Swedish Folktales: Dalarna

The Forskarlen

About six miles northwest of where the church in Järna now is there was once a little mill called Snöåkvarn, which belonged to the people of Nås socken.

One Sunday morning before Järna got its own church and pastor, a chaplain from Nås was on his way to the chapel there to hold a service. When he passed by Snöåkvarn he caught sight of the forskarln, sitting in the river and playing a hymn out of the old hymnbook.

"What good does it do you to play a hymn?" the pastor said, "After all, you can never receive the Lord's mercy."

Forlorn, the forskarln stopped playing, and in despair he smashed his fiddle to pieces. Somewhat taken aback, the pastor regreted his hard words, and offered, "Well, I suppose only God knows, maybe you can be saved..."

"Really?" said the forskarln hopefully. He then picked up the pieces of his smashed fiddle and put them back together, and he began to play the same hymn, but this time even more lovely than before.

There was another mill in the same socken, Lindkvarn, near Lindesnäs, and one time a farmer went there to grind some grain. A bit into the night, he went to go and check on his flour, and saw that the mill had stopped. So, he opened the hatch to the water wheel to try and find the cause of the problem, and saw there in the rapids two huge eyes staring up at him.

"Good gracious, you have big eyes!" he said, but there was no answer. He said it again, "Good gracious you have big eyes!" But again, there was no response. So the farmer ran back into the mill room, heated an iron rod in the fireplace until it glowed red then brought it back down to the water wheel. "Are your eyes still just as big?" he shouted through the hatch.

"Yeah!" came the answer from below.

Then the farmer thrust the iron rod through a hole in the floor and right away the mill started to turn again.