Popular Superstitions 59 



places compounded with the name may be mentioned, 

 such as Ti'ollabrug, nearThrondhjem, and the Troldfjord 

 high up the coast by the Lofotens. All these names 

 witness to the deep-seated beliefs of past times. The hills 

 above Bergen were among the chief places in Europe 

 which popular superstition fixed upon as the scenes 

 for the celebrated Witches' Sabbath, which was held on 

 the ev6 of the first of May. 



About fifty years ago two Norwegians, Asbjornsen 

 and Moe, one a man of letters and a poet, the other a 

 bishop, set to work to do what the brothers Grimm 

 had done for Germany, to collect the popular tales and 

 legends wdiich lingered in the mouths of the peasantry 

 of their day. Their collection of stories has been trans- 

 lated into English, under the title Popular Talefi from 

 the Norse, and from these the reader can get some picture 

 of the legendary superstition of the people about half 

 a century ago. There is no such marked peculiarity 

 in these stories as conjpared with the German popular 

 tales of the brothers Grimm {Kinder-u-Ha u srii drchcn) 

 that it can be characterised in a sentence. 



But since the days of Asbjornsen and Moe, when 

 passengers no longer row from homestead to home- 

 stead, but where steamers are found plying on all the 

 Norwegian waters — when, too, primary education has 

 reached a point of great excellence in the country — 

 these popular beliefs and legends have been rapidly 

 dying out ; we may expect them to disappear altogether 

 in a few years. 



