#haugfolk

Huldra is heading out with her friends to party~

A comic that was supposed to be posted around Christmas. Then holiday demotivation happened. But no issue, surely it can be finished afterwards, right? Then the capital of my country was slightly taken over by insurrectionists until they got bored and left and the majority of them seemingly faced few to no consequences. And then school happened. So here we are. But, better late than never. 

This little comic strip is based on a specific Norwegian legend, which can be found here: http://hauntedohiobooks.com/news/oskorei-and-haug-folk-the-dangers-of-a-norwegian-christmas/ and also in Christiansen's Folktales of Norway. 

The beings the protagonist, Jacob, sees are called the Haug-folk. Or, literally, the Mound Dwellers. The name seems to be synonymous with tusse and huldre-folk, or hidden folk. They are a type of being which live underground together, usually in large groups, specific to Norway (but similar beings can be found across Northern Europe). They tended to be content with their life, full of vast riches beneath the earth living forevermore. Unless the topic of salvation came up. Sometimes they took children and left changelings, or got a fancy for a young human which they took with them. Some stories depict life with the huldre-folk to be drab and boring, where they waste away into a grey nothingness. In this case, however, it appears to have turned out for the better. With the huldre-folk Guro Ljoseng finds riches beyond her imagination as a peasant farmer and love with the leader of their mound. Tostein, the haug-man in question, is a sight to behold. He stands tall with a blue cloak, legs that reach down to the ground when he rides, and a nose long enough to tickle his horse's mane. As far as other stories are concerned the huldre-folk don't appear, if they are seen at all, to be all that dissimilar to human beings. Exceptions to this trend tend to be extreme: they are either the most beautiful person you've seen, or have exaggeratedly ugly features, such as Mr. Tostein's nose. More often than not this is paired with sex: females are beautiful, males are ugly. A pattern which occurs throughout the world of hidden neighbors. In the past I might've described haug-folk as like orangutans, with the largest males developing extreme noses and height in response to becoming the dominant member of their group. Now though, I think Tostein's just got a really long nose and that's just how it is. 

In the book this instance of the haug-folk are compared to the oskorei, a regional Norwegian wild hunt. Similar stories though show that mound-dwellers like to come out during Christmas to celebrate. Danish mound-folk will raise their hills on pillars of fire or gold while they celebrate. Christmas is usually a time of magic, for the places where it's practiced, and even if they aren't elves or angels supernatural beings like to get in on the action. In addition, these terrible riders don't fly through the air like most others do. 

Over the holiday break two important additions were added to my inventory: Jón Baldur Hilðberg and Sigurður Ægisson's Meeting with Monsters and a scanner. So now I have a whole-ass book on Icelandic creatures and a way of uploading traditional art without resorting to a shitty 3DS camera. So, while I'm in-between school and job surfing, there will be a few selections from my sketch-book to tide everyone over before an actual drawing is finished. This page... was actually finished before I got the book or the scanner. Whoops.

The first drawing is the original sketch of Jacob and the Haug-folk, which I've talked extensively about here.

Slightly below that is a cat-snake. Well, not really a cat-snake, but a vatnaormur, or water snake from Icelandic folklore. This was spurred on by A Book of Creature's entry on them, specifically the brief mention of the Hvalvatn snake, which was described as striped and with a cat-like head. This made me remember that I used to draw lindworms exclusively as cat-snake-seal monsters. I think it looks a little cute, especially the second one where the stripes are really standing out. Maybe one day I should do a full portrait of all the different water serpents from Iceland. Similar to what Pristichampsus did with Heuvelmans' sea serpents. Also ironic that literally two days after I drew this I got the book from which the description came from.

Finally, there is the finngalkn. It is a really obscure creature that I was trying to research at the time. This came after a very amateurish attempt at trying to translate the Swedish Wikipedia entry for the finngalkn. The beast in question is referenced in a few medieval sagas, namely Orvar-Odd's saga, Njal's saga, and Hjálmþés saga ok Ölvis. Most often it appears as a sort of centaur, half human and half-beast, although a traditional centaur form might not always be necessary. English translations of Njal's saga most often call it a wild man or something like that; a man-shaped beast that lives in the wild like an animal. The name approximately translates to "Enemy of the Finns". Whether this is because it was known from Lappland or that the Lapps (Sami) lived in what the Norse considered the wilderness and fought it, or something else entirely eludes confirmation. 

Most of the time people slay them like any other monster. Going back to Njal, it's mentioned right alongside a flying dragon as something a character just happened to slay as they were going about their business. Hjálmþés saga ok Ölvis describes a female finngalkn with 'a horse's tail, hooves, like a long man; bright eyes, a broad mouth, and huge hands'. To add to the confusion, as time went on it was mixed more and more with the Greco-Roman basilisk. Suddenly it gained deadly eyes and huge claws. Somehow its name was given to the Shadow Baldur, a relative of the skoffin in Iceland.