Lab Week 6: Storybook Research

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(Image Information: Image by Pixabay)


This week I took the opportunity to do more research for my Storybook project. My story is based on the Danish tale of The Little Mermaid, and I combined it with several elements from Celtic folklore. While I read more information about the Celtic folklore elements, I also thought it best to comb through other stories from the Nordic region of Scandinavia. Then I could use these other stories as additional inspiration for my project.


Scandinavian Tales

This was a story of a human woman seeing a handsome merman who asks her to marry him. She accepts and lives underwater with him and their seven children They share a happy life until she hears church bells accounting the death of her father who had been searching for her the moment she disappeared. She goes back to the land leaving her husband and children to mourn for her return.

I enjoyed the two characters falling in love and being together until the woman learns of her father's death. I want to use this for my story for my main character's mother. She was a mermaid/merrow creature who fell in love with a human man. However, the mermaid mother left for an unknown reason, but the main character believes she's dead.

The King sailed on his boat in the ocean when a mermaid appeared. They made a deal that she would let me pass if he cast the first person laid eyes upon, which happened to be his son. After trying to delay it, the king finally allowed the mermaid to take his son. While under the sea, the prince fell in love with the mermaid's daughter, Singorra. He wanted to be with her, but the mermaid set three labor tasks for him to complete in order to marry her daughter. Each time the prince failed but was assisted by Singorra and was successful. While he was to go before the princess's aunt, Singorra presented him with several iron weapons like iron knives and axes. She tells him to obey her instructions. He gave his weapons away, went before the aunt, and sat in the black chair. He was told not to eat, however, the food spoke to let the aunt know if it was eaten. He hid a sausage under his shirt and managed to get away with it. When he left the sausage transformed into a dragon. The story continues on for too long. They set free some creature. Then Princess Singorra and the prince are married.

While I won't use everything from this convoluted story, I enjoyed many different elements. The story vividly detailed the treatment of the King's son being pulled into the water. This brought the idea of merrows dragging people down. It was a little funny to see the prince couldn't do any of the tasks without the princess's help. I want to incorporate this by having my main character assist the prince with something no one else can. I want there to be a large threat and together the prince and my main character will take it down.

Celtic Story Elements

Iron in Folklore

Iron has been seen to repel mystical creatures like fairies. Its almost consider being poisonous toward these creatures. Sometimes it can suck or drain them of their magic and leave them crying in pain. 

The Fair Folk

The Fair Folk are creatures known as fairies. There are many different behaviors presented by the fairies sometimes they were trickers but other times they were cruel and assaulted humans.

While mermaids and merrow aren't fairies, they have similar behaviors toward humans except there are some cases where these merpeople seek to kill the humans after mistreating them.


Bibliography: 


“Cold Iron.” TV Tropes, tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ColdIron.

“The Fair Folk.” TV Tropes, tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFairFolk.

“A Visit with Agnete and the Merman-Copenhagen, Denmark.” NomadWomen, Donna, June 2018.


 

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