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The Tale of the Woodcutter

The Enchanted Ax

Immortal beings always kept their promises.

The woodcutter found his way home by the light of the Huldrekall’s ring.

The charmed ax the Huldrekall had given him felled the trees around his cottage as if they were nothing more than stalks of tall grass.

The woodcutter happily brought in the firewood to his wife, and soon their hearth was glowing. That night, as they sat by the fire warming their hands, the young couple did not hear any scratching of beasts at their door. Though outside they could see creatures’ fearsome gleaming eyes just beyond the line of cut trees, as if they were held at bay by some invisible force.

The next day, the woodcutter, who now had more firewood than he would need all winter, went to his neighbors with parcels of logs over his shoulders to sell. As they marveled that one man had been able to cut so much wood in one night, he told each of them the story of the enchanted ax. Word quickly spread around the village of Walstad.

That evening, the woodcutter returned home, pockets heavy with coin. And the woodcutter and his wife slept with full bellies for the first time all winter.

The next morning, they were awakened by a knock on their door. It was a young widow from the village. She had lost her husband to the forest some months before, and her firstborn daughter had been carried away in the jaws of a wolf. She feared for her two remaining children. She had heard stories in town of how the things of the forest could not pass the trees felled by the woodcutter’s ax. And so she begged that she might be allowed to build a home here, in the safe circle of trees that he had carved out. She promised the woodcutter that in return, she would give him a fresh egg from her chickens as payment every day.

The woodcutter, pleased with the idea of his wife having a fresh egg to eat each morning, agreed to her bargain.

Not long after, a family of shepherds from the village came knocking at the woodcutter’s door. This family promised the woodcutter a bale of wool each month if they were allowed to stay. The woodcutter, who had seen his wife shivering in her thin smock, agreed to their bargain so that he might see his wife be warm. The next family were weavers, and they promised that they could pay by crafting the wool into clothes and blankets.

Before long, word of the woodcutter and his magic ax had spread beyond Walstad, and others began to arrive from neighboring villages. One family came from beyond the hills in the east, herding goats to trade their milk for safety. Another came from over the river in the western woods, asking if they might pay to live on the woodcutter’s land with their rare craft of metalwork. From the south came a wealthy duke who had lost the favor and the protection of the king, and who paid in gold.

And then from the north, the enchantress came.

Or so they were called, back then, in more superstitious times, when the science of magic was new and mysterious.

The enchantress knew how to craft charms. She offered to pay the woodcutter in knowledge. To teach him and his descendants to use the magic that every one of us is born with.

With each new arrival, the woodcutter cut down more trees to make room for them. The village of Walstad grew larger, the woodcutter’s wealth grew greater, and the danger of the woods grew farther away, always lingering just beyond the edge of the trees.