"The Princess on the Glass Hill" or "The Maiden on the Glass Mountain" () is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in Norske Folkeeventyr.George Webbe Dasent, translator. Popular Tales from the Norse. Edinburgh: David Douglass, 1888. "Princess on the Glass Hill" It recounts how the youngest son of three obtains a magical horse and uses it to win the princess.
It is Aarne–Thompson type 530, which is named after it: the princess on the glass mountain. It is a popular type of tale, although the feats that the hero must perform in the second part, having obtaining the magical horse in the first, vary greatly.Stith Thompson, The Folktale, p. 61-2, University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles London, 1977
Synopsis
A farmer's haymeadow was eaten every year on the Eve of the Feast of St. John the Baptist, also Midsummer. He set his sons, one by one, to guard it, but the older two were frightened off by an earthquake. The third, Boots (also called Cinderlad), was despised by his brothers, who jeered at him for always sitting in the ashes, but he went the third year and stayed through three earthquakes. At the end, he heard a horse and went outside to catch it eating the grass. Next to it was a saddle, bridle, and full suit of armor, all in brass. He threw the steel from his tinderbox over it, which tamed it. When he returned home, he denied that anything had happened. The next year, the equipment for the horse was in silver, and the year after that, in gold.
The king of that country had a beautiful daughter and had decreed that whoever would marry her must climb a glass mountain to win her. She sat on the mountain with three golden apples in her lap; whoever took them would marry her and get half the kingdom.
The day of the trial, Boots's brothers refused to take him, but when the knights and princes had all failed, a knight appeared, whose equipment was brass. The princess was much taken with him, and when he rode one-third of the way up and turned to go back, she threw an apple to him. He took the apple and rode off too quickly to be seen. The next trial, he went in the equipment of silver and rode two-thirds of the way, and the princess threw the second apple to him. The third trial, he went in the equipment of gold, rode all the way, and took the third apple, but still rode off before anyone could catch him.
The king ordered everyone to appear, and in time Boots' two brothers came, and the king asked if there was anyone else. His brothers said that he sat in the ashes all three trials, but the king sent for him, and when questioned, Boots produced the apples, and therefore the king married his daughter to him and gave him half the kingdom.
Motifs Origins It has been suggested by scholarship (e.g., Carl von Sydow, Hasan M. El-Shamy,Maspero, Gaston & El-Shamy, Hasan. Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. 2002. pp. XXXIV-XXXV (Introduction). . Emmanuel Cosquin,Cosquin, Emmanuel. Les Contes indiens et l'occident: petites monographies folkloriques à propos de contes Maures. Paris: Édouard Champion. 1922. pp. 336-337. Kurt Ranke)Ranke, Kurt. Folktales of Germany. Routledge & K. Paul. 1966. p. 211. . that the origins of the tale type may have been first recorded in Ancient Egyptian literature, in The Tale of the Doomed Prince, wherein a prince needs to reach the princess's window by climbing a very tall tower.Sherman, Josepha (2008). Storytelling: An Encyclopedia of Mythology and Folklore. Sharpe Reference. p. 123. .
Researcher Inger Margrethe Boberg, in her study of the tale type through the use of the historic-geographic method, argued that the tale type must have originated with an equestrian people. Since variants are found among Germanic, Slavic, Indian, and Romano-Celtic peoples, and the main type (the princess sitting on the Glass Mountain) is distributed throughout Northern, Eastern and Central Europe, Boberg concluded that tale "came from the ages of Indo-European community". She also suggested that Finnish variants derived in part from Sweden and in part from Russia, variants among the Sámi originated from Norway, and Hungarian tales came from their neighbours.Boberg, Inger Margrethe. "Prinsessen på glasbjoerget". In: Danske Studier (1928): 49-53.
Professor John Th. Honti, in an opposite view from that of Boberg's, observed that she did not seem to be aware of the Ancient Egyptian story of The Tale of the Doomed Prince. According to Honti, the setting of the engagement challenge, the country of Naharanna or Nahrin, in ancient Syria, was famed for its high-towered constructions - and excavations give support to this claim.
Another hypothesis was developed by Kaarle Krohn. In his Übersicht über einige Resultate der Märchenforschung, Krohn argued for a migration of the narrative from India, through Asia Minor and into Europe, until reaching Western Europe.Krohn, Kaarle. Übersicht über einige Resultate der Märchenforschung. Suomalainen tiedeakatemia, Academia scientiarum fennica, 1931. pp. 96ff.
Ossetian-Russian folklorist formulated a hypothesis that the versions with the tower developed in a southern region (possibly the Caucasus), migrated northwards via Russia and merged in Finland with the motif of the glass mountain - a motif that, to him, appears very late and seems to be geographically limited.Осетинские народные сказки. Запись текстов, перевод, предисловие и примечания Г. А. Дзагурова. М., Главная редакция восточной литературы издательства «Наука», 1973. pp. 566-567.
The horse helper The Aarne–Thompson–Uther tales types ATU 530, 531 (The Clever Horse) and 533 (The Speaking Horsehead) fall under the umbrella of Supernatural Helper in the folk/fairy tale index and pertain to a cycle of stories in which a magical horse helps the hero or heroine by giving advice and/or instructing him/her.Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. pp. 61-65.
Structure of the tale
Scholarship recognizes that the tale can be divided in two parts: (1) the method of acquisition of the magical horse; and (2) the rescue of the princess (the Glass Mountain Challenge).de Kooi, Jurjen van. "De prinses op de glazen berg". In: Van Aladdin tot Zwaan kleef aan. Lexicon van sprookjes: ontstaan, ontwikkeling, variaties. 1ste druk. Ton Dekker & Jurjen van der Kooi & Theo Meder. Kritak: Sun. 1997. pp. 286-287.Köhler-Zülch, Ines. "Prinzessin auf dem Glasberg (AaTh 530)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 10: Nibelungenlied – Prozeßmotive. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . pp. 1343-1344. .
Ashlad, the foolish hero Folklorists Johannes Bolte, Jiří Polívka and Marian Roalfe Cox named the main character of the tale type männlichen Aschenbrödel (a Male Cinderella), because the protagonist usually sleeps in the ashes, or plays in ashes and soot.Bolte, Johannes; Polívka, Jiří. Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm. Erster Band. Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1913. pp. 184-185. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Grimms_M%C3%A4rchen_Anmerkungen_(Bolte_Polivka)_I_184.jpg&oldid=- Alternatively, he is usually found at home by the stove, in shabby and dirty clothes, and is often mocked by his family for this strange behaviour.Skabeikytė-Kazlauskienė, Gražina. Lithuanian Narrative Folklore: Didactical Guidelines. Kaunas: Vytautas Magnus University. 2013. p. 14. . As such, English translations commonly name the protagonist "Ashboy", "Ashlad", "Cinderface" or some variation thereof. He appears as lazy and foolish at first, but as the story progresses, develops more heroic attributes.Howitt, William, 1792-1879, and Howitt, Mary Botham. The Literature And Romance of Northern Europe. London: Colburn and Co., 1852. p. 233
The acquisition of the horses The motif of the brothers' vigil at a garden or meadow and the failure of the elder ones hark back to the ATU 550, The Golden Bird. Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald noted in Ehstnische Mährchen (1869) that in several variants the youngest of three brothers, often called stupid or simpleton, is helped by his father's spirit when he is told to hold a vigil for three nights.Kreutzwald, Friedrich Reinhold. Ehstnische Märchen. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses. 1869. pp. 360-362.
August Leskien acknowledged that the "numerous" Slavic variants "almost universally begin" with the father's dying wish for his sons to hold a vigil for his coffin or dead body at night.Leskien, August/Brugman, K.. Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen. Straßburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1882. pp. 524. The vigil on the grave is also considered to be "the most popular trial" in Lithuanian variants.Skabeikytė-Kazlauskienė, Gražina. Lithuanian Narrative Folklore: Didactical Guidelines. Kaunas: Vytautas Magnus University. 2013. p. 13. .
The foolish youngest son is speculated by professor Gražina Skabeikytė-Kazlauskienė to have some connection with the ancestors, since it is by respecting his father's dying wish that he is granted the magical horses by his spirit.Skabeikytė-Kazlauskienė, Gražina. Lithuanian Narrative Folklore: Didactical Guidelines. Kaunas: Vytautas Magnus University. 2013. pp. 13-14. .
In these tales, either the hero receives one single horse, or tames/captures three horses of different colors: copper, silver and gold; of white, black and red;Unterberger, Gerald. Die Gottheit und der Stier: Der Stier in Mythos, Märchen, Kult und Brauchtum. Beiträge zur Religionswissenschaft undvergleichenden Mythenforschung. Wien: Praesens Verlag. pp. 312-313. or, as in Latvian variants, of silver, gold and diamond color.Pakalns, Guntis. "Pasaka par princesi stikla kalnā – latviešu varianti Eiropas kontekstā". In: Letonica: Humanitāro zinātņu žurnāls 29 (2015): 78. Professor suggests that their different color gradient indicates the magical power of each horse.
Hungarian scholars János Berze Nágy and Linda Dégh saw a possible connection between the copper, silver and golden horses of the Hungarian variants of type 530 with the táltos horse of Hungarian mythology. The same coloured horses appear in the context of another tale type: former type AaTh 468, "The Tree that Reached up to the Sky".Degh, Linda. "The Tree that Reached Up to the Sky: Type 468 (1963)". In: Degh, Linda (ed.). Studies in East European Folk Narrative. [s.l.]: American Folklore Society, 1978. p. 289, 310.
The Glass Mountain challenge Some scholars, such as Clara Ströbe,Stroebe, Klara; Martens, Frederick Herman. The Swedish fairy book. New York: Frederick A. Stokes company. 1921. p. 149. Emil Sommer (de)Sommer, Emil. Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen. Volume 1. Halle: 1846. pp. 177-179 and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald,Kreutzwald, Friedrich Reinhold. Ehstnische Märchen. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses. 1869. pp. 360-361. noted that the tale of a princess on the Glass Mountain seemed to hark back to the Germanic legend of Brunhilde, who lay atop a mountain, inaccessible to most people.
In some variants, the princess is not located atop a Glass Mountain. Instead she is trapped or locked in a high-store tower.de Kooi, Jurjen van. "De prinses op de glazen berg". In: Van Aladdin tot Zwaan kleef aan. Lexicon van sprookjes: ontstaan, ontwikkeling, variaties. 1ste druk. Ton Dekker & Jurjen van der Kooi & Theo Meder. Kritak: Sun. 1997. pp. 286-287. The latter type seems more common to Eastern Europe, Russian and Finland.Unterberger, Gerald. Die Gottheit und der Stier: Der Stier in Mythos, Märchen, Kult und Brauchtum. Beiträge zur Religionswissenschaft undvergleichenden Mythenforschung. Wien: Praesens Verlag. pp. 312-313. .