The Wood Grouse Plays: Translated Excerpts from Theodor Kittelsen’s “The Black Death”

[A Defrocked Academic]

1. Introduction

The work of Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914) will be familiar to frequenters of Thomas Ligotti Online with an interest in neofolk or heavy metal music. The drawings reproduced below appear on the covers of the Empyrium album Where at Night the Wood Grouse Plays (1999) and the Burzum album Hvis lyset tar oss (1994). They are two of many illustrations found within the pages of the wonderfully morbid Svartedauen “The Black Death” (1900), available in its entirety on the website of the National Library of Norway.

The words that accompany Kittelsen’s drawings are at times as striking as the images themselves. In Svartedauen, texts and images stand together as parts of a whole. But while the illustrations are well known, the texts are not. I am not aware of any translations of Svartedauen into English.

What follows are my translations from the Dano-Norwegian. Comments and corrections are welcome. Tiuren spiller “The Wood Grouse Plays” describes a post-apocalyptic setting where the Black Death has depopulated the Norwegian countryside, leaving behind only the supernatural beings of Scandinavian folklore. The poem Fattigmanden “The Pauper” is excerpted from an earlier part of the book. I have placed it at the end of this post because its interpretation is aided by the narrative provided in “Wood Grouse”.

2. Glossary

troll-bird
My rendering of troldfugl (‘supernatural bird’ or ‘otherworldly bird’).

draug
A ship-borne apparition of ill omen, familiar to readers of horror fiction through an excerpt from the writings of Jonas Lie variously entitled Elias and the Draug and The Fisherman and the Draug (a recent translation is available here).

nix (nøkk)
A supernatural inhabitant of lakes and streams, associated with death by drowning. See Wikipedia.

huldrefolk
Here translated as “fairy folk of the underworld”. See Wikipedia.

3. The Wood Grouse Plays. (Tiuren spiller.)

When the snow falls softly in millions of heavy white flakes, covering the dark trees in breathtaking white, that is when the troll-bird comes soaring. Large and heavy, it settles in the top of the tallest fir tree.

Shining black with burning red eyebrows, it sits there dreaming strange tales of the lonely, brooding forest. There is a stirring among the shaggy branches below, a whisper:

Where the great forest now stands, there were once villages and homesteads. People lived and labored there. There were houses and churches, fields and orchards lay fertile and green, and joyful voices mingled with the tinkling of cowbells. Then one day there came an ugly old woman in a red skirt, with a rake and a broom. From a far, far country she came, and wherever she went all the people died.

And the grim old woman journeyed across all the land of Norway, over hill and mountain, sweeping and raking until the land lay forgotten and empty. In the high, lonely places there remained, at the last, only the creatures of darkness. From the sea came the howling and screaming of the draug, and the keening of the nix rose from every tarn. The fairy folk of the underworld came and went as they pleased, singing and making merry, going from mound to mound. But in the evenings, when darkness fell, mighty gates opened in the high mountains, softly and silently, and out of light and splendor emerged the large, shaggy trolls ...

And the strange bird up in the treetop listens, with its eyes closed, to the tale that is whispered. And evening comes; the black, slumbering bird merges with the darkness. In the end there is only a looming black outline above which the moon lifts its bewildered face – gazing over the crest of a massive wooded ridge into the dark world of the folktale.

But when the first light of morning comes, the troll-bird ruffles its feathers and lets its wild song echo across the lonely wilderness, full of strange and wondrous stories.

Then the wood grouse plays.

4. The Pauper. (Fattigmanden.)

He knows every step,
every root and tree.
The same tracks,
the same feelings.

That road he has treaded
for many a year.
His thoughts have become
a monotonous song:
“I know every log,
I know every leaf,
every sound, every step,
every sunbeam and shadow.”

The road is long —
long. —
A woodpecker drums
on a rotten log.
A crow is calling.
A squirrel rustles past.
Otherwise all
is so perfectly quiet —
so still that the brook’s
murmur scares him.

Is someone coming? — —
Yes, that’s
what he thought.
Up there round the bend
comes an ugly
crooked old woman,
with a rake and a broom.

She rocks her head,
comes straight towards him.
Looks him in the eye
with a piercing, cross-eyed,
evil stare.
Gives him her withered
palsied hand,
only skin and bones,
sallow and mottled with
bluish-black patches.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Would love to see this printed in English. I've always loved his work.

I might get the print-on-demand Jonas Lie book Weird Tales From The Northern Seas. Very old translation though.

[A Defrocked Academic]

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour

Would love to see this printed in English. I've always loved his work. I might get the print-on-demand Jonas Lie book Weird Tales From The Northern Seas. Very old translation though.

Check out the digital versions first if you haven't already.

Weird Tales from Northern Seas by Jonas Lie - Free Ebook

Weird tales from Northern seas, from the Danish of Jonas Lie : Lie, Jonas Lauritz Idemil, 1833-1908 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[chaingang]

Phenomenal. Would buy a print version of your translations in a heartbeat.

[bendk]

Theodor Kittelsen - Black Death - wardruna - thurs - YouTube

[bendk]

PESTA PESTEN The Plague THEODOR KITTELSEN Gothic Horror - YouTube

[A Defrocked Academic]

1. Introduction

Here are some further poems from Theodor Kittelsen’s Svartedauen “The Black Death”, presented in the order in which they appear in the book. I have not included all the poems.

1.1 A note on the meter

The poems translated below contain passages written in trochaic tetrameter with occasional catalexis. This, you will perhaps remember, is the quite distinctive meter of The Song of Hiawatha (and the meter of this sentence). I have attempted to preserve the meter. At times, this becomes difficult to do without sacrificing sense. This is due, in part, to the strong tendency towards monosyllabicity in English (one example: bisyllabic fyr-e vs. monosyllabic “four”). Particularly troublesome is the word-initial stress of monosyllabic singular definite nouns in Mainland Scandinavian: HEST-en vs. “the HORSE”. Ravnen “the raven” is thus multiplied into “ravens” and so on.

1.2 Definitions

Echo (Ekko)
See the illustration. A poem on the same topic is found in Kittelsen’s Folk og Trold (“People and Trolls”, 1911:83-84).

The poem begins:

Echo in the mountain high
Who art thou? ­­—
Wherefore hidest thou from my sight?
Wherefore dost thou answer, frightening
me with the dread of night?

Or, in a literal translation:

Echo in the high mountain
who are you? ­­—
Why do you hide your face,
why do you answer and frighten
me with the horror of darkness?

“Echo” is also notable for its tragic view of life, a perspective which recurs in Kittelsen’s writings. I will not translate the poem in full, but here is one possible rendition of the ending:

[…] And his heart did quake and tremble.
Sorrow flooded in with violence.
Lonesome, lonesome was his soul!
Lonesome in the barren temple,
lonesome in the silent desert. —
Even in this mountain cavern
there was no peace or oblivion.
The grave was too great and wide.
Up towards the naked cliff-walls
shouted he, so pale of visage:
“Is our life, then, only woe?” —
Gravely, from the darkest hole,
did the hollow answer roll:
“Only woe.”

Pesta (literally “the plague”)
The personification of the Black Death as an old woman with a rake and a broom. Kittelsen’s “The Black Death” is based on folk narratives collected by Andreas Faye in Norske Folke-Sagn (“Norwegian Folktales”) during the early 1800s. The stories, some of which feature Pesta, have recently been translated into English by Simon Roy Hughes. They are available here. Some of the tales are also described here.

The physical appearance of Pesta in “The Black Death” was in turn inspired by Kittelsen’s real-life encounter with an elderly woman, described by him as “worse than the plague (pesta) itself” (Folk og Trold, 1911:93).

Draug
See my initial post and also this webpage, which provides a translation of Faye’s descriptions of the draug.

2. Pesta Comes. (Pesta kommer.)

Who’s coming down there
in a blood-red skirt,
so ragged and tattered,
so ugly and foul?
Her face is sallow,
yellow and wrinkled,
full of bluish
blackened patches.

Eyes set deep
in a death’s head are rolling,
running,
squinting and staring,
as sharp as needles,
glowing, they see in
the darkness like cats do.

Pesta is coming
over mountains and valleys,
forests and meadows,
lakes and rivers,
fjords and crossings.
Shambling,
shuffling,
her knees are rattling.
Raking and scraping,
sweeping, scouring.
The rake gets many,
the broom gets them all.

3. She Roves Across The Land (Hun farer landet rundt.)

Pesta roves across the land,
town and country, house and hovel.
She rakes them by the hundreds,
sweeps them by the thousands.

They flee into the woods
or the high mountains, others far
out on the wild sea,
to isles and skerries.

They hide in clefts and caverns,
chasing each other like wild beasts.
Pesta comes after,
snuffing them out.

Owls are howling, loons are crying.
Ghosts haunt the land. Ghosts haunt the sea,
moaning and sighing,
weeping and keening.

At night there is screaming and howling.
The draug come, draped in seaweed and kelp.
They fight with the dead,
drag them down with them.

The wind plays with dead men’s skulls,
rolls them between stones and sandbars,
blows them dry
and shining white.

Echo sits in the black mountain,
hearing the lonesome
dirge of the sea,
each gurgling sob.

Great banks of mist come billowing forth
over fjords and mountains,
settling over everything
with the clamminess of death.

Pesta with her broom spares no one.
She sweeps those who, tired of living,
wracked with sorrow and with torment,
beg for death.
She sweeps those who beg for life,
those who only in the horror
of their final dying moment
feign remorse before an idol.
Sweeps them all, devoid of mercy,
into death.
And life’s little heap of rubbish
with its cracked, decaying memories
crumbles now, alone, forgotten,
at the high and shining doorway
into Great Eternity.
High as heaven is the glory
found beyond that shining gate
where there are one thousand million
roses for each thorn in life.

Rains are lashing, winds are howling
in the vast and empty spaces.
Among rocks out on the mire
treads a caravan of death.
Wife and husband dead are dangling,
bound fast to the horse’s saddle.
Shivering with the rain and cold
like a lump on trembling legs,
the horse staggers while still dreaming —
down it sinks into the mire,
bound now for the land of death
with its pale and endless meadows
full of beautiful white flowers.

Rains are lashing, winds are howling,
ravens crying for their carrion.

4. Sweeping Every Nook. (Soper hver krok.)

Pesta’s sweeping
every nook.
No more raking,
sweep and sweep!
Time is short.
All must go.
Tom and Dick,
lock and stock.

Pesta enjoys herself.
The weather is fine:
drear and dark.
It’s snowing and sleeting,
melting, seeping,
sloshing and spattering.

The broom sweeps well,
so that it splashes.

The broom sweeps
every cranny and nook.
All is drear,
delightfully drear.
Death and corpses,
stench and rot.
The walls are cracking.
The beams are rotting.
The leaves are falling.
The air is weeping
snow and sleet.

5. Desolate. (Øde.)

Now the autumn leaves have fallen.
All that quivered in the wind,
fresh and green in rays of summer,
has become a carpet made
of withered leaves.
The moon is shining pale and lonesome
through the dry and naked branches.
Only withered tufts of straw
tremble on the turfen roof.