The structure is famous, even if the specific Norwegian variant is not. A poor man with many children is approached by a great white bear, who offers wealth in exchange for the man’s youngest, most beautiful daughter. She goes. She is well-treated, lives in a hidden castle, sleeps each night next to a man she cannot see in the dark. Her mother visits, gives advice that is — as folk-tale mothers’ advice usually is — disastrous. The daughter lights a candle to see her husband’s face, drops a drop of tallow on his shirt, and breaks the spell. The husband is now bound to marry an ugly troll-princess in a land east of the sun and west of the moon. The daughter has to find her way there. She does, with help from three old women, three winds, and one absurdly long set of golden objects she carries in her apron.

The shape is ATU 425 — “the search for the lost husband” — one of the most widely distributed tale-types in the world. Variants are recorded from Greenland to Sicily to Korea. Apuleius’s Cupid and Psyche (c. 160 CE) is the same story underneath. So, arguably, is the central plot of Beauty and the Beast. So is the South African Zulu tale of Nyengebule. The variant collected by Asbjørnsen and Moe in 1845 in the Telemark region of Norway is the one English-speaking readers usually know, partly because of the magnificent 1907 Nielsen illustrations.

What’s good about the long version

Most contemporary retellings cut the journey. The North Wind sequence is shortened, the four old women are condensed into one, and the troll-princess at the end is reduced to a brief obstacle. This is, we think, a serious mistake.

The journey is the story. The original tale spends about 60% of its word count on the daughter’s three-stage journey across the world, the three old women she meets in succession, and the way each one lets her ride part of the way on the back of a successive wind. The west wind carries her to the south wind, the south wind to the east wind, the east wind to the north wind, and the north wind — who has been blowing all day across the sky and is tired — finally and grudgingly carries her, gasping, to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon.

What this gives a child reader is something almost no other tale-type does: a sustained, vivid, geographically expansive sense of the world has parts that I have not seen. The wind sequence is, for the right age, transporting in the literal sense.

The long version — abridged for bedtime

The full Asbjørnsen and Moe text runs about 6,000 words. We recommend it in two sittings for children aged 7 and up. Below is the much shorter version we read to younger listeners.

There was a great white bear who came one winter night to a poor man’s house and asked for the youngest daughter. The man was hungry and the bear was kind, and the daughter agreed. He took her on his back through the woods to a castle she had never seen, full of fires and food and a soft bed, and at night a stranger came into the room and lay down beside her in the dark.

She was happy and she was lonely. Her mother told her to light a candle and see her husband’s face. She did. The husband was beautiful, but a drop of tallow fell from the candle onto his shirt, and he woke, and he said: now I must go and marry a troll in a land east of the sun and west of the moon. And he was gone.

The girl walked for a year, asking the way. She met three old women, each older than the last, and each gave her a golden gift — a comb, an apple, a spinning wheel — though none knew the road. She met the East Wind, then the South Wind, then the West Wind, then the North Wind. The North Wind was very tired, but he carried her, gasping, to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon, and dropped her at the gate.

What happened at the castle, and how she got her husband back, you will hear tomorrow night.

Stopping the story before the troll-princess sequence is a deliberate choice. It gives the child a real cliffhanger; it shortens the read; and the second half is, frankly, the weaker half. The journey is the part that lives.

Notes for parents who want to read the full version

The full text contains: (1) a comically obscene moment where the troll-princess attempts to wash the tallow stain out of the shirt and her nose grows several yards long with the effort; (2) a “shirt-washing competition” between the girl and the troll-princess that is, structurally, identical to the contest motif in Tam Lin; (3) a dénouement that involves the troll-princess literally bursting apart in frustration.

Most of this is fine for ages 8+. For sensitive listeners, we’d recommend an abridgement that ends at the rescue rather than at the troll-princess’s anatomical fate.

Further reading in the archive

• The Six Swans (Grimm, KHM 49) — sister tale-type ATU 451 with similar journey-by-thirds structure.
• East of the Sun, West of the Moon (Kay Nielsen illustrated edition, 1914) — the full art-nouveau visual record.
• Tam Lin (Child Ballad 39) — the Scottish ballad with the same “wife rescues bewitched husband” core.
• The Apuleius / Psyche tradition — the parent story-type, late 2nd century CE.

— Annotated by the editorial collective from the Asbjørnsen & Moe text, Norske Folkeeventyr, 1845.