The Huldre
The Shamcher Bulletin brings you snippets from Shamcher’s writings that might help frame and context our experience of the world we live in today.
Shamcher’s wartime experiences in the Norwegian Underground have more meaning than ever now as the invasion of Ukraine replays history. This long issue features a chapter from his memoir, “A Sufi Goes to War”. In “The Huldre” Shamcher sees beings of folklore and mythology rising up to combine with the forces opposing Nazi occupation, not as otherworld creatures, but embodied as the Norwegian people themselves.
The Huldre
Was there ever an enchantress so ZAP? A witch so deliciously wicked? Her beautiful virgin features are belied by her furiously twirling cows tail, reminding you that beneath the ethereal beauty there is a shameless passion!
When such a powerhouse descends upon a lonely ski man, lost on the mountain on moonlit nights, when she approaches dancing upon the icebound glades, stroking his chin with a slightly-perfumed hand, which makes her tail rise and twirl and whip around in a frenzy of passion, who can resist?
So he follows her, follows her right into her mountain cave where her father, Dovregubben, the mountain troll, puts a tail on the ski man too, so he will be one of the family and he is accepted and adopted as the Huldre’s mate—one of many. To his human friends he is lost forever. To the Huldre’s little brothers and sisters he is a new playmate, or a new victim, to be teased and bounced around on hooked spears.
The Nazi Invasion of Norway
Captain Redburn and I came to know her so well as she bounced out of thousand-year-old folklore to tease and please us with her stirring appeal, steeling us against a merciless invader whom, we were convinced, she resented and despised as much as we did.
Captain Redburn had been with us all the way from Hamar. He had lent graceful fun to our grim business. He was the best of the MI-5 and the ski expert of this playful outfit. His hitch with the Norwegians was clean, good hunting to this British champion—until one day at Mysuseter.
The events in which Captain Redfern played such a delightful part have been termed collectively, the Battle of Gudbrandsdalen which followed the Battle of Elverum.
The screams of the dying were still ringing in our ears when the bombers came. First they dropped incendiaries which fell in a potato field, digging a neat ditch with a zigzagging purple flame. We watched, thrilled that the Nazis just wanted to show us what they could do—the new warfare, the wave of the future, ditch-digging fireworks?
Then came the explosives. Light wooden houses were thrown in the air and came down, settling in ridiculous postures. Half a man stuck up from the debris of sand and rocks. The other half was buried. He was already beyond pain. Calmly he asked me to move his head over to one side so he could breathe a little easier.
Then we both saw the girl. She would have been about nine. Only her head was visible above the debris. She blinked, then tears streamed down her face. Obviously she could not speak. The tears ran out and her large eyes bore a thousand questions. Then as we looked, the light of her eyes went out.
I think it was this girl who cemented my determination. I resolved I would do nothing else until this sort of reasoning had been wiped out. People who believed they could achieve by such means had to be taught. Whether it would take five years or a thousand years did not matter. They had to be dealt with, defeated, educated. All this determination would not have mattered in the least to the course of the world except for the fact that a few million others made exactly the same sort of vow for the same kind of reason. This was what defeated the brazen Nazi effort.
I remembered, at that moment, a show the German Embassy had put on for a select group of cabinet members and some congressmen in Oslo a few days before. It had been called a “Peace film”. It was from Poland and showed the slaughter in the Warsaw ghettoes. It was in the interest of peace, said the promoters, because “it shows what happens when people refused to obey the command of a vastly stronger power.”
But friends, what is strength?
While the Norwegian King and government moved east to Nybergsund and eventually crossed the border to Sweden, the headquarters of the resistance moved to Hamar, southern port of the picturesque Gudbrandsdalen. In Hamar there was a steam bath. This is where I met Captain Redburn. In the middle of a discussion about ski grease on the Ararat (the captain had just come from the MI-5 training center there) and as we were wallowing in the lusty froth of suds, the air raid siren wailed. The captain looked at me. My duty as host, I felt, was to make sure he was well-rinsed and was allowed to complete his bath in lazy comfort. With deliberate care we rinsed, dried, dressed. It isn't every day you can have a steam bath in war.
Just as we left, a bomb crashed through the roof. The walls flew out at us. The captain brushed his tunic. “Rude. They splattered us.”
Captain Redburn had his revenge. The German troops advanced in a long drawn-out column through the Gudbrandsdalen. The captain was attached as observer and strategic advisor to Norwegian ski troops harassing the German approach. “Harassing” proved to be the wrong word. In one single battle, 1700 Germans bit the dust while one Norwegian was lightly wounded.
“Well,” the captain said, expressing the excuse civilized people require while slaughtering their fellowmen, “they asked for it, didn't they? They weren't invited, were they? They killed the little girls and boys whose fathers or mothers have never harmed them, didn't they? And they splattered us.”
The Allied strategy—luring Germans into the narrow valleys and mowing them down from the hillsides—worked fine until that day at Mysuseter. This was a little mountain hamlet above Otta which the battered German troops had just reached.
We were gathered around the radio listing to Neville Chamberlain, “… we have found it necessary to evacuate Aandalsnes…”
Aandalsnes was the connecting point for all British and French troops in southern Norway. Evacuation of that port meant that the British had written off southern Norway. The Britishers still in this area were on their own.
Redburn’s face paled, not from personal fear, I felt sure, but because of the decision to abandon a hard fighting ally just when success seemed so near. How near, even Captain Redburn did not know at that time. Months later, when I was a prisoner of the Nazis, Colonel Freising, head of the German military intelligence in northern Europe, told me with the charming frankness reserved for hapless prisoners about to be shot, that the German High Command had been just on the verge of giving up the entire Norwegian venture and instead going to Denmark, “in view of the murderous resistance of the Anglo-Franco-Norwegian forces.”
That this bit of information eventually found its way to Allied quarters was due to the uncouth indiscretion of a prisoner who cheated death by running away from his firing squad.
Good old Neville Chamberlain, always so well-meaning, often so wrong! A few days’ respite might have changed the course of the war.
Though he had reason to be timid. His predecessors, trying to ease the burden of the strange economy, had nearly stripped England of arms.
Ski Patrol to Safety
Captain Giertsen, head of the Norwegian ski patrol, told me to take Captain Redburn across the mountains to Sweden and be sure to keep out of Nazi traps, for “Captain Redburn, if caught, would be tortured to death.”
We set out that night, while Nazi airmen slept and the snow was cold and bright so the skis ran along without human urging, a mystery revealed to initiates only.
On this night also, troll, goblins and elves emerged from hiding to dance, sing and howl along along the icebound glades. We could not see them, however much we strained our eyes, but we could hear their voices blending with the muted music of streamlets beneath the ice—as I introduced them to the captain from the inexhaustible storehouse of Norse folklore. By and by he could hear them even better than I did. He had learned all that I could tell him during the long nights and added from his own keen perception.
Some of the troll wore British khaki uniforms and tramped determinedly through the snow, long columns marching eagerly North, others as hopefully heading West; others, again, South; some East—all with impeccable reasons for their particular direction. How glad they all were to meet the captain, how willing to listen to him and myself!
They all joined us, heading East, until we were hundreds, the captain and I ploughing a way through the snow on our skis, the others following at strategic distances in groups of six to eight.
Captain Redburn watched darkly when Nazi aircraft zoomed over us and apparently traced our tracks. Then he waited gloomily for the follow-up, the arrival of the ground forces. They never came. Why? He had the explanation: the troll! They were on our side! We had ample proof of this when, once, a plane alighted near our quarters and notified the Ground Forces who then came in imposing numbers on choice equipment up the road only to be stopped by a milling crowd of Norwegian farmers with hay forks and timber axes. They crowded the roads so no progress was possible for the armoured vehicles. They appeared deaf, oblivious to the Germans’ urgings—until we were safely on our way, high up in the mountains. The troll!
It was my own confidence in the troll that made me walk down to that bridge where, Captain Redburn told me, peering through his glasses, German guns blinked in the sun and German uniforms were moving about. It was our only chance of a crossing and stubbornly I walked on alone, my British friends waiting behind trees on top of a hill. This seemed to me then the most tragic walk in my life. My mind was briskly walking in the opposite direction—nay, running! But my stubborn leg muscles would not obey. They walked numbly on toward what could be only cruel death or at least a lifelong hitch in a concentration camp.
But when I arrived, the magic of the troll had converted German bayonets into blinking Norwegian timber axes and the German uniforms to reassuring home-woven woodmen's garb. I waved my friends to come…
Night Skiing in the Woods
Then, on one moonless pitch-black night, as we sizzled down a steep slope dodging mighty pines, “Erik, the Huldre!”
I was as excited as the captain. Had we finally caught up with her? Should I at last be exposed to that legendary lure along with the splendid British champion?
The captain's voice was that of one thoroughly shaken. For a while he had no doubt the Huldre was on our side, he did not trust his ability to resist her, and desertion, even into a mountain hideout of the fair Huldre, is not quite the thing for an officer of the MI-5!
But the captain's outburst was followed by a deep boom that, according to folklore, was several pitches below the Huldre’s: “Nei, jeg er ikke noen huldre. Jeg er Olav Flaksjo. Vi har litt elgkjott aa by paa.”
To Captain Redburn this speech made no more sense and was no more reassuring than if it had come from the real Huldre. He took a firm grip of my arm, as if to make sure the Huldre would not run off with him—or he with her.
The sturdy Norwegian mountaineer who had been waiting in the pitch-black night elected by the mountain grapevine to welcome us with a snack of elk’s meat, had understandably overshot when he extended his hand to detain the captain and had hit the captain’s chin—the Huldre’s technique.
However, as our trip progressed I began to wonder whether Captain Redburn had not been right and Olav Flaksjo was not just another disguise the Huldre had chosen to adopt for our protection for she—he—evinced an earthly foresight and premonition. That same memorable evening, in Olav’s cozy log cabin, as Captain Redburn had gone outside for a moment to get his bearings from the blinking stars, Olav discreetly handed me a little piece of paper.
“It will bring you luck,” he said.
I looked at it. It was a crudely drawn American flag. I could see why he did not want the captain to know. British jealousy of the New World power and all that. But, however touching, I couldn't see what good it could do us. I put it in my pocket and forgot about it—until we came to that bridge across the Klara River. It was under repair, we had learned, and German soldiers would surely be there guarding it and keeping an eye on the repair. My English friends and I were discussing the situation briskly, while looking at a map and walking on.
Halte!
The map must have been wrong for suddenly a stentorian voice resounded in our ears, “Halte!”
We were already out on the bridge, facing 20 German soldiers under a fierce sergeant.
“What are you doing here?” he roared.
It was then the Huldre put into my mind that I should pull out of my pocket the critically drawn American flag Olav Flaksjo had presented to me. Without a word I handed it to the German.
The sergeant fingered the drawing, looked at it with growing fury, then exploded: “You want to tell me the Americans will be here and fight for you…”
I had had no such intention, but it appeared to me the fury of the sergeant and his exclusive preoccupation with me and my American flag provided a fine opportunity for the English to get away. So I made frantic signs with my hands behind my back.
The sergeant promptly circled around me to look at my finger activity. “St. Vitus dance or something?”
Then only did I realize my efforts had been unnecessary. The English had correctly evaluated the situation long before me and had vamoosed already. The sergeant returned to the argument where he had left it.
“But I tell you, the Americans won't be in this at all. The Fuehrer has seen to that. Now scram, you dirty, ignorant Norwegian peasant– get going, I say; get out of here! Before I…”
“But sir, I only showed you a little drawing of an American flag, I…”
Then, abruptly, I realized the welcome meaning of the sergeant’s fierce vocabulary. “Get out of here,” he had bellowed and with relish I obeyed.
As I walked down stream, along the water, looking for place to cross, I ached for my British friends who had disappeared without leaving a trace. No doubt they would get lost and be captured because of my negligence.
The Huldre Intervenes
But here is clear, again, the Huldre came to our aid. For, when I finally found a suitable crossing: a succession of slippery rocks, she caused me to slip on a midstream boulder. My skis careened, I stumbled and splashed into the roaring stream and was carried on at a sizzling speed until at last my feet hit on a rock and I could scramble to the other shore.
Bruised, shaken and dripping wet I pulled myself on to dry land. There, at a place I had had no personal intention of visiting, were my British friends, huddled under a mighty pine. Captain Redburn came forward with not a trace of a smile upon his grateful face, “This, sir, is what you call a sense of orientation. How in the world did you manage to find us?”
Upon the trunk of the pine under which we had gathered three crowns were carved—the Swedish border.
Then, as if they were summoned by radar, two uniformed guardians of Swedish law came stomping along on ashen skis with dignified, old world bamboo bindings. Their sober faces expressed no gleeful wish to embarrass, but rather a studious wonderment about how they could twist the law to our advantage.
We had made up the story to match their hopes. The three Britishers in my immediate company were converted to salesmen of fishing tackle in Norway, when the war had suddenly overtaken them. The rest of the Britishers, who would arrive later, would have to make up their own yarns. So, at the police station, I gave a stirring account of these peaceful salesmen having been caught between the jaws of a cruel war. To prove my contention I offered eagerly to empty Captain Redburn’s rucksack on the table, a sack specifically prepared for such demonstration.
The first item to come bouncing out was a formidable British army handgun. It clunked insolently against the policemen's cozy iron stove and then went off with an earsplitting explosion.
The two policemen thoughtfully stroked their chins, appearing to have neither heard nor seen. I was advised I was free to leave, as a Norwegian. The Englishman would have to stay. I urgently requested to stay and explain their plight. The policemen shook their heads: for the safety of all concerned, please, no further explanation from my side!
Imagine my relief when, the very next day, my British friends joined me in Stockholm. Together we proceeded to the cocktail jungle, Captain Redburn hailed as the king of raconteurs, as he portrayed, stars in his eyes, the incomparable Huldre, with a face like a virgin, who had caressed his chin and whisked him into the mountain, passionately twirling her telling tail, while he was treated to the side-splitting performance of the court troll bouncing captured gestapo agents about at the points of their spears in a ghoulish game of hockey…
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The Shamcher Bulletin is edited by Carol Sill, whose newsletter, “Personal Papers”, is HERE.
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Truly one of the best Shamcher tales which somehow I'd never heard or seen in all these decades! And so well told...
This brings hope, Carol. Thank you!