Tales of guidance and warning
We gather around the fire on a dark evening. There we tell tales about ghosts and ghosts. Someone who was saved from storm and accident.
18 May 2026
Photo: Camilla Iren Sjaanesset
On Saturday the 9th of May, the exhibition “Did you hear that? Tales of Guidance and Warning” opened at Øksnes museum.
The exhibition is made by Øksnes Museum and Narvik Museum, and will be shown for the first time in Øksnes this summer before it travels to Ofoten.
During the opening, the public was given a free visit to the new exhibition, with an introduction by the museum’s conservator, Julien Beck Gjellesvik, as well as an atmospheric storytelling session with Hilde Hansen.
Around 20 people showed up to listen. Julien talked about the background to the exhibition, and the double meaning of the title. “Did you hear that?” is something a listener can ask someone who is telling about something incredible that supposedly happened to them or someone they know. It’s also something you say to your friend when you hear a sound that sends shivers down your spine. The exhibition is a bit spooky, as the legends contain dangers and omens from supernatural forces that know more than us humans.
Many listened intently as Hilde spoke in depth about the various tales presented in the exhibition. She shared, among other things, methods to avoid the draug, about the frog mother Cuoppomáddu, and the hulder people. All these characters appear during the tales in the exhibition.
The exhibition can be visited at Øksnes Museum from 27 June to 16 August.
About the exhibition:
Night is falling and we gather around the bonfire to share tales of the inexplicable. Of a fisherman’s brush with death. Of rescue from the storm, and of greed turning to loss. The tales are shared again and again, and a hundred years from now, they will still be told. Perhaps some things will have changed.
Folk tales account for things that supposedly happened: of historical events and people, how the landscape came to be, and meetings with the supernatural. They entertain, they inspire, and they seek to explain phenomena that we cannot understand.
“Did you hear that? Tales of Guidance and Warning” presents folk tales collected from Ofoten, Lofoten and Vesterålen, but similar versions can be found elsewhere in Norway and the world. Supernatural guidance and warnings are the thematic threads that bind them together. Sometimes, the tales themselves are the warnings: what might happen when unwritten rules are ignored?
In the exhibition, you will meet creatures such as the scary draugen, the whimsical and sometimes auspicious marmel, the strange Krylekropp, and the mother frog Cuoppomáddu.