One winter’s evening in January, a little while before the fishing began, I heard a story told by a man of one of the large boats’ crews who were then spending the night at our house.  He was started by two or three of Komag-Nils’ stories, and wanted to show us that where he came from, down at Doenoe near Ranen, in Helgeland, there were as many and as wonderful stories and boats, as with us in Nordland.  The narrator was a little, quick-speaking fellow, who sat the whole time rocking backwards and forwards, and fidgetting upon the bench, while he talked.  With his sharp nose, and round, reddish little eyes, he resembled a restless sea-bird on a rock.  Every now and then he broke off to dive down into his provision box, as if every time he did so he took out of it a fresh piece of his story.  The story was as follows: 

On Kvalholmen, in Helgeland, there lived a poor fisherman named Elias, with his wife Karen, who had formerly been servant at the minister’s over at Alstadhaug.  They had put up a cottage at Kvalholmen, and Elias was now in the Lofoten fishing-trade, working for daily wages.

It was pretty evident that lonely Kvalholmen was haunted.  When the husband was away, the wife heard many dismal noises and cries, which could not come from anything good.  One day when she was up on the mountain, cutting grass for winter fodder for the two or three sheep they owned, she distinctly heard the sound of talking on the beach below, but dared not look to see who was there.

Every year there came a child, but the parents were both industrious.  When seven years had passed there were six children in the cottage; and that same autumn the man had scraped together so much that he thought he could afford to buy a six-oared boat, and henceforward sail to the fishing in his own boat.

One day as he was walking along with a halibut pike [A long wooden pole with a barbed iron point to spear halibut with.] in his hand, meditating over his intention, he stumbled unexpectedly, upon an immense seal, which lay sunning itself behind a rock down on the shore.  The seal was quite as little prepared for the man as the man for it.  Elias, however, was not slow; from the rock where he stood he thrust the long heavy pike into its back, just below the head.

And then there was a scene!  All at once the seal raised itself upon its tail straight up in the air, as high as a boat-mast, showed its teeth and looked at Elias with two bloodshot eyes, so maliciously and venomously, that he was nearly frightened out of his senses.  Then the seal rushed straight into the sea, leaving a track of blood-tinged foam behind it.  Elias saw nothing more of it; but the same afternoon the halibut pike, with the iron point broken off, was washed up at the landing-stage in Kval creek where the house stood.

Elias thought no more of the affair.  The same autumn he bought his six-oared boat, for which he had put up a little boat-house during the summer.