[Collected in Telemark, Norway, sometime before 1891, by H. Tvedten]
On Lindheim farm, in Nesherad, there was supposed to have been a changeling. No one could remember when he was born or when he had come to the farm. No one had ever heard him speak, but all the same they were afraid to do anything to him or make him angry. He ate so much that the people at Lindheim had been living from hand to mouth, generation after generation, on his account.
One day a wise woman came there and gave them advice and told them what to do. They were to take a big pot, and in it they were to cook only as much porridge as was needed for a tiny baby. Then they were to put the pot in the middle of the parlor floor, with a little clump of porridge in the bottom, and as many spoons as there was room for. When this was done, they all went out so the changeling was left alone inside. He pottered over to the pot and peered down in it. Then they heard him speak for the first and last time.
He said: “Well, I’m not rightly old and I’m not rightly young, but I’ve seen Lindheim forest chopped down and grow up three times. But never before have I seen such a big pot with so little food and so many spoons in it. But when they burn down the shack on Guldhaugen, then I’ll die!”
As you might expect, it was not long before the shack on Guldhaugen was all ablaze, and as for the changeling, it happened as he had said.