The Hulder of the Waterfall

Discover a hulder living behind a waterfall in a Norwegian-inspired tale for children about friendship, honesty and respect for nature.

Region: Norway (mountain summer farms and forests)
Category: Legends & Folk Beliefs
Ages: From 4, with three reading levels (ages 4–6, 7–9 and 10+)
Languages: English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish

About the legend

Being: Hulder (Huldra)
Cultural meaning: The hulder belongs to de underjordiske, the hidden folk of Norwegian folk belief. They were said to live beside people but out of sight, often near farms and mountain summer farms, and to move into the summer farms in autumn, when farm families took their animals back down to the valley. The name hulder comes from the Old Norse verb hylja, 'to hide'. The hidden folk could trouble those who wronged them, but they helped those who treated them with respect.
Fun fact: In one of Asbjørnsen's hulder tales, a boy shares his cream porridge with the hidden folk, and the storyteller says that cream porridge is the best thing a hulder can get!

Cultural notes

In Norwegian folk belief, the hulder belonged above all to the summer farms and forests of Eastern Norway. Tales about her were told not as fairy tales but as legends, often as something the teller or someone they knew had experienced. Peter Christen Asbjørnsen retold many of them in Norske Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn (1845–1848). In his «Fra fjellet og seteren», the dairymaid Brit tells how she heard cowbells ringing as if they were made of silver and a herding call echoing through the woods and hills, and how, under the blue skirt of a girl walking behind a fine herd, she thought she saw a cow's tail. Brit was probably a real dairymaid, Brit Justhole, who worked at a summer farm Asbjørnsen visited in 1842. A summer farm, or seter, was a pasture in the outfields with houses for people and animals, used during the summer. The dairymaid was at the heart of the work and turned the milk into butter and cheese that would keep. In 2024 Norwegian and Swedish summer-farm culture was inscribed on UNESCO's list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. The tall purple flower Astrid must never touch is northern wolfsbane (Norwegian tyrihjelm), which is very poisonous to eat.

About this retelling

Original story inspired by folklore An original story inspired by Norwegian folklore about the hulder and the hidden folk.

The hulder and the hidden folk are traditional figures in Norwegian folk belief, and the old advice was to treat them with respect; Grandma's two rules, never laugh at them and never tell their secrets, are our way of putting that advice for children. In the old legends the hulder could also lure people away, and the hidden folk could take children and leave their own in their place. She is often described as hollow at the back, like a rotten tree stump. We have left these out, because this story is about meeting someone different with respect, and here the hulder is a lonely, gentle forest dweller whose tail is simply part of her. Astrid, her grandmother and Astrid's friendship with the hulder were created for Nordic Tales.

Sources

Themes

kindness
respect
curiosity
empathy
care for nature
hulder
huldra
hidden folk
de underjordiske
Norwegian forest
waterfall
summer farm
mountain farm
folklore
nature
kindness