East of the Sun and West of the Moon

Like in most fairy tales there are always a fight between the good and the evil and food usually separates the two as the evil characters will always desire what the good characters possess. The fairy-tale was read to me when I was a child. I remember the image at the top of the page as both beautiful and scary and in my mind I might have created the memory of someone reading it to me in this way. I am sitting in someone’s lap in front of a fire place after dinner, which means it is close to bed time. I am stuffed with food and I am safe. The book is filled with scary images of a forest, a bear and a flying man who I am sure will give me a nightmare, but the story is so beautiful that I do not stop the tale from being told.

Østenfor for Sola og Vestenfor for Månen is its original title. The story can be read here

Food is not mentioned as a dish or a meal in this  fairy tale. Food is however spoken of in the terms of lacking it or being fooled or dulled by it. The most prominent moment of food being the element that changes a character is when the lassie has found the Prince who she desire to save from the Princess and her Trolls. It is the Princess who possess the power to handle magic and though she manipulates the other characters' lives with it, it backfires when she desires to own it all. The golden apple and the sleeping potion remind me of the German fairy-tale, Snow White.
 

This is mostly because of the magical sleepy drink which turns the Prince into a slumbering like the apple does to Snow White. Drinking just like eating is consumable, so though the sleepy drink is not actually food, it is still used to transform a character from being wide awake to a character in a slumbering state.

Read the Grimm's version of Snow White here

The Gold apple that the lassie pays the Princess with is significant because it is completely solid. The softness of the food has transformed into something of economic value. It is however inconsumable and though there is a feeling of the Princess wanting to consume everything of value, she cannot transform her own value in the eyes of the Prince because she has captured him and keeps because of her greed (she wants it all remember). That is what destroys her in the end, the greed. The fact that the Princess desires something that is not consumable shows that she wants to consume what she is not. The Princess is ugly while the lassie is beautiful, the lassie is desired by the Prince, so perhaps she wants to consume the lassie's beauty. In Snow White the apple is eatable, but deadly for the innocent or good character, while for the lassie the apple serves as the price to pay for a moment with the Prince who she needs to save.

Because of the previous magical events in the story, for example the fact that the Prince is magically transformed into a bear during the day and can only be in his true form during the night when no one can see how handsome and noble he looks like. It can be determined that all the magic in the story is used to manipulate the Prince's marriageable fate. Will he end up with the good or the evil woman?
Apparently the Prince cannot tell that the drink that has been making him sleepy is different from any other drink, as it does not seem to raise any suspicion. This makes it difficult to save him. Until the Christians (people who live next to his room) explain to him about the girl that comes to his room every night. His unawareness of the sleepy transformation is changed when they explain that even though the girl “called and shook him, and wept, and prayed” he would not wake up. It is because of the Christians he suspects that he is being forced asleep every night, making it possible for him to hinder the transformation.

The drink must be palatable in order for him to drink it in the way he would with a normal drink. There is no focus on the culinary art of bewitching the drink, but there is still a process of serving it. It is given to him by the Princess at the same time each day before nightfall, so that when the lassie steps into the bedroom the Prince is fast asleep. Descriptions of the drink is not given, which means that it is not especially

tempting but rather a normal habit, sort of like a glass of milk in the morning. When it is so normal that it seems like a habit it becomes more frightful. Perhaps it is because it relates to reality in a way that you might start to think someone is messing with your food or drinks.

Like most fairy tales this one has a happy ending for the lassie and the Prince. At last he figures out how to not become sleepy by refusing to drink. They defeat the Princess and her followers and live happily ever after away from the spells of the Castle that lay Østenfor for Sola og Vestenfor for Månen.

- The End -