Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

“ Well, if she must know, there lived the old hag who had bewitched King Valemon, the white bear, and in three days she was to hold her wedding feast with him. Then she asked if she mightn't have a word with her. "No! was it likely? It was quite impossible." So she sat down under the window and began to clip in the air with her golden scissors, till the silks and satins flew about as thick as a snowdrift.
But when the old hag saw that, she was all for buying the golden scissors, for she said, "All our tailors can do is no good at all, we have too many to find clothes for." ”

“ So when she came home with the wreath, every one was glad because she was glad again, and the king said, he thought it could never be so hard to stop a white bear. So the third day he turned out his whole army round the castle to withstand him. But when the white bear came there was no one who could stand before him, for no weapon would bite on his hide, and he hurled them down right and left, so that they lay in heaps on either side. All this the king thought right down scathe; so he sent out his eldest daughter, and the white bear took her upon his back and went off with her. ”

“ But King Valemon and the princess, and all the rest of the train, turned back to the castle and took all they could carry away of the gold and goods of the old hag, and so they set off for his own land, and were to hold their real wedding. ”