The Blue Belt Part II

 When last we saw our protagonist, he had ridden in on a raft of lions, reclaimed his belt of superstrength, murdered his mother, and blinded and set adrift the troll who started all this.

Now, I must break to you a terrible piece of news.

After he dismounts his lion raft, the eleven lions are never seen again. No lions will appear from here on out. They will be missed.

Having dealt with things at home, our dude decides he should probably track down his wife.

(Sidenote. Was he supposed to join her in Arabia after a while? Was she supposed to come home after visiting her parents? It was never really discussed. Why didn’t they just go to Arabia together?)

He loads four ships and heads to Arabia. Where did he get all these ships? Who is manning them? Why does he need four of them? Where are his lions?

They have to stop for a while on an island, where they find a giant egg. None of the soldiers can crack it, but our guy breaks it with a single blow of his giant troll sword, releasing a chicken the size of an elephant.

His response to this turn of events is “Now we have done wrong; this can cost us all our lives.”

I’m not sure why? Does he think the chicken is going to attack them? Eat them? Step on them? He just seems really freaked about the giant chicken, and it doesn’t seem that scary, compared to everything else he's faced. I mean, he beat one lion to death, and tamed eleven more.

If only he had a small army of tame lions to help him fight the chicken.

(Seriously, where are they? I will never be over this.)

They have to get off the island fast, apparently. His sailors get him to Arabia in 23 hours. Then he orders them all to bury themselves up to their eyes in a sandhill, while he climbs a big fir tree.

A giant bird comes flying in, carrying an island, which he drops onto the ships and sinks them. It flies past the sandhill and over the fir tree, and our guy chops off its head with the troll sword.

I’m gonna be honest. I have no idea what’s going on here. How did he predict this situation? Is the giant bird friends with the chicken? Is the giant bird the chicken? Why is it using islands to sink random ships?

With the bird decapitated, dude heads into town, where he learns that the king’s daughter is home, but he’s hidden her away, and is offering her hand to anyone who can find her.

Awkward, since she’s already married.

(The story does briefly mention that the king is doing this even though she was already betrothed, and it’s unclear whether it’s referring to her full-fledged marriage to our hero, or if she was engaged to some other guy before the trolls kidnapped her.)

Instead of going to the king and explaining the situation, our guy goes immediately to find a man selling white bear skins. He buys one, puts it on, and has one of his sailors take him around town on a leash. He spends some time dancing and doing tricks, somehow convincing everyone that he is a real live bear, and the king hears about it.

The sailor is ordered to bring the bear to the palace, where everyone is very scared. He tells them all that there’s no danger as long as they don’t laugh at the bear.

A maid laughs. The bear responds by ripping her to shreds.

Reminder that this is not actually a bear. This is not even a man who has been transformed into a bear. This is a human man wearing a bear pelt. A human man who has previously demonstrated such qualities as, like, self-control, and mercy.

The rest of the palace is understandably upset about this. The sailor is understandably upset about this. The king’s response is, “Whatever, she was just a maid.”

The bear continues to put on a show. By the time he’s done, it’s late, and the king says the sailor and the bear better just spend the night. The sailor gets a bedroom, and they leave the bear in the throne room with some pillows.

In the middle of the night, the king comes and carries off the bear.

Carries him?

I mean, okay, a human man in a bear skin weighs a lot less than an actual polar bear, but that’s still a lot of carrying? And again, how is he pulling off this disguise? There is a significant size and shape difference.

Anyway. They wander through a whole bunch of hallways, until they get outside, and onto a pier, where the king pulls a bunch of fancy levers, and a little house floats up.

This is where the princess is being kept.

The king shows off the bear to the princess and her maid. This maid also laughs despite a warning, and also gets torn to pieces.

The princess is understandably frightened and distressed. The king brushes it off again, and leaves the bear with the princess even though she’s terrified and doesn’t want it there.

Once the king is gone, the bear suit is removed, the couple is reunited, and our dude is instantly forgiven for brutally murdering someone—presumably someone she knew and cared about—right in front of her.

They spend the night together, and the bear suit is back on by the time the king comes back. He returns the bear to the sailor, and they leave the palace.

Our guy comes back to the palace without the bear skin to present himself as a suitor for the princess. He’s given twenty four hours to find her, or he’ll be killed.

He hangs out in the palace and parties for the next twenty three hours. Then, with an hour to go, he follows the path the king took last night, while the king follows him and tries to convince him he’s going the wrong way.

With three minutes left on the timer, the house is floating in front of us, but the door is locked, and the king is insisting that he doesn’t have the key, and can someone please come behead this kid?

He kicks down the door, is reunited with his wife, and lives happily ever after.

This story is just. It’s just. So much.

The mom’s drastic personality change. For that matter, the boy’s massive personality change. In the beginning, he carried the troll home to bed after he was injured attempting to kill him. In the middle, he dashes his mother’s brains out. In the end, he rips two women to pieces for laughing at a dancing bear. I just—what is even happening here?

Where did our lions go?

It kind of feels like the first sixteen pages and last eight pages of this are two separate stories. In the first part, we have a too-trusting young man with lion sidekicks surviving the malicious intentions of his mother and stepfather. In the second part, we have an angry, clever man outsmarting a king to win a bride. The character personalities and the overall tone of the story just aren’t consistent from the first page to the last.

All of it is so fun, but also just, like, insane. I don’t even know how to feel about this. I love it. I hate it. It’s a masterpiece. It’s a mess. I don’t know how a single story managed to do so much, and also I will never, never forgive it for abandoning the lions partway through.

The Blue Belt Part I

 I’ve been meaning to talk about The Blue Belt since July of 2012, when I mentioned it briefly in a post about White Bear stories. (East of the Sun and West of the Moon, White Bear King Valemon, and, sort of, this one).

The Blue Belt is Norwegian, from Asbjørnsen and Moe. It’s basically 24 pages of absolute chaos, and I love every second of it.

We open with an old beggar woman and her son. They’re out begging, and the son spots a cool blue belt lying on the ground. He wants to pick it up, but the mother warns him not to, because there might be witchcraft in it.

A little later, when the woman is stopping to rest, the boy runs back and gets the belt. As soon as he puts it on, he feels strong enough to lift a mountain. He runs back to his mom, who’s mad at him for wandering off, but doesn’t seem to notice the belt. He must have put it under his shirt.

They keep walking, until it’s dark out, and the boy spots a house in the distance, where he says maybe they can stay tonight.

The mom explains that this must be a troll house, because no Christians live in this area. The boy is not bothered by this. He lets himself in the front door, where they immediately encounter a troll at least 20 feet tall, and the mom faints.

Boy and troll make friends. It comes up in conversation that the troll is over 300 years old, which isn't super relevant, but I think it’s interesting, especially considering how things are about to go down re: relationship developments.

Mom wakes up. Mom is desperately frightened. She kicks and scratches and flings herself about, trying to get away. The boy asks for supper. The troll says sure. The mom becomes convinced that the troll is going to eat them.

Troll serves a meal consisting of a whole ox and a cask of wine taller than them, with two six-foot knives as their only utensils. Mom is terrified of the knives. Mom is terrified of everything. I cannot, at this time, overstate just how terrified mom is.

They go to bed. The boy lays awake eavesdropping. The troll suggests that he and the mom get rid of the kid, and then the two of them can hook up and everything will be cool.

THE MOM AGREES WITH THIS PLAN. THE MOM, WHO NOT HALF AN HOUR AGO WAS DESPERATELY AFRAID OF THE TROLL, NOW WANTS TO STAY WITH HIM AND MURDER HER OWN SON.

You may be thinking, “She’s just too scared to argue with him. She doesn’t actually want to hook up with a terrifying troll. She doesn’t actually want her son dead.”

If so, you are wrong.

Because if she was just agreeing because she was scared, she would be trying to hurry her son out of there in the morning, before any murdering could occur.

Instead, she just hangs out in the troll house, while the troll invites the boy to work in the quarry with him.

The troll tries to crush the boy with a massive rock, which doesn’t work, because the blue belt gave him super strength. The troll ends up getting injured himself. And instead of fleeing the scene like a sensible person, the boy carries the troll home and puts him to bed to recover, then just stays there in the house with two people he knows want to murder him.

Mom and troll discuss options for a second murder attempt. There is no longer any room for doubt about mom’s true intentions, because she helps the troll come up with plans.

Mom pretends to be sick, and says nothing but lion’s milk will heal her. Troll tells boy his brother has a garden with twelve lions in it. Boy goes to milk some lions.

Of course, the lions do not want to be milked. Boy fights the biggest lion, until there’s nothing left of him but two paws. The remaining eleven lions are then feeling very cooperative. (The lion gender breakdown is not clear here. We have at least one boy lion, or did before the boy killed him, and at least one girl lion, for milk acquisition. The other ten are mysteries.)

Boy returns home with eleven lions and one drop of lion milk.

Troll refuses to believe boy did the milking. Boy sets lions on troll, but calls them off before he gets hurt too bad.

Time for murder plot number 3!

We send the boy to the castle where two more of the troll’s brothers live. The castle is surrounded by apple trees, and anyone who eats one of the apples will sleep for three days and three nights. Which will give the brothers time to tear him apart without worrying about his super strength. We’re gonna get him there by, again, having mom fake sick, with apples as the only cure this time.

And just, like. Sweetheart. You know they want you dead. You literally just eavesdropped on their conversation about it. Why do you keep going where they send you?

He goes to the orchard. He takes his eleven lions. He climbs a tree and eats as many apples as he can, because our dude has no chill and no fear.

He falls asleep. The lions guard him. The trolls come.

These are shapeshifting trolls, and they come in the shape of “man eating steeds.” But they don’t get to eat any men today, because the lions eat them first.

Our guy wakes up and goes to the castle, where he finds the princess of Arabia, who the trolls kidnapped. They decide to get married. He also claims the trolls’ really cool, massive sword. The two of them live together in the castle for a while. It’s unclear whether anyone else is there. Did a priest perform the wedding? Do they have a cook, or are they living on apples? (That sounds wildly impractical, considering the nap factor.)

Eventually, the princess decides she better go home and visit her parents.

In her absence, our guy remembers that he was supposed to bring apples home for his mom. A lot of time has passed, and he’s over the murder. (Not that he seemed particularly bothered in the first place.) So he invites his mom and the troll to come live in the castle with him.

Mom asks him about his super strength, and he shows her the belt. Which she then rips off of his waist.

She wants to dash his brains out, now that his strength is gone, but the troll thinks that’s too good a death for him. So instead, they burn his eyes out and put him out to sea in a little boat. The lions swim after him, pull him to shore, and take care of him, because they are good lions, and I love them.

One of the lions watches a blind rabbit fall into a spring, then come out able to see. Smart lion drags the boy to the spring and dunks him, and his sight is restored.

And then comes my favorite part, a beautiful moment for which, alas, I have never seen an illustration.

The little boat the troll sent our guy out on wasn’t seaworthy, apparently. Because the way we get home is that the lions all line up together to make a raft, and he sails home on a raft made of lions.

Back home, he steals back his belt. The mom tries to convince him to give it back to her, because apparently she thinks he’s an idiot, which I guess is fair, because he did keep letting her try to kill him, and showed her the belt when he knew she was trying to kill him.

He dashes her brains out, which I guess is also fair because that’s what she wanted to do with him, but it still feels intense.

He blinds the troll and puts him out to sea, which I am a lot more on board with.

And this story still has eight pages left!

Which we’re going to pick up next week, because this post is already three pages long. Stay tuned for the reunion between our protagonist and his wife, as well as giant chickens, improbably convincing bear suits, brutal murder, etc!