Who is the nøkken?
In Norway he is called the nøkken, in Sweden the näcken, in Iceland the nykur. He lives in lakes, millponds, rivers and waterfalls and has no fixed form. He can appear as an old man with a dripping beard, as a young man playing the fiddle on a water lily leaf, or as a gray horse. Anyone who climbs onto that horse is carried into the water and never comes up again.
Protection from the water spirit
Iron and steel were considered a reliable defense. Children were given a nail or a knife to carry in their pocket before they went near the water. Calling the nøkken by his name took away his power.
Behind the legends lies a harsh reality. In 19th-century Sweden, a large share of children died before reaching adulthood, and drowning was a common cause. The nøkken gave these deaths a name and kept children away from the water.
The fiddle and the pact
The nøkken and his relative, the fossegrim, are known as masters of music. According to tradition, anyone who wanted to learn from him had to sacrifice a white billy goat to him on a Thursday evening, at a waterfall that flows north. He would then guide the musician’s hand over the strings until the fingers bled. But there was one tune no one was allowed to play, because it made even tables, chairs and the dead dance. It was said of the Norwegian fiddler Myllarguten, Torgeir Augundsson, that he really had learned from the fossegrim.
In art and poetry
In 1904, Theodor Kittelsen painted the nøkken as a pair of eyes above dark water. The Swedish painter Ernst Josephson worked on the motif of the water fiddler for more than a decade. Erik Johan Stagnelius wrote the poem “Näcken,” in which a child tells the water spirit that he will never be redeemed.