When Liv launched into another tale, Gunnhild grinned and nestled in close, forgetting all about Tall Såmund's insult. Nothing Gunnhild liked better than storytime.

~~~

Shortshanks was less than an hour old when he set out on his first adventure. "You're too young to seek your fortune!" his poor mother cried, but the baby insisted.

"If my brother Pippin can seek his, I can just as well seek mine," Shortshanks piped in his baby voice. "I must hurry and catch up with him."

The twins toddled along together, then decided to go their separate ways. Pippin headed west, and Shortshanks, east.

East was the land of the one-eyed trolls. When Shortshanks came across an ugly old hag, he snatched her eye.

"Who did that?" the she-troll squealed. "Give it back!" She clawed at the air all around, not realizing the thief was only knee-high.

Shortshanks stood on tiptoe. "What will you give me for your eye?" Then he ducked.

For all her scrabbling around, the blind hag couldn't find the thief. Growling in anger and defeat, she drew a packet from her pocket. "Take this, but give me back my eye."

"What is it?"

"A ship that travels over land and sea. It's folded up."

"Folded? A ship?"

"Put your foot in, and it grows big enough to carry a troop. Now give me my eye!"

Shortshanks dropped the eyeball in her pocket, then stuck one bare toe into the folded packet.

Sure enough, it burst into a deck beneath his feet and lurched up higher than the troll's head. By the time the hag got her eye back into its socket, Shortshanks had untied knots, dropped the sail, and grasped the steer-board. The sail caught the wind, and the ship sped away, over field and meadow, over brook and gully, over ridge and dale.

~~~

"Over a ridge as big as this?" Gunnhild asked as the procession crossed over the height east of Homme Farm.

"Ja, and bigger still."

"How did Shortshanks snatch the troll's eye?" Gunnhild's brother asked. "Eyes don't pop out like that."

"Maybe she had it out to polish it up," Liv said with a laugh. "Or maybe she used it to play marbles."

"Mormor!" both children chided.

~~~

Shortshanks played the same trick on two more one-eyed trolls. He ransomed the eyeballs for a magic sword and a knack for brewing many barrels of ale at one time.

When at last he came back into the realm of mankind, he toddled along the shore of a fjord until he saw a castle on a hill. There he went to work for the kitchen maid, fetching firewood and buckets of water.

~~~

"I see a castle!" Gunnhild cried, and pointed. The travelers had just broken out of the forest into the dale of Morgedal. Up the rise to the northwest sat a lofty hall.

"I hear a fiddle," her brother said.

Halvor brought the cart pony to a halt. "We've got a few minutes before the fiddler joins us. Who wants out to run around a bit?"

"Me!"

"Me!"

He hoisted out the children.

"And me," Liv said. "These creakybones need a stretch."

.

BEHIND THE SCENES

"Shortshanks"is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moein "Norske Folkeeventyr." Under the title "Minnikin", it was includedby Andrew Lang in "The Red Fairy Book."