The Cat on the Dovrefjell

For the contest over at #Undersized

I didn't stick strictly to the tale I based this on, but it's the same idea. I replaced the man with a little girl, annnnd I didn't draw trolls. Generally I just wanted to give the atmosphere of a forest where you could feel trolls staring at you (and your 'cat') intently and fearfully!

Story used:

<sub>Once upon a time there was a man up in Finnmark who had caught a large white bear, which he was going to take to the King of Denmark. It so happened that he came to the Dovrefjell on Christmas Eve. He went to a cottage where a man lived whose name was Halvor, and he asked the man for lodging for himself and his white bear.

"God bless us!" said the man, "but we can't give anyone lodging just now, for every Christmas Eve the house is so full of trolls that we are forced to move out, and we'll have no shelter over our own heads, to say nothing of providing for anyone else."

"Oh?" said the man, "If that's all, you can very well let me use your house. My bear can sleep under the stove here, and I can sleep in the storeroom."

Well, he begged so hard, that at last he got permission to stay there. The people of the house moved out, but before they went, everything was made ready for the trolls. The table was set with cream porridge and fish and sausages and everything else that was good, just as for any other grand feast.

When everything was ready, in came the trolls. Some were large, and some were small. Some had long tails, and some had no tails at all. And some had long, long noses. They ate and drank and tasted everything.

Then one of the troll youngsters saw the white bear lying under the stove, so he took a piece of sausage, stuck it onto a fork, and went and poked it against the white bear's nose, burning it. Then he shrieked, "Kitty, do you want some sausage?"

The white bear rose up and growled, and then chased the whole pack of them out, both large and small.

A year later Halvor was out in the woods at midday of Christmas Eve, gathering wood for the holidays, for he expected the trolls again. As he was chopping, he heard a voice shouting from the woods, "Halvor! Halvor!"

"Yes?" said Halvor.

"Do you still have that big cat?"

"Yes," said Halvor. "She's lying at home under the stove, and what's more, she now has seven kittens, far bigger and fiercer than she is herself."

"Then, we'll never come to your place again," shouted the troll in the woods, and since that time the trolls have never eaten their Yule porridge with Halvor on the Dovrefjell."</sub>


Acrylics on 14/18" canvas. I remembered why I hate canvas. 8D