“ The little church of what remains of Rantum is a kind of chapel-of-ease to Westerland.
The history of Sylt, like that of all Friesland, is too complicated to be fairly treated in a summary. Like the Dark Ages, which were not so very dark after all, Sylt, which might reasonably be supposed to have little separate history from Denmark, has, in fact, a distinct historical interest. Lying out of the way of all ordinary commerce, its annals might be expected to be short and simple. It is in the character of the people that one finds the key to the extraordinary turbulence of Friesland. ”

“ When his father’s work was over, he would look in with his shining lantern in his hand, and bidding the others remember that it was nearly ten o’clock and time for bed, would take little Christian by the hand and go with him homewards over the lonely heath to Westerland. When the boy became a man, his profession gave him opportunities and leisure enough to seek the history which lay in the countless mounds and hillocks. ”

“ Ekke came no more to Finn’s land, but Finn’s throne lies still as Ekke left it, upset beside the Affenthal and the Riisgap.
Sylt legends are all of grey sandhills, of empty heaths, of witches, or of sea-wonders. So does the aspect of a country affect its thought. There are scarcely any trees in Sylt, no streams, and no hills. The air is so clear, and the view so unimpeded, that distant objects seem comparatively near. But the houses are few, and the population small ”

“ Ekke must brew, And Ekke must bake, For Ekkc is going to marry; Dorret Bundis is my bride, I am Ekke Nekkepen, And nobody knows it! Everybody did know it, however, very soon, for if a merman will proclaim his loves to the winds he cannot fail to attract an audience. So all the Braderup people learned that Dorret Bundis was a girl, and that she had promised to wed Ekke. ”

“ One can do Ekke and his poetical friends no justice in translation, for their rhymes are eminently pertinent and concise. King Finn received the disconsolate wooer kindly, and told him how he won his bride from Braderup. One day the king had heard two maidens talking, as they walked, of their hard fate in having to work the livelong day. “If we had only as good a time as the underground folk!” said the one to the other. “They are always jolly; they dance and sing every evening, and only work when they please!” ”

“ A fair wind gave the Britons new masters, just as an unfavorable one saved Britain from the Armada.
Sylt is the largest of the North Friesland islands. Its peculiar shape on the map must strike the eye. It is like a headless F. In extreme length it is some twenty-three miles; its average width, except at the branch of the headless F, is less than one mile. Surrounded by great sandhills or cliffs, red or white, which replace the dunes at intervals, the interior of the country is like the elongated crater of a volcano smoothed over. ”

“ The actors are always at the opening scene. There is nothing of this operatic picturesqueness in Sylt; but the land makes up for its lack of every-day life by the vivacity of its legends. One of the most curious of these tells of the war between the giants and dwarfs.
It all arose through Ekke’s unfortunate adventures. The giants, or Frisians, were roused to anger at the thought of the danger their wives and daughters were in of being captured by such as Ekke; and, as the nearest available enemy, they wreaked their spite on King Finn and his people. ”

“ To live with the past instead of the present is more easy in Sylt than elsewhere. The whole island is an archæological museum, and every object has its legend. Folklore flourishes in this lonely spot to an extent as exhilarating as it is surprising to the folklorist, who has always to say at home, “in former times,” or “within the last century.” In Sylt the giants have scarcely passed away; the elves have scarcely vanished ”

“ From the interior, which is flat and hill-less, one sees no sea — only the inner rim of the sandhills, or the top of the cliffs. Ascend the dune at any point, and an apparently boundless expanse of sea meets the eye. Sylt is reached by steamer from Hoyer on the mainland, or, better, from Wyk, the capital of the neighboring island of Führ. It has a population of about three thousand, industrious, well-behaved, even wealthy. But the people are greatly scattered, and I know no place where one can walk so far and meet so few people as Sylt. Westerland is the only place of fashion ”

“ Without another word, Ekke vanished and troubled her no more. Evil spirits always keep their word, but by night and day since then he has striven to destroy the land. Inge’s home is now beneath the waters. The Rantum that appears on the Sylt map of to-day is a new Rantum; but a good spirit, a white lady, watches over the lost land. Another story of Ekke‘s wooing is told. Disappointed of Inge’s love, the merman after a time went on a visit to Finn, the king of the dwarfs. These were an odd, small, tricky people whom the Frisians found in Sylt when they took possession. ”

“ The Heligolanders are entirely satisfied with their position as a colony of Britain, — for one reason, because, as a race of sailors, they have a curious contempt for all soldiers, and the Germans are soldiers; for another, because they are ruled with a light and judicious hand. The Sylters are become Germans, and, whether they wish it or not, they will remain so. As years go on, the difference between the peoples will become still more marked. In Heligoland the British tar is the representative of the governing power — in Sylt it is the Prussian soldier ”

“ Of all these glories Finn told Ekke, till the merman’s heart swelled up with new hope. Surely if the maidens of Braderup preferred marriage with Finn to work, then he also might make sure of a bride from Braderup. So it happened that one morning, as he sat on a hillock near Braderup, his face, says the folk-tale, “to the first peep of dawn in the east, the moon still shining in the west,” he saw a comely youth go to bathe in the bay beneath. Now Ekke also felt desirous of a dip, and he hastened to the shore ”

“ They sang and danced by moonlight on the mounds of the plain which was their home, worked little, were deceitful, and loved to steal children and pretty women; the children they exchanged for their own, the women they kept. ”

“ It is a very small place after all, and when the visitors are not bathing they do not promenade in fine clothes, but scoop out great holes in the sand, and therein sit father and mother and all the Kinder, and get so sunbrowned that all their neighbors in Berlin or in Hamburg will call heaven a thousand times to wonder over it, when they pack up their trunks and take ship home again. ”

“ Then Finn told of what evil repute Ekke had brought them into with his stupidity, with a few variations which make his conduct still blacker than I have described it. In consequence of his bad fame, the giants would give the underground folk now nothing but dead dogs and cats, chased them when they were seen, and made life a burden to any respectable elf. Then the loss of the stone throne was a calamity. ”

“ He made a very careful plan of the island, giving every dune and legend-haunted mound; and so correct was his topography, said Frau Hansen to the writer, that when the Prussians annexed Sylt, they adopted the Keitum schoolmaster’s work as the official map. It would be interesting to know if this compliment to his accuracy reconciled Hansen to the transference of his allegiance from Copenhagen to Berlin. As a schoolmaster, Hansen does not seem to have spared the skins of the young Sylters. ”

“ It is very easy to get out of sight of these loiterers; five minutes’ walk in any direction will land you in a wilderness of soft turf and sweet thyme, and it is entirely your own fault if you see another human creature in half-a-dozen hours; it is quite certain you will not meet an Englishman. ”

“ Externally merely a swelling green mound, like so many others in Sylt, entrance is gained by a trap-door in the roof, and descending a steep ladder, one finds himself in a subterranean chamber some seventeen by ten feet in size, the walls of which are twelve huge blocks of Swedish granite; the height of the roof varies from five to six feet. ”

“ Nor was there wonder, for he was no boy, but Dorret Bundis, a maiden who had with her two brothers crossed from the main land the previous winter over the ice. (This is a very superfluous detail, for in the time of the cavemen Sylt can scarcely have been an island. The mind of the artist required, however, to explain the presence of a stranger, and the story was invested with artistic merit by this touch of modern life.) Afraid of the elves and their practice of stealing maids, Dorret had passed as a boy. Ekke quickly caught her. ”

“ Among other playful tricks she threw dead calves and dogs into the merman‘s cave, turning that peaceful bachelor home into a very unsavory abode, and wound up with a dead cat, which she playfully invited him to take as an appropriate spouse, thus fulfilling the prophecy about Bundis’s cat mentioned above. Poor Ekke could not stand this kind of treatment, so he went to his friend King Finn and told him his troubles. He got little sympathy.
“The devil take you “said the elf-king, “you are too stupid to come among underground folks. ”

“ As we hear before that the underground folk had only stone arrows and axes, the story receives additional historical importance from this detail — for in studying the story of this ancient people we have almost undoubtedly an opportunity, curious to find, of acquiring evidence of what must have in fact taken place all over northern Europe, when the Aryans poured out their Asiatic thousands of tall skilled warriors against the small Iberians. ”

“ O Wedke, receive our sacrifice’?” “Yes; that was duly said on the Wind-hill, on Weda’s hill, and on the Holy Place.” “Then we are ready!” “Weda” is the Teutonic Wodan, from the Frisian propensity, as Grimm has remarked, to drop a final n, and to modify o even when not followed by an I. We need not follow the course of the battle. Of course the giants ultimately triumphed. What is valuable in the story is the tradition of the fight ”