Tuvstarr and Skutt

Summer is moving on, the nights are getting longer again – and we have set our old poem “Tuvstarr and Skutt” to music.

The English-language poems are among the most frequently read texts on these websites.

So far, however, this has been a rather mute endeavor – so we have decided to set some of them to music. The first is “Tuvstarr and Skutt”, which is now also available as a music video on YouTube:

The fairy tale of Tuvstarr (or Princess Cottonflower) is best known from the famous illustrations by John Bauer – his picture book “Among Gnomes and Trolls” made him world-famous in 1907.

I have always read the story of the little princess who goes out into the wide world with a moose, finds no sense and ends up paralyzed by a pond in the deep woods, as an allegory of depression and the feelings of depressed people. That’s what I tried to express in my poem.

Once was my heart of gold;
It drowned me at the ground
Surrounded by, I found
That little bit of hold:
I was a princess, young.
Despite I’m living on
As flowers, as you know:

Even my heart is lost
Deep in the bitter pond,
Until I get it back,
Remain as I will do.

A fellow, kind, like you,
You mighty, courageous moose
Others would have complied –
And I have lost my crown,
And I have lost my grace,
I was too green in mind
And knew zilch of the world.

I’m paying now the price,
And I lost everything:
Nothing – remains of me
As flowers I persist.

There, high up in the north
Are many ponds and pools:
Still, black, possibly cursed,
In forests deep, they hide.
Fir trees an wacky pines,
Circled around their banks:
Sometimes they bend their tips,
Forward, to see what is
Hidden in water’s depths.

Down there, too, great woods lie,
Down there, too, great hopes lie,
Silence surrounds them softly,
Silence of golden hearts.

* * *

The poem „Tuvstarr and Skutt“ is part of my mini-anthology „Nordic Fairy Tales and Poetry“ (2021).

I used Aitubo software for the soundtrack and Canva for the video.