Friday night folktales: The Bakki-brothers and the Home-improvement Project

The brothers had noticed it was always colder outside in the winter than in the summer and also that houses were colder the more and bigger windows they had. Therefore they drew the conclusion that all frost and cold was due to houses having windows.

They decided to build themselves a new house, and did not include any windows. Consequently the house was very dark, which they considered to be something of a fault, but it was a consolation for them that it would at least be warm in the winter.

In order to get some light into the house they waited for a bright and sunny day in high summer, took their caps off and started carrying the light into the house in the caps. Others say they used buckets. These they carried inside and overturned them inside and then went back outside for more. The were looking forward to sitting in their brightly lit house that night, but when they came inside after a long day’s work, the house was as dark as ever.

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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