This Nordic tale is ripe for the telling, and the two most well known versions of the story are Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, and East. The two stories are very different though, even though they were based on the same base fairy tale. The first of the stories is much closer to the original tale, so it is the first one we should probably talk about.
Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow-- By Jessica Day George
The author Jessica Day George has written a number of fairy tale adaptations, and although this is the first one we are talking about, it is far from the last. This adaptation is very close to the original story. The main character is simply called pika or lass, depending on who is talking to her, because her mother refused to name her (she was angry that she had given birth to yet another daughter). She did have several sons, including Hans Peter, a man who had come back after several years of sailing severely changed. The lass is closest to him and wants to understand what is making him so sad.
The lass met a white reindeer when she was a little child, and the reindeer granted her a name. After this encounter, the lass is now able to talk to animals. By the time she is a teenager, the pika is well-known to have a way with animals, rumored to even be able to converse with them. So the Isbjorn (ice bear) seeks her out.
The girl is taken away to his palace (voluntarily) and grows used to life there. She even meets the servants, including a faun named Erasmus. She is given a diary through which she can talk to her family back home, and learns to love the palace.
She eventually returns home, however, after hearing that her father is extremely ill. In that time, her mother gives her the candle and flint that would prove to be the girl's undoing. The story follows the fairy tale through it all. It does change it so the three old crones who provide the lass with the items she uses to bargain time with her beloved to be in a single spot. This is really nice actually, because that section would be extremely repetitive to read otherwise.
The story continues, with her riding on the backs of each of the winds, until the lass has reached the palace that is East of Sun, West of Moon. She bargains away her things for time with the prince, and on the third night, when he is conscious, they make the necessary plans so he can trick the troll.
When the troll fails to wash out the tallow, but the lass is able to, the palace comes crashing down. They escape with the human prisoners, and make their way south in search of civilization. The girl and her isbjorn marry, and everyone in the story lives happily ever after.
East--Edith Pattou
This story centers around a girl named Ebba Rose. Actually, her name is Nyamh Rose, but that is beside the point. Her mother was superstitious, and believed that the "birth direction" of the child indicated some of the personality traits that the kid would have. She wanted one child born for each of the directions on the compass rose (7 of them--she included South-East, South-West, etc), except for North, because she North borns are the hardest to deal with. She also had a prediction from a soothsayer that indicated that any north-born child of hers would die painfully. So when her last daughter was born with an ambiguous birth direction, her mother convinced herself that her daughter was born an East.
Because Rose was a North born, she love to explore the world around her. But when she was a teenager, everything on her family's farm went wrong, to the point that they were being foreclosed upon. In the nick of time, an Ice Bear who had been protecting her all her life came back into it. From here, the story follows the actual fairy tale fairly closely, with only minor addendums, until we get to the point where Rose makes the crucial mistake. She looks at the prince with the candle given to her by her mother, drops the wax, and the prince is whirled away to marry the troll-queen.
She is able, through much struggling, to book passage onto a ship headed north, believing that to be the way to the land East of Sun and West of Moon, and through much hardship, makes it to Gronland (Greenland), where she meets a tribe of Inuit people who are more than willing to help her. Rose is guided through the icy land by a village Shaman who speaks her language.
Finally, Rose reaches the palace that is East of Sun, West of Moon, only to discover that they are in the midst of wedding preparations. She disguises herself as a servant, and, with the help of a troll friend that she made in her time with the ice bear, Tuki, Rose is able to get the prince to stop taking the potion. She attends the wedding disguised as a troll, and she meets her prince on the first, preliminary night of the wedding. By the second day, the prince decides that his queen must wash the shirt before she can marry him, seemingly out of the blue.
The story ends happily ever after, with the prince and Rose going off to get married.
Both of these novels are really quite good and very entertaining, and they can be found in the YA section of your local library or bookstore.
Next week, we shall pick up our dancing slippers and learn about the 12 girls who danced every night--the Twelve Dancing Princesses.
No comments:
Post a Comment