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The Tale of the Woodcutter

The Woodcutter and His Wife

Stay out of the woods, little one. There you will find dangers you do not yet know how to face.

Now sit still, stay silent, and I will tell you the tale of the honorable woodcutter and his enchanted ax.

In the midst of the ancient woods, there was a tiny village called Walstad. It was small and poor, and the village folk, like all village folk, lived in fear of the creatures that dwelled in the dark between the trees. Creatures as ancient as the woods themselves.

There were the Nokk, who crouched in wells, waiting for children sent to fetch water so they could drag them down to the depths and drown them. Trolls, who could crack open the walls of the villagers’ homes like eggs and devour them. The Weeping Orphans, who cried like lost children to lure soft-hearted mothers into the night. And the clever skin-shifting wolves, who stalked young girls gathering flowers and ate them whole.

On the outskirts of Walstad lived a young woodcutter and his beautiful wife. The couple was poor, but the woodcutter’s work brought in enough that they neither went hungry nor cold. And they were happy.

Until one dark winter when the snow began to fall and didn’t stop. Some said it was a war of the frost giant in the mountains that made the winter so fierce. But regardless of the cause, it snowed for days, then weeks, then months. The young woodcutter had worked hard for many months at his trade. But all the wood that he had cut, he had sold, keeping none for himself. Without a fire in the hearth, the woodcutter and his wife’s house grew cold, their bellies went empty, and the creatures in the wood scratched at their doors.

And one morning, when the icy winds howled around their cottage and the woodcutter saw his wife poking around in the cinders for a scrap left to light, he knew he must take his ax and brave the dangerous woods.

But as the woodcutter pressed into the forest, he found tree after tree brittle with cold, shattering uselessly into shards of ice under his ax. He carried on, deeper and deeper into the woods, until he was hopelessly lost.

The woodcutter fought for hours against the bitter snow, looking for his path home, until he stumbled into a small clearing. Suddenly hail no longer lashed at his face, icy air no longer bit at his fingers, and banks of snow no longer reached up to his waist. Cold winds still battered the trees beyond the clearing, but here the air was as temperate as a spring day, the ground was clear and green, and the moonlight broke through dense winter clouds to shine almost as bright as the midday sun.

And in the middle of the clearing stood the most beautiful tree the woodcutter had ever seen. The bark gleamed like gold and silver, marbled through with rubies and sapphires that flickered in the moonlight.

The woodcutter raised his ax, but just before it fell, a voice called out from the tree.

“Please, good woodcutter. I beg of you, do no harm to my tree. For if you cut it down, I, too, shall perish.”

The woodcutter was desperate. He and his wife would surely die if he returned empty-handed. But he could not ignore such a desperate plea either. And so he lowered his ax.

No sooner had he done so than a face appeared from the wood of the tree. Then an arm, then a leg, until finally, stepping out from the heart of the tree itself, in skin and clothes of golden bark, with hair of ruby leaves and veins of silver sap, appeared a Huldrekall.

“Thank you, honorable woodcutter.” The Huldrekall was an immortal being, the powerful ruler of all living beings in the forest. And yet he bowed to the woodcutter. “For your good-heartedness, I will grant you any desire.”

The woodcutter’s wishes were simple. To return to his wife. To bring home enough wood to last them through this winter. And to keep her safe from the things in the woods that clawed at their door. The Huldrekall was surprised to hear such humble wishes. He pressed the woodcutter again. Told him that he could wish for all the jewels in the king’s coffers and it would be granted. But the worthy woodcutter shook his head. And so the Huldrekall granted his simple wishes.

First, he gave the woodcutter a ring woven from the golden twigs of his tree. This ring, he told the woodcutter, would light and guide his path safely through the woods, leading him to wherever he wished to go.

Second, the Huldrekall reached up into the branches of his tree and plucked off a bough. In his hands, it twisted and shaped itself into a sharp ax, finer than any the woodcutter had ever seen. He gave it to the woodcutter and promised him that this ax would cut down any tree in one blow. “If you cut down the trees around your cottage in a great circle,” the Huldrekall said, “no danger from the woods will pass where the trees once stood.”

This was his gift to the woodcutter, he said. And to his children. And their children’s children. That for as long as his descendants wielded the ax, they would have the Huldrekall’s protection.