Fanden og futen

                                                         "Fanden og futen"

                                    Then neither prayer nor invocation will help.

                    This artwork is based on the illustrations by Theodor Kittelsen.

Theodor Kittelsen's illustration "Fanden og futen" depicts the Devil as a naked, old man with a horse's hoof and a buckhorn, and the Futen with a comical toupee. From "Asbjørnsen and Moe: Illustrated Fairy Tales, Selected Folk Tales" 1907.

"The Devil and the Foot" is a Norwegian folktale about a devil who wants to take a foot to hell. 

The fairy tale in its best-known Norwegian edition was written down by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen in Oslo and printed in Norske Folkeeventyr in 1876.

Fairy tales of this kind are widespread in Northern Europe. It has AT number 1186. It formed the basis for "The Friar's Tale", one of the stories in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

                                                                 Pencil drawing.