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<channel><generator>iloblog 1.0</generator><title>Nidlongdir Feed</title><link>http://library.nidlongdir.com/</link><description>&lt;p&gt;In this blog you can follow my adventures into Nidlongdir. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you are new to the blog you might want to read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nidlongdir.com/what_is_nidlongdor.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;introduction to this fairy world&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nidlongdir.com&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Back to Nidlongdir.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description><item><title>The Giant&#039;s Spoon</title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=28</link><description><![CDATA[    
 For a few days, I have been listening to the beautiful symphonic music of cracking ice and snow. I can hear the tinkling of ice tapes melting, and forming swirling streams of melting water. Lovebirds have returned from the south, singing their romantic ballads, and the Spring Maiden has covered my garden with a carpet of white Snowdrops and yellow Eranthis. She is casting her spells on all nature’s creatures to arouse them from the long winter, by playing her harp to lure out the sun, in the hope it will stay on the sky for a little longer every day.  
 We haven’t seen the hideous bird monster, since the day I rescued Ebbe from the tree house on the opposite side of the road. Mama Kauppa and I paid the Whispering Library a visit, to try to find some facts about the bird monster. We searched for a whole day, but we had no luck. However, I did find a whispering leaf about tree juice brewing that I borrowed. The next day I had some information about the bird monster from a very surprising source. A whispering leaf had been hung upon my clothesline among my laundry.  
 It turned out to be a letter from Ebbe’s flying instructor Sir Treebreaker. The content of this letter was regarding the terrifying bird monster. Sir Treebreaker apologised that he had left so suddenly in the autumn, and that he hadn’t contacted us until now. I was relived to know that he is still alive! Sir Treebreaker told that he had been hunting the bird monster most of the autumn and winter. According to his letter, the bird monster is an evil shaman called Lord Net Binder, living on the border to the Mist. From the first time, I met Sir Treebreaker, I thought he was a strange butterfly. Of cause, I have never heard what other butterflies' sounds like when they speak, but sir Treebreaker’s voice is so deep that you should think it belonged to a bear, rather than a butterfly. His letter gave me an exploration of why he has such a dark voice, and I think you will be just as surprised to learn why as I did! Sir Treebreaker is more or less the opposite of a butterfly, and his name actually suggests his real identity, he is a giant in the body of a butterfly. A spell was cast on him by the bird monster, which turned him into a butterfly as an action of revenge.  
 As most giants, he had been wandering around the world minding his own business, trying to avoid getting into trouble with anyone. He had found himself a quiet corner of the world, on a small island in the human's part of the world called Als. He had created a comfortable bed on a field next to the beach, so that the sound of waves could make him go to sleep every night. He had been staying there for some time, when he decided that he needed a new spoon for eating his soup. Early in the morning he went into the Mist to find a nice tree, he could carve the spoon from, but all the trees he found were too small. At last he came to the boarder of the Mist, where he saw a very nice tree with a good straight tree trunk. He carefully looked around, but saw no one nearby the tree, so he pulled the tree up by its roots. He started to pull of the branches, when he noticed a bird flying around his nose. The bird landed on the tip of his nose, and he could see that it was quit angry. Much to his surprise it started to grow in size, until it was tall enough to be able to look straight into his eyes. The bird reached out one of its pale white hands, showing him a mirror where he saw himself pulling the tree out of the ground. The next things he saw the bird inside a nest castle trembling out of bed. Much to Sir Trebreaker’s dismay he saw how he ripped the bird’s nest castle of the branch it was built on. Sir Treebreaker got so ashamed that he apologised to the bird, and volunteered to place the nest castle in another tree. The bird laughed at him, and pointed at him with a pale crooked finger. “You are a daft giant, you have ruined my castle, you shall pay dearly, you shall become so small that I can crush you with one hand, and like this you shall remain until the day you have finished carving your spoon. The next thing Sir Treebreaker remembered was seeing the bird turning the mirror, then lighting struck him right between his eyes, and he turned into a butterfly.  
 Sir Treebreaker ended the letter by asking for our help. It is impossible for me to carve out my spoon from the tree, having the size of a butterfly, so I was wondering if you possible could help me. The tree is located to the north of the island where I dropped it when I turned into a butterfly. I will visit you soon, and if you agree to help me, I promise you a giant reward! As soon as I had finished listening to the leaf I called for Ebbe, and gave him the letter. He was so excited that he by accident grabbed one of the flowers in my kitchen window, and by his healing touch it stated to grow with the speed of the light, and it reached the sealing in the time of a few heart beats. Ebbe talked and talked about Sir Treebreaker over the dinner, and I had to scold him repeatedly to make him go to sleep that night.  
 Now we look forward to Sir Treebreaker’s visit with a great deal of excitement. I have am wondering how we are going to carve the whole tree into a spoon, I think a chainsaw might be the answer to Sir Trebreaker's problem. Sir Trebreaker will be the first giant I have made acquaintance with, and I am very anxiously of how big he will become when the spell is broken. It makes me a bit sad that he will be unable to visit us inside our house; he will properly become much too tall. Giants do have a disreputable reputation among humans, and I am also worried that he will be chased of the island if he is discovered by some of the island residents. If any of you have done you some experience with giants I would love to hear from you!  
 Happy Easter Marianne  


 
Blog Catalog Blog Directory
   
 ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:28:04 +0200</pubDate><category>New Nidlongdir Blogs 2010</category></item><item><title>Does Humans Really Exist?</title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=27</link><description><![CDATA[    As humans we often wonder if fairies and such really exist, but now I have found evidence that the fairies also are wondering if humans are for real. In an article original recorded in The Nidlongdir Post by Weaving Flower, she asks the question; is it’s possible to prove that humans exist?  
 Does Humans Really Exist?  
 Nidlongdir Post, year of the frogs, spring issue  
 By Weaving Flower  
 I have never seen a human, and I very much doubt that many fairies in Leafenheim City actually have. My children ask about the humans all the time. They want to know about their magic called math, and to hear all the stories about all the monsters the humans are supposed to have, according to the famous whispering leaf, Fairy Tales of the Human Race, by Dust Cloud the elder.  
 Personally, I find humans incredibly scary! First of all, they are humongous. They are known to be very greedy, and the monsters they all have, are so frightening that I would rather go and live in a troll family, then have an encounter with a human. On the whispering leaf Fairy Tales of the Human Race, Dust Cloud tells about his adventures into a human's garden and house. I have been studying all the records by Dust Cloud the elder, and compared them with more reason articles about human encounters, and what struck me, was the fact that all the fairies that had a human encounter never had any evidence that could prove that it was a human they had an encounter with. In many of the cases I have studied, the fairies are known to be notarise liars. Some of the fairies are also known to hang out at the Apple Worms Tavern, and in the Dragonian Caves.  
 Rumours are that the new Dragonian Ambassador should be human, but how can that be? First of all, a human is much too big to go into the Dragonian Caves. Secondly, the Dragonians would risk that this human would bring some of the terrible monsters into the caves. According to Dust Cloud’s whispering leaf, humans sometimes travel into the Mist with the risk of ageing very fast, to get sizing potions from Mother Bog. They drink the potions so that they can enter our world. He even postulates that humans and gnomes some times get friendly, and in some cases gnomes live in the human’s houses.  
 Although gnomes are known to use the human magic called math, I find it very unlikely that they would dare to live among all the monsters that the humans create with their magic. I have found many stories in The Whispering Library that tells about a strange monster living in a special room in most humans’ houses. Most of these monsters are white, and have a big mouth.The monster's ugly mouth is kept open most of the time, so that it is ready to eat what ever comes in reach of it. In one of Dust Cloud’s fairy tales, he is nearly swallowed by this monster. He describes how the monster sucked him into its throat, and how he had to hold his breath, and struggle very hard to reach the surface of the water in the drooling monster’s mouth. Dust Cloud tells, that he had seen these kind of monsters in many diffrent shapes and colours, but No matter what the monsters looked like the humans called them the toilet. The monsters have no limbs, and on Dust Cloud’s whispering leaf the monster is described as a very bad smelling monster. Perhaps that is why it is kept lucked up in a special room.  
  The fairy tale about the toilet monster is my children’s favourite, and I have heard that the new Beatle Theatre will set up the toilet monster story as a play in the upcoming season. I can’t recommend Dust Cloud’s fairy tales as good night stories, but as long as you keep in mind that it’s just good old fairy tales, I find the stories very amusing and especially small fairy knights will love them! I haven’t come to a conclusion about the existents of the human race! It would make the universe very exiting if they did exist! I would properly be very scared if I had an encounter with one of them, and I would never ever tell a living soul about it, in the fear that they would regard me as a totally nutcase.  
 ]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Mar 2010 09:51:36 +0100</pubDate><category>New Nidlongdir Blogs 2010</category></item><item><title>Ebbe’s Disappearing</title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=26</link><description><![CDATA[   As a child my granddad taught me how to interpret the old weather warnings based on observing wild life. If you want to know what the weather of the season is going to be like, watching the birds’ behavior will be a good indicator. In Denmark, it heralds a long and hard winter, if the Yellowhammer gathers around farms and houses. This winter a Yellowhammer has been visiting every day right outside my kitchen window. I think the first time I noticed it was in the end of November, so the hard winter hasn't come as a surprise to me at all.   
 As usually I had prepared breakfast, and while I was waiting for the toasts to get ready, I had time to take a look outside the kitchen window to watch the birds. I was met by a delightful sight of icicles covering the old hawthorn growing on an arc at my garden gate. The icicles were sparkling in the early morning sun, and formed a magic entrance to our garden; it looked almost like the entrance of King Winter’s palace. A Yellowhammer was waiting impatiently for Ebbe to come out to feed the birds with the left over bread crumbs from our toasts. When we had finished our toasts Ebbe went outside with the crumbs, but this morning he stayed outside much longer than usually. I called for him, but he was out of sight. It’s not the first time Ebbe has been flying of on his own, so I decided to go inside to get a cup of coffee and wait for him. After an hour Selene and I started to worry about Ebbe’s disappearing. It was freezing cold outside. The sun had disappeared and the Northern Wind swept over the roof, and made the snow drift. I put on my coat and boots to go outside to search for Ebbe. Selene didn’t want to come. “I am not going to get frozen wings, just because that daft lad has to disappear” She said while she was hanging above the door with crossed arms. I knew Ebbe had been attracted to some empty bird nests in the trees behind our house, so I went to the back side of the house to see if I could spot him. I couldn’t see him, so I called for him. The Yellowhammer came around the corner and landed on a bush right in front of me. It started to behave very strangely; it stepped from side to side on the branch, flapping its left wing. I knew it was trying to tell me something. It sounded as if it was singing “hurry, hurry” as it set of towards the field behind our house.   
 I followed the bird across the field. We crossed the main road, and went into another larger field on the other side of the road. The Yellowhammer was far ahead of me. I was struggling through the deep snow; the strength of the wind had increased more and more. I had forgotten to put on some gloves, so my fingers had started to hurt from the cold. “How much further do we have to go?” I shouted to the Yellowhammer, but it was to far away to hear me. It had started to snow, and I could hardly see the road when I looked back. It looked like the Yellowhammer was heading towards an old tree at the end of the Field. At this point, I had seriously started to worry about Ebbe, he isn’t fitted to live in the cold, and I knew he hadn’t been wearing the tiny wool jumper I had made for him. When I reached the tree the Yellowhammer was out of sight, I called for Ebbe, but there was no reply. I went around the tree, and there I spotted a poorly made ladder. It was banging against the trunk of the tree. I looked up to find out where the ladder was leading to. I could discern a small tree house. A light was coming from a small window, and I could see a small green door. I tried to call for Ebbe but the wind was howling, and I didn’t get a reply, so I carefully examined the ladder to see if it was safe for me to climb it. It looked a bit unsafe, but now I had become curious to find out if there was someone in the small tree house.   
 My feet slipped a few times on the ladder, but I managed to pull myself into safety on a big branch in front of the tree house. I knocked on the small green door. I could hear something being dragged or pushed inside the house. I thought it was some kids from the farm near by the tree, so I opened the door myself to look inside. It definitely wasn’t a child I saw inside the house, it was a creature I never had seen before. It had a face like a bird with a big purple and yellow bird beak. It was about the size of a cat. It was wearing a brown coat, and it had bony white hands. I was a bit chocked to see this strange creature, and I had no idea if it was friendly or not, but now I was happy I had remembered to put on my fairy communicator, and I just hoped that it would work. I have always believed in, that one comes courtesy of the longest, so I reached out my hand to greet the bird creature hello, and at the same time I tried to look over the shoulder of the creature to see if I could spot Ebbe inside the house. The bird creature took a step forward with his hands stretched out, and it attempted to push me away from the door. Now I heard a noise inside the house, so I forced myself back into the house. It was impossible for me to get my whole body inside, but I had my head and chest inside. I looked around. However, I couldn’t see Ebbe, I called for him, and then I heard a weak call right above my head. It was hard for me to turn my head inside the house so that I could look up above my head, but I was so excited that I tore the door of in my eagerness to find Ebbe. I saw a bundle that hung in the limbs in a rope, and I could see that the bundle had a pair of shoes that looked exactly like Ebbe’s shoes. “I will get you down!” I shouted to Ebbe, but I had to pull myself out of the doorway to be able to grab him. Now the bird creature was pulling my hair, so I had to pacify the angry beast. I pulled myself back and when I was free of the doorway, I grabbed the bird creature by the legs and pulled it out of the house, and then I put it on a tree branch above the tree house. I turned myself so that I could get an arm inside the house to free Ebbe from the robe. It took me some time to free him. The bird creature had done a good job on fixing him with the robe. Ebbe was very scared and he wept all the way down the ladder. The bird creature had jumped my bag, to try to get me away from Ebbe, but at last it gave up retreating back into the tree.   
 I had to make sure Ebbe got warm again, so I covered him with my coat. We walked back to our house as fast as I could. When we returned home, Selene was out of her mind of worries. I had been away much longer than I thought. Selene and I demanded an explanation from Ebbe, as soon as he was warm enough to talk. He told us how the bird creature had lured him away from our garden. The beast had told Ebbe that Sir Treebreaker (Ebbe’s flying instructor) had broken a wing, and that he had knocked on the bird creature’s door in the tree house to get help. The bird creature had told Ebbe that Sir Treebreaker had asked the beast to find Ebbe. I felt very badly after this incident, I should have warned the twins not to go with any strangers. I know I always told Bjarne and Camilla not to talk to any strangers, when they were children, but I hadn’t had this conversation with the twines jet.   
 Sir Treebreaker hasn’t been around since late October, when Ebbe had finished his flying lessons. Most butterflies only live for one season, but I couldn’t get it over my heart to tell Ebbe that Sir Treebreaker properly had gone to Valhal by now. I decide that it was time to tell him, and I think it was just about one of the hardest things I ever had to do, because Ebbe had been very fond of Sir Treebreaker, the White Cabbage Butterfly with the strange name and the lovely deep voice, so he cried the whole afternoon. Selene and I tried to cheer him up; after all we didn’t know if he actually was dead, moreover he was a very strange butterfly.   
 I was worried about the bird creature, how did it know about Ebbe’s flying instructor, and why had it captured Ebbe? To me, it had looked like Ebbe was kept captive to be handed over to someone else, or perhaps the beast had kept him for supper? Who knows? I have decided to ask Mama Kauppa and Plotka if they know of this creature, and if they don’t, I will have to go to the whispering library to see if I can look it up some how.  
   
 Selene and I found this dress in front of our house last week. 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:54:19 +0100</pubDate><category>News about the fairy Twins</category></item><item><title>Horrifying Smell in My Kitchen</title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=25</link><description><![CDATA[   To have a fairy cottage in your kitchen might sound like an great idea, but if you have fairy twins living in the cottage you might want to find a better location, because it can be quite noisy, and at times the smell is unbelievable.   
 
  Ebbe reminds me a lot of my son when he was a boy. Besides taking his flying lessons, he is experimenting with recipes for   healing potions for plants and animals. Yesterday I had been into town to do the last shopping for the Winter Solstice celebration  , and when I returned home the smell in my kitchen was horrifying. To be honest I was very tired, and I wasn’t prepared to get home to a kitchen table field with all sorts of nasty things like; mugs with worms, chopped up bird feathers mix with butter, dead spiders in mint gel, and I will never forget the bottles of rotten apple juice mixed with eggs in my refrigerator  . Ebbe had been experimenting in my kitchen, and it was like having a flashback of what my kitchen was like, at the time my son was eight years old. He also went through a time where he was very curious about mixing things in my kitchen. I remember him trying to make poison that would kill ants, or how he created a smelly bomb. I was horrified to find a rotten apple under his bed, that he had been studying to see the colors of the mold that was growing on the disgusting brown apple. I know I sound a bit grumpy, but sometimes the kids are a handful!   
 
  Selene’s activities might not smell as bad as Ebbe’s does, but the noise is unbearable. She is turning into a little Dragonian, working all day long on creating things from kaputs. She is always looking forward to the weekends when my daughter comes home. Selene will stay by her side from the moment she arrives, and most of the weekend they are in another world creating jewelries. When Danagonia isn’t here Selene will join my husband in the garage where he has his workshop. She is leaning how to use all his tools, she knows how to switch power sockets, and how to change the oil on my car. She even managed to repair our coffee machine. From time to time my husband complains that his tools have gone missing. Then we start a search in the house, and usually we find the tools in dark corners of the house where Selene has been crafting.  
 
  Selene is very fascinated with my old cooking journal, where I save all my best recipes. I have promised her, that I will help her to start her own cooking journal. I have found a nice journal in a local book shop. I bought the journal and had it wrapped up for her, as a gift for the Winter Solstice celebration. The Winter Solstice has always been very special to me, because I was born on this day. I have also found a gift for Ebbe! Last time I went to Silkeborg I went into a small bookshop which sells   antiquarian and rare books. I know the owner of this bookshop very well, and I always look forward to visit him! I asked him if he could find a book about herbs. He had several books on the subject. I decided on a book titled: My Favorite Herb Mixes. The book is a first edition from 1980, so it’s not an old book, but I think it will be perfect for Ebbe to start with! Later I will go to the Whispering Library to find recipes from Nidlongdir, but I think we better start with some human recipes, so that I can help him to get started.   
 
  I have written my grandmother’s recipe   for pepper cookies on the first page in Selene’s journal to get her started gathering cooking recipes. I hope we will spend many hours trying out all kind of recipes in my kitchen, even if some of them won’t smell as delicious as paper cookies!  
 
  1 cup butter    1 cup sugar  2 ½ cup flour  1 egg  1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp. Ginger  ¾ tsp. Cardamom  ½ tsp. Cinnamon  ¼ tsp. White pepper     
  Butter and sugar are stirred. The other ingredients are stir in. Dough rolled into finger-thick rods is kept separated by baking paper. Rest the dough overnight.   Cut into pieces of approx. ½   inch. Bake at 200 degrees around. 8-10 min.   
 ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:31:29 +0100</pubDate><category>News about the fairy Twins</category></item><item><title>Winter Solstice Celebration in Nidlongdir</title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=24</link><description><![CDATA[    
 The Winter solstice celebrating takes place every year at the Gnomes Inn, and in the garden behind Apple Hold Castle. This celebration is a very old gnomish celebration that goes back to the time when the gnomes still lived in Valhalla. At that time there were no gifts, Santa Claus wasn’t born, and pancakes were a recipe jet to be invented. The gnomes have always been crafters, and they relied on fire for many of their crafts. Fire would provide them with light and heat, so when the dark time of the year came they were afraid that the sun wouldn’t return, and therefore they had a celebration to   worship the sun. Later in history the gnomes were sent across the bridge called Bifrost, to live in the human world. Some of the gnomes chose to live among the humans, other preferred to live in the nature. The gnomes’ relationship with the humans was a bit strained, because the humans believed that the gnomes had magic powers, and therefore the gnomes had to be very carful not to get caught by a human. The humans thought that the gnomes were able to make gold and if they could catch a gnome they were sudden that their fortune was done. This was of cause a misunderstanding, because gnomes are not alchemists. The gnomes had bad experiences with the humans, so as time went by most of them retreated into the woods, where they started to build houses in hollow trees, or in old fox caves. A few gnomes stayed behind on the farms. Some humans liked the gnomes and started to treat them better, they provided them with food and beer, to make them stay as protectors of the animals on their farms.  

 There was one celebration that the humans and gnomes had in common, the humans called this celebration Yule, but among the gnomes it was called the Winter Solstice. 
 The gnomes, who lived on the farms, liked some of the humans’   customs, especially the part of it that had to do with food, and decorations! So to please the humans the gnomes started to bring small gifts to the human children, in the hope that they would get some of the delicious food in return. In other parts of the world the children had started to believe in Santa Clause, but that is another story!  

 As I told you the gnomes also liked the humans Yule decorations, so the gnomes on the farms started to create decoration for the Winter Solstice. They traded the decorations with the gnomes living in the woods, and as time went by the gnomes had their own kind of decorations with symbols of the sun. Later they had decorations with moons and stars to honor King Winter. The humans’ think they invented the Christmas tree, but that is actually not true, it was an old custom among the Apple Fairies to burn a large wooden oak log to worship the god Thor. The fairies are known to be very competitive, and this celebration actually turned into the worst disaster in the history of the Apple Fairies. The fairies couldn’t get the oak logs big enough, and eventually they brought an entire oak tree into Leafenheim city and set it on fire, with the horrifying result that the whole city burned down. Only Apple Hold Castle and The Blue Bells Inn was saved. This tragedy made the King proclaim that it was forbidden to burn oak logs! Instead he would provide the city with a beautiful and very rare tree, that the whole city could decorate in the honor of Thor. The next winter the king swung his wand in the garden behind Apple Hold Castle, and a Fir tree fell down from the North Star. The Apple Fairies had never seen a tree like this, they gathered its cones, and the next spring they went around the world to spread the seeds from the Fir tree, to make sure there would be enough Fir trees to celebrate the Winter Solstice in the feature. The King had heard about the gnomes decorations for the Winter Solstice, and sent a knight into the woods to trade some decorations for some Fir cones. The knight came back with a big sack of decorations for the city’s Fir tree. The Apple Fairies are not very good at crafts, so they decided to decorate the tree with apples and flowers as well as the gnome’s decoration. At present time they only decorate their Fir tree with winter roses, magic stars, snow, and fairy dust. 
 
 This year the Fir tree at the Gnomes Inn has been decorated with traditional sun, moon and star decorations. The patterns are very old and from the book    Dragonian Cave Patterns published by Plotka Hildur, who gathered all the old patterns in order to save them for the feature generations of gnomes. You will find a printable version for human Christmas trees, or for the decoration of your house at the Gnomes Inn. You can also get them at Kaputs &amp; Recycling in the Kaputs Caves in Dragonia.   
 
 
  Happy   Winter Solstice!  


   
   
   
 Download the free printable decorations at: 
  http://www.nidlongdir.com/maps-gnome_dragonia.html  
 ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:24:28 +0100</pubDate><category>Nidlongdir History</category></item><item><title>King Winter</title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=23</link><description><![CDATA[      
  The days are getting shorter and shorter every week here in Denmark. T  he Northern wind is howling in the tree tops and the nights are bitterly cold.   Last night my apple trees dropped their last brown leaves in the heavy storm coming from the north.   I couldn’t sleep, because some branches were banging on the roof. My bag door blow up and I had to go to the backside of the house to secure it. As I turned around the corner of the house, I saw what had caused the door to blow up! King Winter had rumbled by my house in his wagon pulled by his two white   Tundra W  olves  , his white coat was blowing in the wind behind the wagon, and I saw how it left a carpet of rime frost over the garden. I went inside and asked Ebbe and Selene to help light candles in my windows as a celebration of the return of King Winter.  
 
   Last winter Ebbe was asleep most of the time, but it seams like he has grown out of his need for the long winter sleep. Selene was very disappointed that I hadn’t called her when King Winter passed by, she has a list of things she wants to ask him, and now it’s too late. I told her that we could send him a letter to calm her down. I asked Ebbe to find his bundle of whispering leaves with all the stories about the seasons. I had traded a broken teapot for this lovely collection of stories at the Kaputs Caves, and they have become Ebbe’s favorite Nidlongdir stories. I asked the twins to snuggle into their tiny beds; we rolled the whispering leaves, and pushed them into our ears so that we could listen to the story about King Winter.  
 
   If you follow the trail   of the reindeers as fare north as you can, and you find the spot where you are standing exactly under the North Star, a big grey seal     will pick you up, and offer you a ride to the ice palace Kylmä. Kylmä is the home of King Winter and his ice dragon, also known as The Northern Wind. During most of the summer the ice dragon is resting under Kylmä to gather all the strength it can to blow heavy ice storms at sea, and keep King Winter’s white fur coat full of ice and snow.   
 
   King Winter lives alone with his dragon, because no one can stand the cold at Kylmä for very long. Many have tried to enter Kylmä, and never returned, it is said that the entrance of Kylmä is filled with frozen visitors. Only a very few visitors are known to have returned safely from a stay at King Winter’s palace. One of them is Santa Clause. He passes Kylmä every year at the end of the autumn to open the gate of Kylmä, and awake the ice dragon to make sure he will get lots of Christmas snow. When the spring is near, the Spring Maiden will close the gate of Kylmä with her green key of spring, to make sure King Winter will be able to rest in peace until it’s time for him to go to work again. Some say the Spring Maiden is deeply in love with King Winter. To show him her affection, she weaves his beard   with flowers before she closes the gate. In return King Winter lets millions of ice bells tinkle in her honor, and if you listen to the sound of melting snow and ice in the spring, you can hear his bells greeting her welcome!  
 
   To the south in the other end of King Winter’s kingdom, he keeps his army of penguins. To call them an army may sound strange, but they are indeed one of the most powerful armies in the world. Not that they ever have been into a battle, no they keep order at the south pole by making sure the Queen Of Summer wont melt the poles and create chaos. But what powers can an army of penguins possibly have you might ask! The penguin’s power lies in their black feathers, the Queen Of Summer fear to be wrapped in a coat of black feathers, but she is very vain and the black coat of penguin feathers is irresistible   beautiful. The penguins work every day of the year on preparing the black feather coat in case the queen should pass by, and try to heat up the South Pole, she will be wrapped in the isolating coat and King Winter will come and carry her away from his kingdom.   
 
   There is an old tail that tells how King Winter got his two white   t  undra w  olves. At the time when the world was still very young King Winter ruled the world! The other seasons only had very little powers, but he was getting tired and felt he needed a rest. He used to ride on the back of the ice dragon the Northern Wind, but the dragon was very wild and hard to tame. One Night King Winter fell of the Northern Wind. He fell into a deep gap of ice. His broad shoulders   was stuck in the gap,   he desperately struggled to get free, but ho matter how hard he struggled he was trapped. King Winter called the Northern Wind but it had run wild and didn’t listen to his calls. King Winter sat in the ice gap for many days and nights, there were no sign of the Northern Wind, and one day the sun broke through, and a small white flower had found its way through the snow and ice and started to bloom. The next day the Spring Maiden felt her powers had increased, and she started her long walk of rebirth to turn the world green. The small white flower called for the Spring Maiden to come and rescue it from the cold surroundings. The Spring Maiden never had a call form a flower that fare to the north, so she decided to help the poor flower growing in the cold north. To walk into King Winter’s kingdom would be risky, so she asked Mother Wolf if she would lend her two of her wolf pups to accompany her on her journey. Mother Wolf was very clever she had her spies every where, and she knew King Winter was trapped in the ice gap, but she didn’t want him to rule the world any more, she wanted spring to get more power, so that her pups wouldn’t have to starve all the time. Mother Wolf agreed to let her two oldest pups follow the Maiden Of Spring on her journey on one condition, the Spring Maiden should offer to help King Winter out of the ice gap, if he in return would retrieve into his palace in the spring every year. As a gift from Mother Wolf, King Winter was to receive the two white wolf pups so that he would be able to travel safely in a wagon pulled by the two strong white wolves. The Spring Maiden walked for many days, and when she finely reached King Winter in the ice gap he was so tired that he had gone to sleep. His long white beard     was wrapped around the white flower. The Spring Maiden felt sorry for the once so powerful king, he looked so lost trapped in the ice gap, that she sat down beside him and started to weave his beard   with flowers. The King felt the tenderness deep into his frozen heart, and when he opened his eyes, the Spring Maiden gave him a kiss of rebirth. He soon regained his strength and pulled himself out of the ice gap. The King gladly accepted Mother Wolf’s gift, he was so happy that the beautiful Spring Maiden had offered him kindness in his darkest hour, that he created millions of ice bells to follow the Spring Maiden on her spring journey of rebirth. King Winter fed the two wolf pups with big fat fish and he purchase a wagon from the grey dwarfs living in the mountains on the border of his kingdom. The two wolf pups grew into the two strongest t  undra w  olves ever seen, and some even say that King Winter’s wagon is made of the same stuff as Santa’s sleigh.   
       
   



 
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 ]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:42:14 +0100</pubDate><category>Nidlongdir Blogs 2009-07</category></item><item><title>Fairy, Alf or Fe? </title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=22</link><description><![CDATA[    
 I have been working on a Danish translation of my story about Nidlongdir, and I have stumbled up on some interesting problems. 
 In Danish the word fairy is translated into the word fe. (a fairy = en fe) 
 In Denmark a fe is believed to be human sizes, and it's not a character we actually believe in, this character belongs to the fairy tales. 
 We have another character called an Alf. In English an alf would be like a flower fairy or a nature spirit. 
 In the Norse Mythology there were two kinds of Alfs; the Lightalfs, and the Svartalfs. The Svartalfs lived under the ground together with the Dwarfs, and the lightalfs lived among plants and animals. 
 The alfs were nature spirits and the believe in them goes back to the Stone Age in Scandinavian. Later they became minor gods in the Norse Mythology. They lived in the house called Alfheim in Valhalla, but the god Frey was handed over the house, so he had the alfs send into the human world. The Alfs were given a body and a mind like the humans, but they could have many sizes, and some could even change their shape into the shape of an animal or plant.  
 The Svartalfs are related to the Danish gnomes and the modern Christmas Elfs. The Lightalfs are related to the modern flower fairies, but in Scandinavian we see them more like nature spirits.  
   
 In English you also have the Elven people; in Denmark they are called Elver Folk. 
   
 In the Scandinavian countries: Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark, the elves were of human size. In  (Old Norse), Rolf Kraki or Rolf Krake was a legendary king at Lejre on the isle of Zealand in Denmark. He has been described in several old sagas, and other documents such as the Leire chronicle and Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. In the sagas , the Danish king Helgi finds an elf-woman on an island and rapes her. Famous men could be elevated to the rank of elves after death, and in one such case, the full-sized smith hero Võluen is called an elf. 
 In the Norwegian Heimskringla there are notions about a line of local kings who rule over Álfheim, situated between Gautelfr and the present border between Norway and Sweden on the Swedish west coast. The last king was named Gandalf. 
 So when I am going to translate Nidlongdir into Danish the problem is how to translate the word fairy. Should it be fe or alf? I have decided on alf as I find this character more Scandinavian, and I am after all a Viking ;) 
 King Apple Strong is related to the Lightalfs, and so is some of the Dragonians, but the gnomes and some of the alfs/fairies in Dragonia are Svartalfs, and closely related to different kind of animals. 
 I would like to know if you have the word alf in the English or Irish Mythology. The Nine Worlds of Norse Mythology 
 ·  Upper level  Asgard (Aesir, the land of the gods), Alfheim (elves/alfs), Vanaheim (Vanir),  
 ·  Middle Level  Midgard (men), Jotunheim (giants), Svartalfheim (dark-elves/alfs), Nidavellir (dwarves),  
 ·  Lower Level  Muspleheim (fire, a bright, flaming, hot world in the southern region), and Niflheim (the dead, the lowest level)  
 ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:09:05 +0200</pubDate><category>Read about the characters</category></item><item><title>The Chicken Plant</title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=21</link><description><![CDATA[    
 When I travel I always bring my sketchbook, and of cause I bring it along when I travel into Nidlongdir. To day I went to Lower Branch Road to sit in the sun outside the Fairy Dust Mill. As I sat there my eyes caught an interesting plant. I had never seen anything like this plant in my garden, but seeing things from the perspective of a fairy, makes even tiny plants look gigantic, so perhaps I just hadn't noticed it before.  I have no idea what the plant is called, but when I started drawing it, I thought it looked like a Chicken, so I think I will call it the Chicken Plant! When I had finished the drawing Mama Kauppa came. She told me that the sticky stuff inside the steam of the plant is used as glue by the fairies. The trolls in Nidlongdir eat the plant, they love the taste of liquorice and the flower does smell like liquorice, and perhaps a little bit of lavender as well.  I wish I had brought my water colors, but I only had my pencil, so I couldn't add any color to the drawing, but the flower was red, white, and orange and the leaves are dark green. 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:49:46 +0200</pubDate><category>Nidlongdir Blogs 2009-07</category></item><item><title>Celebrating One Year with Nidlongdir, and the Harvest</title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=20</link><description><![CDATA[   Where did time go? It's amazing to think that it's now been one year, since my daughter and I discovered the fairy twins inside an apple from our apple trees. I am so thankful that the fairies chose me to take care of the twins.  
   
 Looking back at the year that has gone, I can feel a change inside my self, it's like I feel an inner peace. At the time I became the foster mother of Ebbe and Selene, my life had change dramatically. My husband got a new job in the south of Denmark, and we had to move to Als. Both my children moved away from home, and started their adult lives. My daughter had a new boyfriend, and my son a beautiful girl fiend. Next year we will have a wedding coming up, when my daughter is getting married. As a mother I went through a rough time having to let go of my son and daughter, and I think the fairies could sense that I needed help on letting go, and accepting that a new part of my life had begun. 
 Ebbe and Selene opened a new world to me; they gave me the courage to travel into unknown land, in more than one way! As an artist I felt that I found a delightful pass that I now am dedicated to follow. So now I am not only doing my botanical illustration, but also doing fantasy art. I don't know if any of you recall my blog, on how I like to do something new every day. It doesn't have to be any ting big and importuned, it can just be climbing a tree and hanging with my head upside down, to see my garden in a new perspective, or taking a left turn where I always take a right turn to discover a new road. I have developed this idea, and put it into my art, and I feel that it has given me a lot of new inspiration, to go down roads I never explored before. 
 Through Ebbe and Selene I found my sanctuary that I call Nidlongdir. I enjoy venturing into this world, exploring the life of the fairies, and to be given the opportunity to let my imagination run wild. I truly feel like a bird that has been set free, and I am ever so thankful to the good fairies of Nidlongdir, who let me into their world, and trusted me to tell about them in the human world! 
   
 Although Ebbe and Selene are twins they are still like night and day. Ebbe is as light as the inside of an apple, he loves the sun, and he mostly feed on apple juice and honey. His flying skills are improving, but he will never be able to fly with the speed and precision Selene does. Ebbe has other skills that are very interesting to watch, he is able to heal plants. I discovered it, because one of my roses in the garden looked miserable. The summer has been very dry, and this rose was suffering badly, I had tried to water it, and nurse it, but it still didn't look like it was going to survive the summer. I was very sad because this particular rose has a historical value to the place I live. It was bred after the Second World War, as a celebration of the end of the war, and this rose has bloomed out site our house every year since. I enjoy keeping the garden, and taking care of the plants the pervious owners have planted, knowing I carry on their hard work.  
   

 Ebbe sensed I was worried about the rose, so yesterday I watch him doing a miracle. At sunset we went on our usual garden round, and when we passed the ill rose, he put his finger on the stalk of the Rose; I could see a green light coming from his finger, and spreading through the rose. The light spread through the stalk to all parts of the plant, I could even see its root glowing through the soil. I knew he was trying to save the rose, so I kissed him and hugged him, and we ended up playing the frog game he so much loves to play. The next morning I could see the rose was healing, it had new buds, and the leaves looked fresh and green.  

 Although the roses still are blooming, I can sense the turn of the year. The farmers have started the harvest, and in Denmark the harvest has been celebrated for many generations. The traditional celebrations take place in a decorated barn. The decorations are plants from the harvest like wheat, pumpkins, apples, roses and what ever is available. People dress up in their best clothes, and have a harvest dinner. After the dinner there is a harvest ball. If you are not a farmer you might not have this celebration, but, many Danes still have.  

 For me harvest is the time of the year where I look back. I know most people use the New Year to review the year, but to me harvest marks how this year have been in my garden. This is the time where I will know if my new projects worked or failed, and I can compare how many vegetables, berries, and fruit I got compared to last year. This is also the time of the year, where the children will start in a new class or perhaps even on a new education. I will start to think about the autumn and winter. Some of my Yule preparations starts now, buy making sure I have collected the things I need for the Christmas dinner and decorations, so harvest does set a mark in the calendar! It's the end, and the beginning of a new year of gardening.  

 I wish all of you a good harvest!  

 Marianne 
 ]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:29:02 +0200</pubDate><category>Nidlongdir Blogs 2009-07</category></item><item><title>History of The Blue Bells Inn</title><link>http://iloapp.nidlongdir.com/blog/library?Home&amp;post=19</link><description><![CDATA[     Visit The Blue Bells Inn, and have fun reading about the inn's history. 
  The Blue Bells inn was founded by a real fairy princess called Elyra.  
 ]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:07:07 +0200</pubDate><category>Nidlongdir History</category></item></channel>
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