We left our hero (like a year ago, I’m so sorry guys) alone
in the middle of nowhere after her bear roommate/super cute nighttime visitor
was swept away by his evil troll mother. A brief recap: if she had slept with
mystery man for one more month without curiosity, the spell would have broken
and he wouldn’t have had to be a bear anymore. However, her mom convinced her
that maybe she should KNOW WHO SHE WAS SLEEPING WITH, so she lit a candle and
checked him out in the middle of the night. Now he has to marry his evil troll
stepmother’s evil troll daughter, in a land that lies east of the sun and west
of the moon.
She decides she’d better go there and rescue him—maybe because
she feels guilty, maybe because he’s super cute, maybe both. Astronomy is no
help here, so she chooses a direction at random, walking until she meets a
little old lady.
The little old lady doesn’t know how to get east of the sun
and west of the moon, but she gives our girl directions to a second little old
lady, a loaner horse so she can get there faster, and a golden apple. (She
always gives her a golden something; the specifics vary but this set seems to
be the most common.)
The second little old lady also can’t help us get to the
troll palace, but she can help with another horse, directions to another old
lady, and a golden carding comb. Old lady number three gives her a golden
spinning wheel and sends her to the east wind, and can we all just pause and take
a moment to consider the difficulty of lugging around a whole entire spinning
wheel made out of solid gold? This poor girl.
The east wind can’t help. The west wind can’t help. The
south wind can’t help. Finally she gets to the north wind, who once blew a
single leaf east of the sun and west of the moon. He knows where it is, and he’s
up for a challenge—our girl is significantly heavier than a leaf, but he
manages it with great difficulty.
Girl positions herself outside step-sister troll’s window
with the golden apple. Troll expresses interest in the apple, and they make a
deal—apple in exchange for one night with the troll’s future husband/stepbrother.
Now it may seem odd that she’s so unconcerned by who he
spends his nights with, but troll girl’s got this—boy’s all drugged up. Same
thing happens the second night, in exchange for the carding comb. Fortunately,
our former bear has some friends among the trolls. Which makes sense since they
are his step family. Apparently trolls just don’t care about sorta-kinda-almost
incest?
Friends let dude know about his nighttime visitor who’s been
sitting by his bed and crying while he sleeps for the last two nights. And about
the drugging. He doesn’t take the spiked drink on the third night—the spinning
wheel night—and he and our girl make a plan.
(Side-note: the text specifies that his friends are
Christians. That’s important in a way we’ll get to shortly.)
Tomorrow is the wedding. And before things get going, our
bear-dude issues a condition for marrying the troll.
Sure, whatever, says troll-mom. We got magic, we can meet
conditions, no big.
Dude whips out the nightshirt our girl spilled candlewax all
over. Wash this.
Turns out trolls really, really suck at laundry. Troll bride
can’t do it. Troll mom can’t do it. All the other fancy, royal trolls can’t do
it. They scrub and scrub and scrub, and the wax stain just gets bigger.
Now some versions of this story make a point of telling us
that the trolls can’t wash clothes because they aren’t Christians. Which I think is just, like, really fascinating. I’ve been thinking about this thing—trolls
can’t do laundry—for so long.
I’ve considered a few options. Maybe this was a well
established fact about trolls at the time, forgotten by history. Maybe these
privileged, royal trolls were so far removed from the daily lives of normal,
working trolls that things like chores were beyond their comprehension. But my
best guess is that we have a Nothing But the Blood of Jesus situation on our
hands here. You know, like, “What can wash my sins away? Nothing but the blood
of Jesus”? There’s this big thing in hymns and stuff where stain=sin, and this
particular wax stain is essentially a physical representation of our heroine’s
mistake. Thus, she can wash out her own stain, because though she sinned, this
journey is an indication of her repentance, and the Lord is with her now. The
trolls cannot wash out the sin, because they are wicked and do not know God.
(Thus far my research supports the theory that 95% of
ridiculous fairy tale occurrences in fairy tales recorded in largely Christian
areas after the rise of Christianity can be explained by something I learned in
Sunday School. See also: Prince Lindworm.)
So. The troll bride fails to meet the conditions set for the
marriage, and all of the trolls are so upset about this that they literally
explode. And everyone else lives happily
ever after!