Three Barrows

Deep in the ancient forest far north of here, on land where Vikings once farmed and feasted in times of peace, three barrows lie forgotten in a glade.

Ferns and wood anemones mingle with the grass that mantel them. While oaks, grown fat with age and tall with pride, circle the glade, only one tree has dared to take root on a barrow, on the one in the middle, the biggest of the three. They may look like regular burial mounds; certainly they are the tombs of three brothers.

This much the learned call knowledge.

The rest they call myth.

Grim, Ravn and Gumme. The three sons of Hillogdal, a king among the trolls who roamed the land aeons before the Vikings cut down the ancient forest to build boats. Back when the forest was not so very ancient.

Grim was largest and oldest and the first to fashion a village in the woodland realm his father left him and his brothers. He ruled over the humans in his settlement, never wondering if the wretched creatures did his bidding out of fear or love. Humans mattered not to him, and this is not their story.

Ravn eyed his brother's creation with envy. Before his death, Hillogdal divided the ancient forest between the three brothers, and Ravn’s lands bordered Grim’s, but they were of poorer quality, plagued by floods in the spring and home to goblins and elves and other such undesirable creatures. Nonetheless, Ravn fashioned a village much like his brother’s with houses of mud, twigs and pebbles. A human village, like a child’s toy to a troll.

Ravnsoe lay a stone's throw from Grimstrup, and as the human populations in the two settlements grew, the villagers all but lived on top of each other. War between them was entirely avoidable. Or would have been, had their overlords not been vicious trolls.

Gumme, the third and smallest of the brothers, did not build a village. He lived among the untouched woods left to him by Hillogdal, lording over nothing but innocent beasts. But he admired his brothers’ creations and grieved when he saw them poised to destroy each other.

I must do something to prevent a bloodbath, Gumme thought. And bravely, he approached his brother Grim. “Ravn is planning to destroy your village. He is hiding in the forest, planning his attack.”

Enraged, Grim charged through the oaks with an air-shattering bellow, trampling the anemones and startling the squirrels.

Gumme walked through the peaceful village his brother left behind unprotected, hoping his risky plan would spare the fragile humans that lived here.

“Ravn!” he called when he reached the border of his brother’s village. “Ravn! Grim is in the woods, planning to destroy Ravnsoe.”

“That is not news, brother,” came Ravn’s reply. “We’re prepared.” Rather than charge into the woods as Gumme had hoped, Ravn turned his ogreish eyes to the field where an army of villagers had gathered and transformed the land into a lake of firelight. Flickering torches reflected off the honed edges of pitchforks.

“Burn Grim’s village!” Ravn shouted. “Kill his frail people! Raze their houses! Torch their fields!”

Responsible for Grim’s absence, Gumme could not let his brother’s people be destroyed, and thus he stood in Ravn’s way.

“Move aside brother! Or you will burn with the woods!” Ravn raised a burning branch bearing flames the size of an oak crown.

Gumme did not move.

The villagers under Ravn’s command panicked. It is not known if the great blaze was started by Ravn and his beacon of destruction or by a feckless human too riven by fear to know what he was doing.

The forest caught alight.

Ravn’s kingdom burned to the ground, leaving nothing but soot-stained marshland and a lake that spawned nothing but snakes for centuries. The blaze likewise devoured Gumme’s untarnished woodland, immolating squirrels, deer and tree guardians. A large area of land became barren, bereft, turned into a mark that would never sprout saplings. To this day Gummesmark remains naked.

Ravn’s rage burned away his astonishment and despair, and he pursued his younger brother through Grim’s still-standing village and into the unburnt forest where Grim lay in ambush.

Gumme sprinted for his life, sending the earth into tremorous spasms under his vast troll’s feet. An ancient oak recognised his predicament and lent him a splintered branch to use as a weapon.

Unsure where in the forest Grim waited, Gumme turned to face his enraged pursuer, who had also received help from the forest in the form of acorns which Ravn hurled at Gumme until one struck him between the eyes and knocked him unconscious.

Out cold, Gumme did not witness the fall that sent his brother headfirst onto the sharp point of the branch in his hand and turned Ravn’s brain to mangled porridge. Nor did he see the acorn that went over his shoulder and continued through foliage until it lodged itself in Grim’s eye, where it killed him slowly while a young oak took root at the centre of his huge cranium.

That same oak is no longer so young. It now grows on the hillock in the middle, the largest barrow, where rests Grim, the oldest and meanest of Hillogdal’s three sons. On one side of him, Ravn’s smaller mound stands unadorned by trees but scruffy with unruly ferns. On the other side, Gumme made his own resting place. When he woke up and found his brothers slain, he enchanted the glade, leaving spells which are still in force today.

It is said that certain words will break the enchantment and awaken the trolls to once again protect their father’s kingdom. If you know these magic words, do not utter them in the vicinity of the barrows; trolls cannot be trusted.

Most of this is considered myth, but at least one more fact remains undeniable: Gummesmark, Ravnsoe, and Grimstrup are still in the same place they’ve always been. As are the three barrows.

If you go there, you may hear the echoes of Grim's roar or see the unsettled shade of Ravn. But beware! Rumor has it there are still trolls in those woods, visible only to children whom they teach how to love the forest the way Gumme did.

Deep in the ancient forests of Denmark, three barrows lie forgotten in a glade. People would have us believe that they are simply the burial mounds of human chieftains. But that's not what the trolls whispered to us when we were children.

Loosely based on local folklore, known to few, remembered by fewer, and orally passed from troll to child on at least one occasion.