How Father- And Daughter-In-Law Became Bears?

How Father- And Daughter-In-Law Became Bears

A Sami Tale

There was once an old man who would disappear every winter only to return home in the spring. His son´s wife grew inquisitive and began wondering where her father-in-law vanished to each year. One autumn she decided to clear up the matter once and for all.

So the daughter-in-law kept her eye on the old man until she saw him setting off for the forest, then trotted in after him. But before long the man was lost from sight. Where he ought to have been she saw an old twisted tree, and under the tree sat a bear preparing for his winter sleep.

As soon as she reached the place under the tree, the daughter-in-law too changed into a bear. The other honey-paws was of course her father-in-law, who told her that he turned himself into a bear every winter and then went to sleep in his lair. That way, he explained, life only cost half as much. The old man, you see, was very stingy.

The daughter-in-law didn´t know what to do: she didn´t know how to change herself back into a human being. Her father-in-law suggested that she would hibernate with him. If she did, he said, the family would be saved the price of her meals. So there was nothing for it for the girl but to curl up in the lair and go to sleep.

In the middle of winter, while both the bears slept deeply, the old man´s sons set off hunting. However it came about, they stumbled upon the very same lair, and began setting traps around it. The old man awoke and realised his hour of peril was at hand. He shook his daughter-in-law awake and told her that he was prepared to go to his death because he was old, but she had children, and so must turn herself quickly back into a woman. The old man decided to emerge from the lair and let the boys shoot him. The girl was to lie quietly until the hunters went away. Then she should follow them. When the hunters skinned and laid out the bear they had caught in front of their hut, the dughter-in-law was to jump over the carcass and so turn herself back into a human being.

The girl followed the old man´s instructions.She trailed behind the hunters and watched as they laid out their bear skin. The girl leapt over it, but didn´t get all the way across. Her left foot grazed the hide. She changed back into a woman, but her left foot remained a bear´s paw from then until the day she died.