The longest and narrowest of the Scandinavian countries is Norway.
On the map it looks like the head and back of a big tiger which is leaping from north to south. The legs and the belly of the tiger are in Sweden.
This is what many people believe is the whole of Scandinavia. However, Scandinavia is much bigger.
Norway lies between Iceland and the Faeroe Islands in the west, Sweden, Finland and Lapland in the east and Denmark in the south.
If the big tiger of Scandinavia would open its mouth, it could swallow Denmark in one bite!
Don´t try to count the mountains in Norway. They are far too many and some of them very high. Most of the country is covered with pine trees. There is a fantastic archipelago off its west coast. In summer cruises are made to the north where the midsummer night´s sun dances on the horizon. There is Lofoten and one of themost beautiful places is the Oslo Fjord. That´s where the royal family lives. Just like Denmark and Sweden, Norway is a monarchy.
The palace is in the middle of the capital Oslo. There is the king, the queen and their two children. Their son Hakon will inheriting the throne after his parents with his wife Mette-Marit who has the son Marius. Mette-Marit and Marius were not royal. Hakon didn´t want to be king if his parents didn´t accept his beloved. So be it, he said. So be it, said the King and Queen. So be it, said the Norwegian people. And they married and have a baby daughter.
Karin is a Norwegian girl who lives far away from Oslo.
She is nine years old and lives in a long and deep valley close to a place they call The Hood of Giants. And the name of the farm where she lives is “The Giant.”
Karin´s father is a farmer. Her mother is a housewife, but she is also a teacher at the village school.
They have many cows, sheep and horses.
Karin has a cat, called Quitit and four dolls: Oslo, Bergen, Tromsoe and Kirkenæs. Those are in fact placenames. You can find them on the map.
Karin likes saying these words because they are so special. That is why she has given her dolls such strange names.
Karin´s father has built a little hut for her. She calls her hut “stabbur.” A stabbur is usually a hut where some food was kept during winter in the old days, before the refrigerator. There are still many stabburs in the countryside of Norway.
Karin´s stabbur is hers alone and no one else has a key to it. Sometimes she seeks peace and quiet together with Quitit and her dolls in this hut. Nobody worries about her when she is there. It is the safest place on the farm.
When her grandad, Hakon, comes visiting, he often goes to her stabbur.
Karin has a secret she doesn´t want her parents to know. She has a friend. Her friend is a pitch black raven which lives high up in the mountains. Her raven is a huge bird of prey, which steals a lot, especially things that glitter. This raven has never stolen anything from Karin. Sometimes it comes in through her open window and stands quite still and majestic on her table, until she gives it something to eat. Quitit is afraid of the raven and hides under the bench when it appears. What the raven loves most of all are pancakes. When Karin gives it one, he or she eats it in one gulp and carries the rest the second cake in its beak up to the mountains. Karin is sure that it has some very eager and hungry babies up there. This has to be a secret, because her mother says that food is very expensive, so you are not to throw it away. She also says that ravens are evil birds that eat small lambs. If Karin´s mother knew that she feeds a raven with pancakes, Karin thinks she might stop baking them.
Now there was a Monday morning and Karin was bored. Her father had driven away in his jeep and wouldn´t take her with him. Her mother was at school teaching.
Snow drifted in big flakes down from the cloudy sky. The days were long and dark now in the middle of winter, just before Christmas. Karin tried to make some verses. She liked making her own.

—- Mountain raven come and go,
let me know and let me know,
when it is and when is it,
that grandpa will us visit.
He will tell us stories then,
tell us when, tell us when,
mountain ravens come and go,
let me know and let me know.—-

Karin wasn´t sure whether this was a good poem, but she felt it was great fun trying to make words fit.
Now her mother called and she went into the big red wooden farmhouse to have dinner with her parents.
The next morning Karin woke up early. Her mother and father were already up. They were sitting at the breakfast table having eggs,
milk from their own cows, homemade buns with butter, cheese and an apple. Karin ate much and kept asking questions.

“How many days are there until Christmas?”
“Are the old fogeys coming?”
“May I sledge today?”
“When is grandpa coming?”
“Your grandpa is coming today,” her mother answered and added:
“Don´t go anywhere today, because your grandpa wants us all to stand in the entrance and wait for him and welcome him.”

Karin went into the living room together with Oslo and Quitit. She sat by the window eating her apple.
She wanted to see when the milktruck brought her grandpa through drifts of snow.
She looked so much forward to seeing him, because she felt he was the best man in the world.
He knew so many stories and sometimes he made some himself. She had to sit there for a long time looking over the road, the river,
the fields in the long and narrow valley. Everything was white, because of the snowfall, but the clouds stood still as if they too were waiting.
Karin liked snow. A little more snow would make it possible to form snowballs and perhaps a big snowman.
Quitit fell asleep of course, because a cat can always sleep. And she had chosen the best chair in the room.
The heavy snowclouds started falling down in huge flakes and finally the milktruck came into sight far down in the valley,
like a little black dot climbing uphill. She watched it all the way and then she called to her parents and they poised at the front door in order to welcome the good guest.
Grandpa looked exactly like Santa Claus, when he stepped down from the cab of the truck.
His beard was white, his eyes shining, he had a big seaman´s bag on his shoulder filled with christmas gifts.
And he kissed them all and Karin cried out, because his beard pricked her soft cheek hard.
They ate lunch and then grandpa demanded that he and Karin should go to her stabbur. He wanted to see her domestic animals, as he said.
He was the only one who knew about the raven.
When they had entered Karin´s stabbur, they sat down on the rug on the floor. Karin asked for a story.
“Do you want to hear the story about the Teaspoon Woman?” he asked.
“I know that one by heart,” she answered.
“What about the Wizard of Oz?” he asked.
“No, please. A new one,” she pleaded. “Make one yourself. I like your stories best.
Tell me about people in the capital of Norway, Oslo, and the children there.”
“Then we have to go into Themakebelieveland,” grandpa said, “because you know that giants only live in Themakebelieveland in Oslo.”
Now grandpa took a thinking break. Then he said:
“Let us go now into Themakebelieveland where there are both giants and city kids.”
And he started telling Karin a new story he made up while he was talking.
“Once upon a time there was this great Giantess. Her name was Maincraft and she was married to the giant they called Rootcraft.
They had one son. His name was Slimbone.
His was the world record in long arms and legs.
When he was sitting on top of the mountain Trollhättan (The Giant Hood mountain),
he could pick berries in the Gudbrandsdalen far away. He could straddle over the highest mountains.
Slimbone had noone to play with, poor thing. He was so big and ugly that the humankinds were afraid of him.
He always hid himself when he saw humans. He could make himself invisible.
Sometimes Slimbone went down south to the beautiful Oslo Fjord.
Then he took a seat at the top of the Holmenkollen-mountain and watched the skiers,
especially the children he was so fond of, because they were clever skirunners.
He knew every playground in the city and he knew all the children by their names. They couldn´t see him though.
Once, when Slimbone was sitting at the top of the ski resort above Oslo eating oranges from a box, his mother had given him,
he ate the peel and everything, as if it were bonbons. Then he noticed something strange.
He saw two boys put a little cat into a sack and then they threw the sack in the water in the Oslo Fjord.
Slimbone was so horrified at this, that he stretched out his long arm and took the cat in the sack out of the water,
dried the frightened little creature with his pockerchief which was as big as a towel
and then he put the cat very carefully down behind the house where he knew it came from.
The cat ran like an arrow in through the cellar window, home to its tiny kittens.
Slimbone put on his Sevenmile shoes and straddled back home to his mother Maincraft and his father Rootcraft.
They lived inside the Trollhättan in their own big cave. He told them about the boys and the cat.
Now Grandpa was silent for a long while and Karin thought that the story was over.
His eyes were closed and he took two pieces of candy out of his pocket.
“Do you want one?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she said.
While she was unwrapping it, she said: “And then what, Grandpa?”
“Well, wait a bit. I have to think,” he said.
“Did his mother Maincraft go to Oslo to fetch the boys?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Then what?”
Grandpa put a piece of candy in his mouth and proceeded:
“Slimbone was so tired, that he went to bed. He laid himself down on his furry bed and fell instantly asleep.
His mother was to wake him up in a year. He slept through the whole winter, the summer and half of the next winter,
until just before Christmas.
On Christmas Eve Maincraft lifted the furs from off him. He had grown so much while asleep,
that his trousers and shirt had split from his body. He was much taller and broader than before.
“What a giant you have turned into!” Maincraft exclaimed, proud of her son. “I must make some new clothes for you.
Lucky that I´ve been collecting thick oxhides for the purpose.”
She laid Slimbone on top of the oxhides, cut and sowed them with barbed wire. This kept aggressive wolves from him.
At five o´clock on Christmas Eve his clothes were ready. He was so happy, that he went down to the great big lake to mirror himself
in the clear surface of the ice.
Maincraft had prepared his evening meal, a big box of boiled potatoes, because that was his favorite dish.
He said goodbye to his parents who were very proud of him and he straddled over the mountains on his way to Oslo.
He was very careful not to tread on the farmhouses on his way. He would never hurt anyone.
However, he couldn´t resist the temptation to peer into some of the windows on his way.
There were Christmas trees in the living rooms everywhere and there was this unbelievable aroma from newly baked and fried food.
The people in Norway are very rich because there is so much oil in the underground around their country.
They would never let anyone starve or be hungry and in any case there was plenty of food everywhere on Christmas Eve.
That is the time when they give each other Christmas presents and they make a great feast out of it.
On Christmas Day they sleep for long and then go visiting their families and friends. This is why most people were at home on Christmas Eve,
waiting for the church bells to chime.
When Slimbone arrived to the Oslo Fjord, he took a seat right on top of the Holmenkollen. He opened his potatoebox. In his hands the potatoes looked like raisins.
He felt it was great fun watching with how much difficulty the humans moved through the snowdrifts. Some of them were carrying packages.
Some of them dragged pinetrees with them, in order to put these in their living rooms and decorate them.
It was dark by now and more and more lights came in the windows and there were colored lights on balconies.
In some of the dining rooms the tables were totally covered with food and sweets. It was very difficult for the kids to wait until the Christmas presents would be given out. They didn´t eat much, except for the icecream. Slimbone tried to imagine what a big mountain one could build out of all this icecream right in front of him. It would make yet another icehood on top of the Holmenkollen. He thought, that the icecream they were eating was plain snow. He couldn´t understand how much of this stuff the humans could eat. He himself put a snowball into his mouth, but spit it out. Wugh!
When they started opening their Christmas presents, he watched them intensely. He counted thousands of toycars, dolls, books and saw many things he didn´t know the names of, or of what use they might be. They must be very important, because some of them could move all by themselves, stir about, roll, even fly.
Now people started kissing each other. Soon the men started reading their books, or playing with the toy trains their sons had got. The women did the dishes.
Even the two boys he had seen throw the cat in the sea were now wearing nice and clean clothes. They looked sweet and happy and played with their presents.
The prisons, the hospitals, the churches, the fire stations bathed in lights.
Slimbone felt that this was how it should always be. He was so fascinated by Christmas time in Oslo, that he kept sitting there for days.
To him, one day is like an hour is for human beings. Maincraft had told him, that this great Christmas feast would go on for days, but afterwards everything would turn back to normal. He didn´t really believe this, so he waited in order to see for himself whether the humans would go back to the stage they were in before, the hurry state, the pushing state, the sulky state, the fighting state.
When he had been sitting up there for a whole week, he suddenly became very frightened and alarmed. A big flying fire passed his ear and then exploded right in the middle of the air. It shone like a sun. There were now fires all over town and more flying fires exploded around him. One even hit his nose, so it bled a bit.
He succeeded in catching the next one, but it burnt his finger and it went out when he threw it away.
Early in the morning the fires were dead and there were no humans in the streets and very few lights in the windows and on the balconies.
From then on there were fewer lights every day.
One day, the grownups started working again and the kids going to school.
Slimbone was stiff all through from sitting up there for so long. And as he had eaten all his potatoes, he was hungry.
He rose, straightened his back and was about to leave to go back to his cave.
Suddenly he saw the two boys he had seen before, the ones who threw the cat in the sea. Now they were not finely dressed or washed.
They had thrown their Christmas clothes into a corner. Their hair was straggling and their eyes were mean.
They obviously thought that it was enough to be nice just during Christmas, while there were lights and lots of food, sweets and presents.
Now, they were running after a bus on the Karl Johan Street which stretches itself all the way up to the King´s Palace.
They grabbed hold of the shockabsorber of the bus and made it pull them along the icy street. One of them fell and a great big truck would have run him over,
if Slimbone had not stretched out his long arm and pushed him to the side. The boys laughed at this incident, because they thought it was the wind,
that had pushed the boy into a safe place. They ran into a candyshop and pinched some sweets.
“These boys need a lesson,” Slimbone thought.
As he was thinking this, he saw them hide behind a trash can and start catching pigeons. They threw their jackets over them and put them in a box.
Then they lit some matches and put a fire to the box where the pigeons were closed in and helpless.
Then Slimbone couldn´t wait any longer.
He reached out with both of his arms, put his nails as hangers inside the back of their shirts and lifted them up to his nose.
They kicked wildly about, screamed and called out: “Ma! “Pa! Ma! Pa!”
Slimbone laughed like a giant. He put the boys on his knees and they couldn´t move at all.
He snatched the matches from them and put fire to his own potatoebox. He made as if he would put the boys into the burning box.
They screamed and begged for mercy.
Slimbone was so quick in his movements, that when he put them back beside the trashcans at the Grand Hotel,
he could let the pigeons out of their burning box at the same time.
One of the boys ran screaming and crying home and hid under his mother´s skirts. The other one helped a dead scared pigeon move away from the burning box. Then it flew right up to the top of the National Theatre.
This boy ran out to the Karl Johan Street in order to see the giant Slimbone still sitting on top of the hill.
He saw Slimbone rise, stretch himself high as a tower and leave for the great mountains. He ran home and told his parents about Slimbone,
but they laughed a lot and said his fantasy was going wild.
Slimbone straddled home in order to tell his parents the story about the humans and their Christmas.”
Grandpa opened his eyes and said: “End of story.”
“Do you think that Slimbone ever sits on our mountains?” Karin asked.
Grandpa got a lot of wrinkles around his eyes and said:
“If you want him to. Remember that he lives in The Makebelieveland. That can be our land whenever we want to.
You and I can go there whenever we want to.”
Karin wanted more stories, but Grandpa said he could only make one a day. He wanted her to think about this one before he told her a new one.
The raven didn´t come that day to Karin´s stabbur.
Karin and her Grandpa walked through the deep snow up to the farmhouse.
Her mother said, that dinner was ready.
When she had had her dinner, Karin took a seat by the kitchen window.
She listened to the grownups talk and kept an eye on the great mountains on the other side of the valley, in order to see,
if Slimbone would be having a rest on it during one of his long journeys.