A desperate errand yields a useful exchange
A poor man asks his wealthy brother for food at Christmas. The brother gives him bacon with an angry command to go to Hell, which he takes literally. Near the destination, an old woodcutter advises him to exchange the coveted meat for a hand-mill kept behind the door. The man follows the advice and learns how to operate the device before returning home.
The mill produces whatever he commands: food, drink, household necessities, and eventually wealth. His family’s immediate hunger is relieved, and he can entertain others. The miraculous gift is not simply found on the road. It results from an exchange, followed by instruction that proves as important as possession of the object.
Source: Popular Tales from the Norse · “Why the Sea Is Salt”: Christmas request, bacon exchange, and instruction
Abundance becomes a flood
The jealous brother purchases the mill but is not taught how to handle it. When he commands it to produce herrings and broth, it continues until the house and farm are overwhelmed. He pays the former owner to take it back. Later a sea captain, hoping to avoid repeated voyages for salt, buys it at a much greater price.
The captain leaves too quickly to ask how it works. At sea he orders salt, but cannot stop the flow. The growing load sinks the ship. The tale concludes that the mill still grinds on the sea floor and therefore makes the sea salty. Its explanation is a narrative ending, not an account of the physical origins of ocean salinity.
Source: Popular Tales from the Norse · “Why the Sea Is Salt”: brother’s purchase, broth flood, and captain’s voyage
Knowledge is part of the equipment
The two failures look similar but have different circumstances. The brother’s seller deliberately withholds instruction; the captain’s haste prevents him from asking. Both expose the danger of treating a productive object as self-sufficient. The successful first owner learned a procedure from someone else, and later uses that unequal knowledge to increase his wealth.
This makes the story more complicated than a simple reward for poverty and punishment for greed. The formerly poor man is generous in some settings and shrewdly exploitative in others. Its Christian language and Christmas setting also belong to the recorded folktale. The mill should not automatically be identified with every supernatural mill appearing in medieval Norse poetry merely because the objects share a function.
Source: Popular Tales from the Norse · “Why the Sea Is Salt”: instruction, withheld knowledge, and departures
- Period / witness
- Norwegian collected tales; George Webbe Dasent’s English translation, nineteenth century.
- Recording context
- Asbjørnsen and Moe’s Norwegian collecting and editorial work, read through Dasent. These are recorded folktales, not medieval Eddic witnesses.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
Explore time & place →Read the sources
These references support the explanation above. Rights and edition notes are recorded individually.
Popular Tales from the Norse ↗
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe; translated by George Webbe Dasent · English collection 1859; online text based on an enlarged edition
Edition & rights note