Why the Sea Is Salt

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there were two brothers, one rich and the other poor. When Christmas Eve came, the poor one had not a bite in the house, neither meat nor bread. So he went to his brother and begged him, in God's name, to give him something for Christmas Day. It was far from the first time the brother had to give him something, and he was no more pleased to be asked now than he usually was.

"If you do as I ask, you shall have a whole ham," he said. The poor man thanked him at once and promised this.

"Well, here is the ham, and now you must go straight to the Hall of the Dead," said the rich brother, and threw the ham to him.

"Yes, I shall do as I have promised," said the other, and he took the ham and set off. He walked and walked all day, and when evening came, he arrived at a place where there was a bright light.

"I have no doubt that this is the place," thought the man with the ham.

An old man with a long white beard stood in the outhouse chopping firewood.

"Good evening," said the man with the ham.

"Good evening to you. Where are you going so late in the evening?" said the man.

"I am going to the Hall of the Dead, if I am on the right path," answered the poor man.

"Oh, yes, you are on the right path, for this is it," said the old man. "When you go in, everyone will try to buy your ham, for they do not get much meat there. But you must not sell it unless you get the hand mill that stands behind the door. When you come out again, I will teach you how to stop the mill, which is useful for almost everything."

So the man with the ham thanked the other for the good advice and knocked on the door.

When he went in, everything happened exactly as the old man had said: all the people, great and small, came around him like ants on an anthill, and each tried to outbid the other for the ham.

"Actually, my wife and I should have it for our Christmas dinner, but since you have set your hearts on it, I must just give it to you," said the man. "But if I sell it, I want the hand mill that stands there behind the door."

At first they would not hear of this, and they haggled and bargained with the man, but he stood firm on what he had said, and the people had to give him the mill. When the man came out again into the yard, he asked the old woodcutter how he should stop the mill, and when he had learned that, he thanked him and set off home as fast as he could, but did not get there until the clock had struck twelve on Christmas Eve.

"Where in all the world have you been?" said his wife. "Here I have been sitting waiting hour after hour, and I do not even have two sticks to cross under the Christmas porridge pot."

"Oh, I could not come before; I had something important to do, and a long way to go as well; but now you shall just see!" said the man, and then he set the mill on the table and asked it first to grind lights, then a tablecloth, and then meat and ale and everything else that was good for Christmas Eve supper; and the mill ground everything he asked for.

"Oh, my goodness!" said his wife as one thing after another appeared; and she wanted to know where the man had gotten the mill from, but he would not tell her.

"Do not worry about where I got it; you can see that it is good, and the water that turns it never freezes," said the man. So he ground meat and drink and all kinds of good things, enough to last the whole Christmas season, and on the third day he invited all his friends to a feast.

When the rich brother saw everything that was on the table and in the house, he became both angry and furious, for he begrudged his brother everything. "On Christmas Eve he was so poor that he came to me and begged for a crumb, for God's sake, and now he is holding a feast as if he were both a count and a king!" he thought. "But for heaven's sake, tell me where you have your wealth from," he said to his brother.

"From behind the door," said the one who owned the mill, for he would not satisfy his brother on that point; but later in the evening, when he had taken a drop over his thirst, he could not help telling how he had gotten the mill.

"There you see what has given me all my wealth!" he said, and brought out the mill and let it grind first one thing and then another. When the brother saw that, he insisted on having the mill, and after much persuasion he got it; but he had to give three hundred dollars for it, and the poor brother was to keep it until the haymaking was over, for he thought: "If I keep it that long, I can grind meat and drink that will last for many years."

In that time you can imagine that the mill did not get rusty, and when haymaking came, the rich brother got it, but the other had taken care not to teach him how to stop it.

It was evening when the rich man got the mill home, and in the morning he asked his wife to go out and spread the hay after the haymakers, and he would tend to the house himself that day, he said.

So when it approached midday, he set the mill on the kitchen table and said: "Grind herring and milk porridge, and do it both quickly and well."

So the mill began to grind herring and milk porridge, and first all the dishes and tubs were filled, and then it came out over the whole kitchen floor. The man twisted and turned it and did everything he could to stop the mill, but no matter how he twisted and turned, the mill kept grinding, and soon the porridge rose so high that the man was nearly drowning.

So he opened the door to the living room, but it was not long before the mill had ground that room full too, and it was with great difficulty that the man managed to get through the stream of porridge and grab the door handle.

When he got the door open, he did not stay long in the room, but ran out, and the herring and porridge came after him, and it streamed out over both farm and field. Now the wife, who was out spreading hay, began to think that dinner was taking its time, and said to the women and the haymakers: "Even though the farmer does not call us home, we might as well go.

Perhaps he thinks he is not good at making porridge, and that I should help him." So they began to trudge homeward, but when they had come a little way up the slope, they met herring and porridge and bread, all streaming out and winding over each other, and the man himself ahead of the flood.

"Would that each of you had a hundred stomachs! Watch out that you do not drown in the porridge!" he shouted as he ran past them as if the Beast were at his heels, down to where the brother lived. Then he begged him, for God's sake, to take the mill back, and that at once, for he said: "If it grinds for another hour, the whole district will be ruined by herring and porridge."

But the brother would not take it until the other paid him three hundred dollars, and that he had to do.

Now the poor brother had both the money and the mill again. So it was not long before he had a farm much finer than the one his brother lived on, but the mill ground him so much money that he covered it with gold plates; and the farm lay right by the seaside, so it shone and glittered far out over the sea.

Everyone who sailed past there now had to put ashore to visit the rich man in the gold farm, and everyone wanted to see the wonderful mill, for the rumor of it spread far and wide, and there was no one who had not heard talk of it.

After a long, long time, a skipper also came who wanted to see the mill. He asked if it could grind salt. "Yes, it can grind salt," said the one who owned it, and when the skipper heard that, he wished with all his heart to have the mill, cost what it might, for he thought: if he had it, he would not have to sail far away over the perilous sea for loads of salt.

At first the man would not hear of parting with it, but the skipper pleaded and begged, and in the end the man sold it to him and got many, many thousands of dollars for it. When the skipper had gotten the mill on his back, he did not stay there long, for he was so afraid that the man would change his mind, and he did not have time to ask how to stop it from grinding, but got on board his ship as fast as he could.

When he had gotten a little way out to sea, he took the mill up on deck. "Grind salt, and grind both quickly and well," said the skipper. So the mill began to grind salt, until it spurted out like water, and when the skipper had gotten the ship fully loaded, he wanted to stop the mill, but no matter how he twisted it, and no matter how much he tried, it kept grinding, and the pile of salt grew higher and higher, until at last the ship sank. There the mill lies on the seabed, and it still grinds day after day; and that is why the sea is salt.