In the night, when they had come home and lay sleeping in the hut, at about twelve o’clock they heard the boy crying for help.  One of the men thought, too, he saw by the dim light of the oil lamp a great hand stretching in from the door up to the bench on which the boy lay.  Before they had so far collected themselves as to lay hold of the hand, the boy, crying out and resisting, was already dragged to the door.  And now a hard struggle took place in the doorway, the goblin pulling the boy by the legs, while the whole crew held him by the arms and the upper part of his body.  In this way, at the hour of midnight, he was dragged backwards and forwards in the half-open doorway, now the men, now the goblin, having the better of the struggle.  All at once the goblin let go his hold, so that the whole crew fell over one another backwards on to the floor.  But the boy was dead, and they understood that it was only then that the goblin had let go.  The following winter they used to hear wailings at midnight in the fishing-hut, and they had no peace until it was moved away to another spot.

The Nordlander has the same, or even a greater pride in owning the fastest sailing-boat, that the East countryman in many places has in having the fastest trotting-horse.  A really good boat is talked of in as many districts in the north, as, a really fine trotter would be in the south.  All sorts of traditions about the speed and wonderful racing powers of the boats are current in Nordland, and romantic tales are told of some of them.  The best boats in Nordland now came from Ranen, where boatbuilding has made great strides.  To build a good boat with the correct water-lines requires genius, and cannot be learned theoretically; for it is a matter of special skill on the part of the builder of each boat.  Ill-constructed boats are sometimes put together but they are, of course, unsatisfactory and sail only moderately well.  The Nordland boat-builders have long since discovered the high fore and aft, sharp-keeled boat, to be the most practical, with one mast and a broad, prettily cut square sail admirably suited to what is most required, rapid sailing in fore and side winds, though less so for tacking.  The boat is exactly the same shape under water as the fast-sailing clippers for which the English and Americans have of late become famed.  What it has cost the Nordlanders to perfect the form that now enables them almost to fly before the wind, away from mighty curling billows which would bury the boat, if they reached it; how many generations have suffered and toiled and thought over, and corrected this shape under pain of death, so to speak, for every mistake made!  In short, the history of the Nordland boat, from the days of men who first waged war with the ocean up there, to this day is a forgotten Nordland saga, full of the great achievements of the steadily toiling workman.