Fairy Tale Spotlight: A Mountain Made of Glass

I suppose you may be curious about the title. This week's blog is about impossible things that sometimes happen in fairy tales. The reference of a mountain made of glass comes from a Grimm story called "Old Rinkrank." Without getting too much into the body of the story, it all starts off with a king who was very protective of his daughter. He makes a mountain made of glass and challenges anyone who would dare to climb it to the top. If anyone can do it, they will have his daughter's hand in marriage.

Here is my question: How did the king make the glass mountain? We often assume that these stories take place in a more primitive era. But if you think about it, making a glass mountain would be hard even in the modern era. Surely, some sort of magic was employed. I think the thing that always strikes the reader the hardest is how casually it is mentioned: "...he caused a glass mountain to be made..."

Impossible things happen a lot on old fairy tales. These great acts are not always explained, and it leaves the reader to simply accept them at face value, but we still raise our eyebrows in extreme skepticism.

Another example of impossible things was in one of my favorite Grimm tales, "The Juniper Tree." Without spoiling the surrounding story, there is a scene where a small bird effortlessly picks up a millstone and flies around with it. Up to the point this happens, everything seemed fairly based in reality. Without any real explanation how, the bird suddenly gets super strength. Once again, magic influence is assumed, but the story never concretely explains itself.

Is the glass mountain and millstone carrying bird the result of bad writing, or is there something more to this? It depends on if you have the ability to imagine a world where amazing things happened regularly. But could this world have also been closer to the present day? Imagine if it was, and then post apocalypse, the humans of this planet had to explain these things as best they could. I am sure a lot of things would not make sense to us now, but what else are they going to do? Legends tend to devolve into very odd things over time.

I am not saying these events took place. I even suggest that these very well could have simply been lazy authors trying to tell a quick story. But I also believe that this world was once a much more fantastic place to live in. Always try and have an open mind about these things. Impossible things may only be impossible if you are so quickly ready to dismiss them.

Did you enjoy my blog? Whether or not you did, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. Thanks!