A young man once rode from the southland regions to the northland to work as a hand in the harvest. When he had ridden northward to the meadows, a thick fog engulfed him and he lost his way. Soon there came wind-driven snow and cold. He stopped and pitched a tent. As he took out his travel rations and began to eat, a bedraggled and starving red hound crept into his tent.
The southerner wondered how a hound would come to him in a place where he hardly expected to see any animal. The hound was so ugly and unusual that he became afraid; nonetheless, he gave the hound as much to eat as it wished. The hound ate ravenously, then left and disappeared outside in the fog.
The man gave no further thought to the hound, and when he had finished his own meal, he lay down to sleep, his head on his saddle. He soon was asleep and dreamt that a woman came to him in his tent.
The woman appeared tall, slender and somewhat elderly. She said, “I thank you, young man, on behalf of my daughter. However, it is not within my power to reward you as you have earned. Still, I want you to take this old scythe that I am placing beneath your saddle. I hope you will find it useful and that it cuts well whatever it meets. But never lay it to glow in fire, for then it will do nothing. But if you find it necessary, you can sharpen it on a stone.” With that, the woman disappeared.
The boy awoke from his sleep and saw that the fog had cleared, and that it was now a clear day. The sun was high in the sky. His first task was to gather his horses and then to prepare to leave. He bound up his tent, packing it on a horse. But as he took his saddle from the ground, he found beneath it a worn scythe covered with rust spots. Remembering the dream, he stowed the scythe, traveled on and all was well.
He soon found his way again and so traveled as fast as he could to a place where people lived. But as he came to the northland, no one would hire him. Everyone had already hired people for the harvest and a week of the harvest was already over.
Then he heard of a woman who lived in the area who still had no harvest hand. She was rich in goods and people believed she was very capable. She rarely hired harvest hands, and she never started to cut hay earlier than a week or even 14 days after everyone else. Still, she usually finished harvesting her home field just as quickly as the rest.
If she did occasionally hire a hand, she kept him no longer than a week and she didn’t pay him. The people sent the southerner to her after telling him how she was. As he was unable to find work anywhere else, he went to her and offered to cut hay for her.
She took him on, telling him that she would allow him to stay for a week. “But I will not pay you,” she said, “except if you can cut so much hay in a week that I am unable to rake it together on Saturday.” That seemed to him to be a good condition, and so he began to cut the hay.
He took the scythe, the gift from the huldre woman, and found that it cut well. He never had to hone it and so he was able to cut continuously for five days. He enjoyed his work and the woman was very friendly to him. Once, he came to the forge where he saw an uncountable number of scythe handles and rakes near a big pile of scythes. He wondered about this, finding that the woman had no lack of harvest tools.
On that week’s Friday evening, he went to bed as always. That night, he dreamt that the huldre woman who had given him the scythe came to him and said, “You have already cut very much hay, but your mistress will not need much time to rake it together and then she will chase you away if she catches up with you tomorrow. If you think that the hay you have already cut is not enough, go now to the forge and take as many scythe handles as you think you need. Fasten scythes to them, take them to the field and see what happens.”
After the huldre woman spoke, she left. The harvest hand awoke, got up and began to cut hay. In the morning, his mistress came out carrying five rakes. She said, “You have cut much hay – much more than I had thought.” She then laid the rakes here and there in the meadow and then began to rake.
The young hand saw that she could rake much hay, but that the other rakes did also even though no one was by them. When midday approached and he saw that the cut hay would not be enough he went to the forge, took some scythe handles and fastened scythes to them. He then went outside and spread the scythes on the uncut meadow. The scythes began to cut and soon the area began to grow. This continued for the whole day until evening when there was enough hay cut. In the evening, the woman went home, taking her rakes with her and asking the young hand to follow her.
She said that he knew more than she had thought, and so she would reward him and that he could stay with her as long as he liked. He stayed with her for the summer, and they got on well with each other. They harvested much hay but had much time for themselves. After the harvest, she gave him a handsome payment. With that, he returned to the southland.
The next summer and all summers thereafter when he looked for harvest work, he found it with her. He then acquired a farm for himself in the southland, where everyone regarded him as an ambitious man. He was a clever sailor, adept at everything to which he laid a hand. He always cut his own hay, never using any other scythe than the one that the huldre woman had given him. Still, he was just as fast at harvesting his home fields as the others were.
It then happened one summer as he had sailed out to fish, that a neighbor came to his farm and asked his wife for a scythe. He had broken his own scythe and didn’t know what to do. The wife searched through her husband’s tools and found the good old scythe. She loaned the scythe to the neighbor but cautioned him never to place it in fire because her husband never did so, she told him.
This he promised her, and returned home. He fastened the scythe to a handle and began to cut the hay. But he was unable to cut a single straw. Angrily, he began to hone the scythe, but it was no help. So he took the scythe to the forge to hammer a new edge, thinking that it could do no harm to lay the scythe in the forge fire.
But as soon as the scythe was in the fire it melted like wax, becoming just molten iron slag. He went back to the man’s wife and told her what had happened. She was very fearful, as she knew her man would be very angry when he learned what had happened.
And that was indeed the case; still, it is not told that he was angry for very long; only that he stroked his wife’s cheek for the first and last time.