Faroese Folk Tales — Part 4: Marjun and the Magic Scythe · The Summoning of the Rats · Olavur and the Driftwood Tree · The Crow's Daughter · The Runaway Pot
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part Four of KacheliTV's Faroese Folk Tales — five more tales in a fresh English translation from Jakob Jakobsen's Færøske Folkesagn og Æventyr (Copenhagen, 1898–1901), the great collection of the legends and fairy tales of the Faroe Islands.
Marjun of Ordavik, called Wise Marjun, sets the young man who loves her foster-daughter a hard condition: he must mow the whole home-field without whetting his scythe even once. A kindly neighbour lends him a wondrous scythe — with one strange warning: never look at the edge. Then, an Icelander strong in magic is hired to rid two island groups of their rats, and reads the great summoning at Baktangi — but when the rats are all gathered, the men of Eysturoy try to break their bargain. Olavur in the Parlour, the rich and clever man of Kvannasund, is refused the great driftwood tree he wants for his new smoke-room, and pays the Svinoy men back with three tides of conjured surf. The Crow's daughter eats so daintily at table — half an egg yolk, picked out with a pin — that her suitor thinks her a wife who will be light to feed; what he sees through a hole in the smoke-room wall at midnight tells another story. And a poor couple trade their only cow for a little crock pot that runs out of the house every morning — and comes home each time fuller than it went.
Stories in this episode:
0:35 Introduction
1:49 Marjun and the Magic Scythe
4:38 The Summoning of the Rats
6:58 Olavur and the Driftwood Tree
10:28 The Crow's Daughter
12:48 The Runaway Pot
Source: Færøske Folkesagn og Æventyr, collected and edited by Jakob Jakobsen (Copenhagen, 1898–1901) — Sagn No. 74 (More about Marjun Lavarsdóttir), Sagn No. 84 (The Summoning of the Rats), Sagn No. 87 (Ólavur in the Parlour), Æventyr No. 20 (The Crow's Daughter) and Æventyr No. 28(a) (The Pot That Ran Away), in a fresh English translation made for KacheliTV. Narrated by Orson.
Music: "Blazing Fire" (instrumental) — opening and closing theme, with a short excerpt between stories.
Keywords: Faroe Islands folklore, Faroese folk tales, Jakob Jakobsen, fairy tales audiobook, Scandinavian folklore, folk tales podcast, storytelling, magic scythe, runaway pot
