Samuel Peterson’s Reviews > Icelandic Folktales > Status Update

This last one is also hilarious.

Lol! Oh, that is a feisty, old woman who doesn't take no for an answer. She throws the soul of her own good-for-nothing husband into heaven even when Jesus himself closed the door to her request! Hilarious!

"Then they came to the ugly and riotous sheep.
"'These,' said the stranger, 'mean the rich, who are never satisfied, and never thrive, albeit they have abundance of all things, for they ever are striving for more; and the discord and quarrelsomeness of these sheep betoken the envious talk which the rich hold one of another.'"
Seems to have been a lesson that goes far but is never implemented in the US.

A little bit of "A Christmas Carol" in this story with a priest in place of Ebenezer Scrooge who is shown many strange sights and what his final resting place will look like. But it's given a more Christian spin with the message being that a priest must be dedicated to God and God's people, and not the other way around.

I don't get the context of this exorcism prayer because it's written in Latin! And no one thought to put a translation in the margins?!

This story of the jealous farmer and the quern that was able to ground anything reminds me of another tale from Norway. That one also ended with the jealous farmer commanding the grinding stone to make salt, and the stone made so much it sank the ship it was on. Although this story doesn't say that that was the explanation for all of the salt in the oceans, I'd imagine that it was the point.

Yeah, I was wondering if the man's brother had caught on that the man had not asked him for any aid or any good or anything for a good long while. And then all of a sudden he asks for something very particular: a measurement tool.

A farmer and a bishop double-teaming the devil in disguise? And the former was beating him with a holy book until he sunk into the earth? That's hilarious.

Lastly, are stories about God and the Devil, similar to those found in Norway, I imagine.

"'See how we differ! I cherish and love your son, while you beat and ill-use my husband;' with these words, she gave back to the farmer's wife her own son, and taking the changeling by the hand, disappeared with him."
The farmer's wife was just doing as she was told by the old, wise woman. Can't really blame her for being given terrible advice.