The Pancake

Read the Norwegian folktale of the runaway pancake, first printed by Asbjørnsen in 1866, retold for children about thinking twice before you trust.

Region: Norway (Scandinavian folk tradition)
Category: Folk & Fairy Tales
Ages: From 4, with three reading levels (ages 4–6, 7–9 and 10+)
Languages: English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish

About the legend

Being: A runaway pancake and talking farm animals
Cultural meaning: In Norway, a tale like this is called a ramseeventyr, a chain tale. It is built from many short meetings, and each time something new happens, everything that came before is said again, so that by the end the story sounds like a long rhyme, a regle. «Pannekaken» is a well-known example.
Fun fact: Runaway food turns up in stories from many countries. In a Russian tale, a little round bread called Kolobok runs away from an old woman and an old man, and in an American tale, the Gingerbread Man leaps out of the oven and runs away from everyone who chases him.

Cultural notes

«Pannekaken» (The Pancake) is a Norwegian folk tale written down by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812–1885) from storytellers in Fåberg and Sel. It was first printed in his Christmas book Juletræet in 1866 and then in his new collection of Norwegian folk tales, Norske Folke-Eventyr. Ny Samling (1871). This retelling follows the text in the 1896 edition of Norske Folke- og Huldre-Eventyr, where the title is spelled «Pandekagen». The pancake is a råmelkskake, made with the first milk a cow gives after her calf is born. In the pancake's rhyme, nearly everyone has a rhyming nickname: the mother is Kone Krone, the man Mand Brand, the hen Høne Pøne, the rooster Hane Pane, the duck Ande Vande, the goose Gaase Vaase, the gander Gasse Vasse and the pig Gylte Grisesylte. The tale ends with a joke: since the pancake got no farther, the story gets no farther either. George Webbe Dasent translated it into English as «The Pancake» in Tales from the Fjeld (1874), and H. L. Brækstad did the same in Round the Yule Log (1881). Folklorists count it as tale type ATU 2025, the runaway pancake, and the brothers Carl and Theodor Colshorn published a German version, «Vom dicken fetten Pfannekuchen», in 1854.

About this retelling

Traditional tale, retold for children A retelling of the Norwegian folk tale of the pancake that rolls away from everyone who wants to eat it.

Based on Asbjørnsen's «Pandekagen». The thick pancake, the seven hungry children who beg with more and more sweet words, the mother's slip ('wait until it turns itself'), the pancake that flips itself and rolls out of the door, the chase with frying pan and ladle with Grandpa hobbling last, the meetings with a man, a hen, a rooster, a duck, a goose and a gander, the rhyme that grows at every meeting, the pig who offers company through an unsafe forest, the brook, the ride on the snout and the single gulp all come from the tale. In the tale the pancake calls the children 'seven screaming kids'; here they are seven hungry children, the old man of the house, Gamlefar, is Grandpa here, and the English rhyming nicknames are our own. The children's names, the family's search for the pancake, the youngest child's words at the brook and the new pancake the family fries and shares at the end were created for Nordic Tales, and so were Mother's teasing words about sweet words and, in the longest version, the pig's flattery. The tale itself ends when the pig swallows the pancake.

Sources

Themes

caution
good judgment
sharing
family
Pannekaken
Pandekagen
The Pancake
Asbjørnsen
Norwegian folk tale
chain tale
ramseeventyr
runaway pancake
pancake
pig
farm animals
farm
family
Norway