The Bog Man
As in an earlier Margaret Atwood story, The Age of Lead, The Bog Man revolves around a long-dead body. A university student’s hero worship of her archaeology professor leads to a torrid affair during which she accompanies him as his ‘assistant’ to inspect a 2,000-year-old body preserved in a Scottish peat bog. As his invisible wife comes between them, she feels “cheap and furtive”. Recognizing his shallowness, she ends the relationship. Like the bog man, over the years he becomes flatter and more leathery, as life goes out of him in her mind. Themes include infatuation, sexual exploitation, desire, guilt, empowerment.
This Norwegian folktale is about a young man whose poor father sends him out into the world to earn a living. He joins a group of robbers, and is so good at stealing that he becomes their leader. The Master Thief returns home a rich man and decides to marry the Governor’s daughter. In order to marry the girl, he must prove how good a thief he is. This story goes against the English idiom: Crime doesn’t pay. The moral seems to be that crime does pay… but only if you are very good at it!
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As is all too often the case in folk and fairy tales, the central plot here involves a young girl who is badly treated by a cruel stepmother, has a series of adventures, marries a handsome prince, and lives happily ever after. The big difference here is that the finds refuge and friendship in Tontlawald, a vast stretch of moorland on which no man ever dared set foot. To her surprise, she learns that it is a magical fairyland where people never age. When she outgrows the playmate who discovered her, she is told that she must leave.