Friday night folktales: The Bakki-brothers and the Barrel

Another time the Bakki-brothers bough a large barrel in Borgarfjörður, which is in southern Iceland, many days travelling from Bakki. They took the barrel apart to make it easier to transport.

When they got home they put the barrel back together and started filling it (it doesn’t say with what, but presumably whey or brine for preserving food), but the barrel started leaking. The brothers examined to barrel to find out what was causing the leak. Finally one of them said: “Gísli-Eiríkur-Helgi, no wonder the barrel leaks, the bottom is still in Borgarfjörður!”

Copyright notice: The wording used to tell this folk-tale is under copyright. The story itself is not copyrighted. If you want to re-tell it, for a collection of folk-tales, incorporate it into fiction, use it in a school essay or any kind of publication, please tell it in your own words or give the proper attribution if you choose to use the wording unchanged.

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