"The Finn Messenger" is curious as, along with "Driving out the Snakes" it is an example of the association of Finns with sorcery. I recall, this was one of the points in favor of the "Turanian" theory which associated the sorcerous little people with memories of a prehistoric Finno-Ugric stock. For instance David MacRitchie comments on it in his TESTIMONY OF TRADITION (1890).

I also came across, in Robert Keightley's FAIRY MYTHOLOGY (1828), the Danish story "Kallundborg Church", which is very similar to 2a and 2b in this volume, except the hero is the Danish chieftain Esberne Snare, and the troll whose name is to be guessed is named "Fin". That version managed to get translated into English before these Norwegian versions were even collected in Norway, much less printed in Norway. Keightley claimed that Scandinavian trolls were diminutive, in contrast to Icelandic ones, but that generalization does not seem to apply to Norwegian trolls, judging by this volume. I'm not sure Fin was originally diminutive either, given his association with cyclopean feats of architecture. Still, Fin and his family do live inside a hill, which might imply small size given the constricting nature of tunnels.

I'll mention a book I have seen and looked into, but not read:

Rockwell, Joan: Evald Tang Kristensen : a lifelong adventure in folklore, Aalborg University Press, Danish Folklore Society, 1982.

Dale Nelson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Platypus wrote, "You mention Dasent's translation,
> reminding me I have not yet read it."
>
> I've read the Norwegian tales in (a
> print-on-demand edition of) "Popular Tales from
> the Norse." I got that edition largely because of
> Tolkien's reference to it in "On Fairy-Stories."
>
>
> What with Tolkien's interest, I suppose I should
> get the complete series of "Color" Fairy Books
> attributed to Andrew Lang. (My understanding is
> that his wife actually did much of the writing of
> the versions of the stories.) I have only two of
> them -- common Dover reprints.

I've read through most of the tales in this volume.

My focus was on finding tales of "scary/evil little people", since I've been writing a Machen-inspired list of such tales (my earliest find so far, in English, is "The Yellow Dwarf", which was translated into English in 1708, from a French 1790s original). I found there were few such "huldre folk" tales in this volume, either because the huldre folk were not little, or were not scary/evil, or both.

One of the traditional features of scary fairies is to make folks disappear. One thing I noticed in this volume is that we are often reassured that the kidnapped persons are perfectly happy living with the fairies. I guess this is reassuring to Norwegian parents who lost a child in the snowy winter. But it does undercut the horror element.

Some invite comparison with "Laura Silver Bell" by Sheridan Le Fanu, which is apparently based on a Northumbrian legend, and has a clear connection to other British fairy tales like "The Fairy Nurse". Le Fanu allows much of the horror of the fairy kidnapping to remain. In Le Fanu's tale, the grandeur of the fairy lord is illusion, and poor Laura is doomed to a life of squalor and degradation until the Day of Judgment. But Le Fanu's fairies are not little either. In fact, when they are not impersonating mortals, they are implied to be tall as the tree tops of the forests they haunt.

When the huldre-in this collection are allowed to be scary, we often find that they are not little. This seems to support one of the theories of the origin of little people tales, which they are ancient gods/demons grown small, and therefore, less scary. This competes with the theory that mainly inspired Machen -- that little-people tales are based on memories of a prehistoric priest class of shorter stature, that may have retreated into caves.