The Three Snake Leaves

 I’ve decided to talk about this story today, even though it wasn’t on my very tentative schedule, because I’ve still been thinking about The Blue Belt. Specifically about how different our protagonist seemed after the lions healed his eyes in the magic stream.

I guess I can’t say he came back wrong, since technically he never went—he wasn’t dead, just blind. But it kind of feels like that, doesn’t it? The boy we set to sea was not the same boy who rode home on a raft of lions. (Still obsessed with that image, btw.)

So I was thinking about this story, because it’s about a girl who came back wrong. And as I’m reading it, she sort of reminds me of The Blue Belt’s mother, too, just in terms of her decision making just seeming absolutely insane and out of nowhere. Which, like, at least she can blame it on coming back wrong. Blue Belt Mom, why did you team up with that troll you were so scared of?

(Actually, side note. I promise I will get into the snake leaves soon. But The Blue Belt. The mom warned the boy that there were no Christians in the woods. Which in this setting means there are only monsters in the woods. Were the woods, like, inherently bad? Was there a corrupting influence that the belt protected our protagonist from? It corrupted the mom, and then she stole the belt, and it corrupted the protagonist too—they both got suddenly murderous. Idk. Gonna keep thinking about this.)

Anyway. The Three Snake Leaves. German. Grimms.

A young man distinguishes himself in battle and becomes a favorite of the king. The king has a daughter described as whimsical, who refuses to marry unless her husband promises that, should she die first, he be buried alive with her in her grave.

Not what I would call whimsy, exactly, but okay.

Obviously, our young soldier marries her. And, of course, she gets sick and dies. He regrets his promise, but the king’s not letting him out of it; into the grave he goes, with four loaves of bread and four bottles of wine, and when they’re gone he’ll starve to death.

He is not given any water. And, like, what about oxygen? I guess the grave isn't airtight? It’s not technically a grave, anyway—big enough for him to walk around in.

While he’s down there, slowly dying, a white snake approaches the princess’ body. He’s not about to let anything mess with his wife’s body, so he takes out his sword and chops it into three pieces.

A second snake arrives, sees his dead body, and brings over three green leaves. He puts the leaves in the wounds, and they heal, leaving the first snake intact and alive.

The snakes slither away, leaving the leaves behind, and the soldier uses them to bring his wife back to life. They knock on the tomb door until someone lets them out, the soldier gives the leaves to a friend for safekeeping, and everything is great.

For a while.

But the princess doesn’t love him anymore.

They go on a journey by sea to visit the soldier’s father. On the ship, the princess befriends the captain. They plot together, throw the soldier overboard, and make plans to go home to her father and be married.

The soldier’s friend takes a lifeboat, finds the body in the water, and rows away. He brings the soldier back to life, and they return to the palace, somehow beating the princess there.

Interestingly, the soldier didn’t come back wrong. The princess went from loving him to murdering him, but he still seems like the same guy, post-resurrection. Not, I guess, that we see a whole lot of him afterward. Maybe the wrongness builds with time?

The king is, understandably, reluctant to believe that his daughter murdered her husband. He has the soldier and his friend hide in the palace until he has a chance to speak with her.

The princess gets home, and tells exactly the story the soldier’s friend said she would tell—my husband tragically died, the captain was there the whole time, I don’t know what I would have done without him.

The king presents her with her living husband. She immediately confesses to everything and begs for mercy. The king says no.

Princess and captain are put out to sea in a boat full of holes, where presumably they drown and die.

And that’s it. That’s the story.

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!

Th Turnip Princess

 So this story is from Schonwerth—it’s actually the title story for the first-ever Schonwerth collection published in English—and like most of Schonwerth, it’s wild.

(BTW, this story was published in the Guardian when the book was announced, so it’s online for free, but, like, don’t bother reading it. It’s not the same translation, and it’s basically nonsensical. I thought I could use that version for reference, to work on this post when I didn’t have my physical book on hand, but that didn’t work.)

We start with a prince. He’s wandering around in the woods, as princes tend to do. (Seriously, don’t they have any sort of royal responsibilities? Why are they always in the woods?) He sleeps in a cave, and when he wakes up he meets an old lady and her pet bear.

The old lady likes him. Wants to marry him. He’s not interested, which is fair. You meet a lot of old women, wandering in the woods, and asking for some food, or help carrying something, is reasonable. You say no, you get cursed for being rude. But asking for a wedding is a little much, and I support the prince’s right to refuse.

However.

He just, like, stays? He continues hanging out in this woman’s cave, with her pet bear, taking advantage of her hospitality. It says he’s unable to leave. There is no indication as to why. In fact, one paragraph later, he will leave, with no difficulty. So I kinda think he’s just sick of the princely wood-wandering, and taking advantage of this poor old lady.

One day the prince and the bear are chilling out in the cave without the old lady, and the bear just…starts talking? Did the prince know already that the bear could talk? I sure didn’t, but he seems to be taking it in stride.

The bear tells him that if he pulls a nail out of the wall, and then sets it under a turnip, the bear will be set free and the prince will get a beautiful wife.

He doesn’t even think about. Just immediately yanks out the nail and runs for the nearest turnip field. The bear turns into a man with a crown as soon as the nail is out, and the prince doesn’t even talk to him, doesn’t ask any follow-up questions or anything. Straight for the turnip field.

Where, out of nowhere, a monster appears!

No further details are provided. The monster has no relevance to the larger story. He runs into the prince, the prince drops the nail, he grabs the nearest object to steady himself, and that object happens to be a thorny bush.

He pricks himself on the thorns, and bleeds so much he passes out.

No wonder he was hiding out in the cave. This dude can’t handle a bush. What would have happened if he’d run into a bear that wasn’t domesticated? What would have happened if he’d run into a squirrel in a bad mood? Why did the king let him go out into the woods alone?

Anyway. He passes out. When he wakes up again, he’s not in the turnip field, and also he’s grown a beard. So, a reasonably long nap. (The next story in this Schonwerth collection also features a man who wakes up to find he's been out long enough to grow a beard. We might talk about that one later.)

This dude is not concerned that an extended period of time has passed and he's somehow been moved while unconscious. He doesn’t spend any time trying to figure out where he is or what’s happened. He just immediately starts searching for a turnip field.

Apparently, he really wants a beautiful wife.

Doesn’t have the nail anymore, though.

Eventually, he finds a single turnip. Since he doesn’t have the nail, he puts a branch under it instead. Which, somehow, sort of works. He goes to sleep on the ground next to the turnip, and when he wakes up it’s turned into a bowl/large nutshell, with a nail sitting inside of it. Further examination of the inside of the bowl/shell reveals the imprint of “the entire body of a wondrously beautiful maiden.”

How can he tell how beautiful she is from a dent she left in a nutshell? How large is this nutshell? Is it still roughly the size of a turnip? Is he not concerned about accidently stepping on and murdering his Thumbelina-esque future wife?

None of these questions will be answered.

The prince returns to the cave, and I would love to know when and how he figured out where he was and how to get back.

The cave is abandoned, and the nail is sitting on the ground.

Which makes no sense, because didn’t he already find the nail in the turnip bowl?

Anyway. He picks up the nail and puts it back in the wall. The old woman and the bear materialize out of thin air, and the prince starts yelling at the old lady, demanding to know what she did with the alleged beautiful maiden.

Dude. You have no reason to believe this lady has anything to do with any of this. You got the tip from a talking bear when she wasn’t even there. You didn’t follow the instructions, you lost the nail, and the only evidence you have that this beautiful maiden even exists is a weird indent in a turnip. You need to chill.

The woman says, “I’m right here. Why do you keep rejecting me?”

The prince ignores this. The bear tells him to pull the nail out of the wall. He pulls it out halfway.

The bear turns halfway into a man. The old lady turns halfway into a beautiful maiden.

He pulls it out the rest of the way. They transform the rest of the way. Apparently, the turnip step is no longer needed. They destroy the nail, the prince marries the girl, and they go back to his kingdom, where they live happily ever after.

I have. So many questions.

What is the connection between the bear and the woman? What happens to the former bear when the other two go home and get married? Why were they cursed in the first place? Who cursed them? Was the monster in the turnip field in any way connected to the others? Did whoever set the curse send the monster to prevent it breaking? Was the monster the one who set the curse? Why does this girl even want to marry the prince? He wasn’t very nice to her when she was cursed. Why are there two nails? Why is the turnip not involved in the spell breaking for round two? Why did the bear turn back into a bear, when he was human last time we saw him? If all it took to break the spell was taking a nail out of the wall, why didn’t the girl or the bear just do it themselves? How did the girl go from being an old lady, to being Thumbelina in the turnip, back to being an old lady?

None of these questions will ever be answered. But speculating is fun.

Patreon

 I do not have the time or energy to be posting things to multiple platforms every week. So, like, when I get a chance I'll copy things back over to here, but you can get my posts consistently and on time over on Patreon - I'm trying to get back into the habit of weekly fairy tale blogs, and the next couple we'll be discussing are The Turnip Princess and The Blue Belt. Hope to see you there!

Patreon Membership! Merch! Book! Etc!

 Okay, so! The winning pin design was this one:

And now to discuss what we're doing with the pins. As you may have noticed, I'm really trying to improve Patreon membership and engagement for 2024. This includes a lot of new rewards for various support tiers, as well as plans to, like, actually post things on Patreon regularly.

One of our new things is that everyone who is a member on the page by January 1, 2024 gets one of these pins. This means free members, paid members, members who signed up on January 1, and members who've been here for five years. Everyone gets a free pin. (Unless you're not comfortable giving out an address, in which case I guess you don't get a pin, because how would I send it to you? I guess you can have a copy of the file so you can make your own pin at home?)

Another new thing is that everyone who's a member by January 1 is entered in a drawing for a free, signed copy of either Shards of Glass or Lindworm, your choice, with a personalized message. All free members get one entry; all paid members at all tiers get two entries. I'm giving away 5 books. (To five different people—if your name is entered twice and gets drawn twice, you only get one book. I'll draw again.) If you don't want a copy, you can waive it, or you can take it and give it to a friend.

(It is worth noting that given the current member breakdown, there are 7 people total who are eligible for 1 of 5 books, and 50% of entries go to my family members. So if there seems to be a significant bias in the drawing results, well. That's just math. Become a member to improve the math!)

https://www.patreon.com/konglindorm

Patreon Updates

 My Patreon page has been, frankly, pretty sad, pretty much since its inception. The goal is to change that in 2024, and we’re going to discuss some of the new developments today.

1. It used to be impossible for people who were not financially supporting me to comment on posts. I fixed that. Anyone should be able to comment now, and please, do. I would love to increase general engagement.

2. New rewards have already been added to the $15 and $25 support tiers. New rewards are in the works for $5 and $10 tiers. I’ve deleted the $20 tier, because no one was using it and I didn’t want to think of something to differentiate it from the others. The $1 tier will continue to get early access and exclusive content.

3. I am hoping to increase the amount of content I actually share on Patreon, because I’ve been seriously struggling in that department.

4. Patreon has recently added the option to sell digital media here, and I’m going to look into whether that’s worth doing or not. I will keep you guys posted.

5. I’m planning to add a Patrons-only coupon that can be used in my store.

6. I desperately need your feedback on what you’d like to see more of. What were you looking for when you came to this page? If you’ve never been here before, what would make you want to stay? What would make you want to support me?

· I started with blogs about folk and fairy tales. Did people enjoy that? Would you like me to get that going again?

· Do you want to see rough drafts or deleted scenes from finished projects?

· Do you want more content about the writing or publishing process?

· Do you want more pieces of upcoming projects?

· Do you like exclusively written content? Would you like to see more variety in format? Maybe videos? Would like a livestream thing be interesting? So we could have, like, actual conversation?

· I shared an early draft of Lindworm serially on Patreon, years ago. I started sharing a draft of another novel, but stopped because it was difficult to keep up with when no one seemed to really be reading at, at least not in comparison to the numbers I was seeing on the fanfic I was sharing at the same time. Were people reading it? Would you like to, if I started something like that again?

· (On the topic of fanfic. That’s something I write under a different name, and a name I haven’t shared with everyone on Patreon, because it’s something I like to keep kind of separate and just for me. But if you’d like me to talk about fanfic in general, I’d be happy to do that. Like, original vs fan writing, or the process of writing serially, or how writing fanfic has improved my original fic, or why I’ve still been writing so much fanfic while kind of burned out of my original writing. And if you’re coming here from Tumblr or AO3, and already know about my fanfic, I’d be happy to talk more about the specifics over on Tumblr—just send me a message!)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/93585569?utm_campaign=postshare_creator