IN NORTHERN MISTS 



asks: " Is the white woman still alive? " They answered yes, though they did 

 not know what he meant. Again he asks: " Is my goat-house still standing?" 

 They again answered yes, though ignorant of what he meant. He then said: 

 " I could not keep my goat-house in peace because of the church that was built 

 in that place. If you would reach home safely, I give you two conditions," 

 They promised to accept these, and the blind old man continued: "Take this 

 belt of silver, and when you come home, buckle it on the white woman; and 

 place this box on the altar in my goat-house." When the sailors were safely 

 come home, the belt was buckled on a birch tree, which immediately shot up 

 into the air, and the box was placed on a mound, which immediately burst 

 into flame. But from the church being built where the blind man had his goat- 

 house the place was called Getinge [in J. Grimm, ii. 1876, p. 798, after Bexell's 

 " Halland," Goteborg, 1818, ii. p. 301]. Similar tales are known from other 

 localities in Sweden and Norway. The old blind man is a heathen giant driven 

 out by the Christian church or by the image of Mary (the white woman); 

 sometimes, again, he is a heathen exile. 



Here we have undeniable parallels to the storm-driven 

 Icelanders' meeting with the exiled Breidvikinge-kjaempe, 

 who asks after his native place and his woman, Thurid,^ and 

 who also sends two gifts home, though with very different 

 feelings and objects. It may be supposed that the Swedish- 

 Norwegian tale is derived from ancient myths, and the 

 Icelandic narrative may have borrowed features, not, of 

 course, from this very tale, but from myths of the 

 same type. 



Remarkable points of resemblance both to the voyages of 

 the Irish (Brandan's voyage) to the Fortunate Isles in the west, 

 and to those of Gudleif and of the eight Portuguese (in 

 Edrisi), are found in a Japanese tale of the fortunate isles of 

 " Horaisan," to which Moltke Moe has called my attention.^ 



This happy land lies far away in the sea towards the east; there on the 

 mountain, Fusan, grows a splendid tree which is sometimes seen in the distance 

 over the horizon; all vegetation is verdant and flowering in eternal spring, 

 which keeps the air mild and the sky blue; the passing of time is unnoticed, 

 and death never finds the way thither, there is no pain, no suffering, only peace 

 and happiness. Once on a time Jofuku, body physician to a cruel emperor of 



1 In one of his lays Bjorn Breidvikinge-kjaempe also, as it happens, speaks 

 of Thurid as the snow-white (" fannhvit ") woman. 



2 See D. Brauns: Japanische Marchen und Sagen. Leipzig, 1885, p. 146 f. 



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