The Nøkken of the Still Pond

📜 The whole story (transcript)

Ohhh, this is a Norwegian one. Very old. Very cold. My great-grandmother learned it from a herring fisherman, and he learned it from his mother, who learned it, she claimed, from the pond itself. In the far north, where the pines grow so close together they hold hands, there are ponds so still that when you look into them, you see two skies. And in some of those ponds lives a Nøkken. A water-spirit. He looks — when he wishes to look at all — like a beautiful young man with wet hair and eyes the colour of nothing. And he plays the violin. Oh, but the music! Sweeter than honey on hot bread. Sadder than a chimney-swallow in October. On summer nights he sits half-in and half-out of the water, and he plays. And any child who follows the music, right up to the pond's edge, feels a very strong wish — a wish they cannot quite explain — to step in. Just to hear it a little better. There was once a girl called Ingrid, with hair like straw and boots too big for her. She heard the Nøkken one midsummer's eve and she walked, and she walked, and she walked, right to the pond's black edge. And she was about to step in — one boot already lifted, mind you — when she remembered what her grandmother had told her. 'If ever the Nøkken plays to you, child, ask him his true name. Politely. He must answer.' So Ingrid, one boot in the air, called out: 'Kind musician, might I know your true name?' The music stopped. The pond went colder still. And a small, cross voice answered from beneath the water: 'That is a very rude question, little girl.' 'And yet I have asked it,' said Ingrid. And she waited. The Nøkken sighed the sigh of something very old being caught out. He told her his name — I shan't repeat it here; it is bad luck to say aloud after dark — and the moment he did, his fiddle went silent forever. Ingrid walked home in her too-big boots, and she slept beautifully, and she never once heard that music again. So you see, my dear: when someone tries to lead you somewhere with a lovely song, you have every right to stop and ask them, quite politely, exactly who they are.