’s known as a Strömkarlen in Swedish, meaning “stream man.” The descriptions of his appearance are varied from region to region and story to story. He is usually an old man who wears a green hat and has a mouth full of green teeth. Other times he has green hair and green eyes to match. Sometimes he is described as looking like a young boy. Occasionally, he’s a sort of centaur-like figure, probably because he is very similar to the näk—Scandinavian kelpies, essentially. He is said to have “slit ears” (like gills, maybe?) and he will keep his feet hidden.
The Fossegrim is known to be an exceptionally talented fiddler or harpist. There is magic in his music which makes it so the strings play the sounds of the forest, wind, and water. His skills are much sought-after, and he can be convinced to teach those skills in exchange for a food offering. With the caveat being that this food offering must be a white ram thrown butt-first, without looking, into a northward-flowing waterfall. Sound oddly specific? Well, this offering also must be made specifically on a Thursday evening** and in secrecy. Alternatively, if chucking a whole goat into a waterfall is a little too inconvenient for you, you can provide smoked mutton as a substitute, but it has to be stolen from your neighbour’s pantry, four Thursdays** in a row. Now, if you don’t provide enough meat, the Fossegrim will only teach you how to tune your instrument.
Let’s assume you’ve managed to provide a satisfactory, albeit odd, meal to the Fossegrim and he has agreed to teach you his skills. His teaching style is a little extreme: he will guide your hand onto the instrument, drawing the fingers along the strings until they bleed. But after that, you’ll be able to play so well that trees will dance and torrential waters will stand still. I’m also assuming you will be learning while standing waist-high in a frigid cold fjord.
Apparently, the Fossegrim has eleven variations in his repertoire, but I couldn’t find what the first ten were, as everyone seems to jump straight to the eleventh. Forget Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, we’re going straight for Paganini’s 24th Caprice. The reason this eleventh piece is so desired is because if a mortal plays it, every person and living thing must dance. Because making trees dance and water stop wasn’t enough.
Speaking of Paganini—he was rumoured to have made a deal with the devil to acquire his musical genius. Well, there were Scandinavian fiddlers who were so skilled that it was rumoured they had been taught by the Fossegrim. Two of them were Torgeir Augundsson (1801-1872) and Ole Bull (1810-1880). Because somehow it was more conceivable to people that making agreements with supernatural, nefarious spirits was how you got good at making music. Instead of, you know, practicing.
So, if you’re thinking of taking up the harp or the fiddle, it’s probably easier to put in 40 hours of practice a day than throwing an ungulate into a river. Just saying. Now go practice.
* Okay, so the etymology of “grim” is a bit varied. It’s Old Norse and could be used to denote an intimidating hooded figure. In Icelandic texts, it meant heartless, strict, or wicked, and was very similar to the word for wrath, gramr. And gramr was usually used as a name for “lord”. Regardless of the origin, it says a lot about the Viking ruling class.
** I’m guessing that this has something to do with Thor, as he is associated with rams, and Thursday is literally from Old Norse “Thor’s Day”.
