The flitting hob
Bob Fischer’s ‘Hobnobbing with the Hobs’ [ FT330:58] recounts the tale of the hob that followed the farmer who tried to move away from him. This folkloric motif is apparently found all over Europe, and we Norwegians know about it
from a well-known children’s song:
Og mannen ville fra nissen flytte men reisen ble ham til ingen nytte, for høyt på vognlasset nissen lo: Jeg tror vi flytter i dag, vi to, jeg tror vi flytter i dag, vi to.
This is a literal word-for-word translation: “And the man would from the nisse move, but the journey became him to no avail, for high on the cartload the nisse laughed: I think we’re moving today, we two, I think we’re moving today, we two.”
The nisse is the same entity as the Swedish tomte and (obviously) Fischer’s ‘hob’ – one of the Little People who is attached to a farm and can be both benevolent and malevolent. The word flytte means ‘move’ and corresponds to the ‘flitting’ in Fischer’s story.
The provenance of the song is unknown, but the words and music are sufficiently modern that I would guess they are no older than the 19th century. It is – or used to be – universally known to Norwegians, and the phrase nissen på lasset (the hob on the cartload) is a stock comment on situations where someone unsuccessfully tries to get away from something undesirable: – I hear Smith got a new job? – Yes, he gets much better pay but still spends more than he earns.
– Uh huh, the hob on the cartload, eh?
The nisse is commonly pictured as a little man with a long beard, similar (but not identical) to Rien Portvliet’s gnomes [ FT322:40]. This is a universal stereotype – all Norwegians will tell you that a nisse has a red woollen hat and a long white beard.
All the odder, some years ago – probably in the 1980s – I heard a man on the radio claiming he had met a real nisse. But, significantly, this nisse had been totally different: he had no hair or clothes. I think he described him as a ‘hairless monkey’ or something like that. This always sends a shudder through me when I think of it. If he had been hallucinating or
dreaming, you would expect him to see the stereotypical bearded nisse. Whatever he saw, it must have been something completely different – but why then call it a nisse? I can’t get my head around it. Nils Erik Grande Oslo, Norway