The Hulder

Norwegian folklore has trolls, of course, but the hulder (or huldra) is the one that has refused to retire. She is a forest woman, often described as beautiful, dressed plainly, sometimes with a cow’s tail or — in the older versions — a back that is hollow like a rotten log. She lures men into the woods. Sometimes she means them harm. Sometimes she means them love. Sometimes she just wants help with a difficult cow.

The hulder is part of the broader huldrefolk — “the hidden people” — who live alongside humans but in a parallel landscape, occasionally crossing into ours. She survives in modern Norway as a stock figure of children’s books, of black metal album art, and of half-serious jokes told late at night in the cabins.

What we hope to encounter

Mostly the absence of her — the reason the woods feel watchful. The hulder is what older Norwegians made out of the feeling of being alone in a forest at dusk. We expect to feel something of that ourselves.