Móðir mín í kví, kví — The Icelandic Ghost Haunting the Mother

The Folktale of Móðir mín í kví, kví

Once there was a young girl living on a farm with a want for life, dancing, singing and partying. She was unmarried and poor though and became pregnant with a man that had no plans of taking her as his wife. When she gave birth she decided to carry the child and put it outside to die. She carried the child out in her shawl or veil, sometimes retold it was only a rag.

After it was all over and done with, she attended a vikivaki celebration with singing and dancing a ritual circle dance during the church holidays, something the girl loved. She got the invitation, but had nothing to wear for the occasion. So she didn’t go and was sorry to be sitting at home.

Just before the dance, the girl was milking sheep with another woman and complained to her that she had nothing to wear. As soon as she said it out loud they heard a voice from under the wall of the pen:

Icelandic:
“Móðir mín í kví, kví,
kvíddu ekki því, því;
ég skal ljá þér duluna mína
að dansa í
og dansa í.”

English:
“Dear mother, in a pen, a pen,
do not worry about it because, because
I’ll lend you my rag
to dance in
and dance in. “

In Icelandic ghost stories, the ghost often repeat the last word in the sentence as in this short verse. She knew the message was to her, and she knew it was a ghost, talking about the single piece of clothing she had left the child out to die in. She was so shaken up after hearing her dead child reciting the words to her and she went insane for the rest of her life.

The útburður Ghost in Icelandic Folktales

In Icelandic as well as Scandinavian ghost stories, people sometimes encounter an útburður or an utburd. They were ghosts of children that were put outside to die. Either the child was unwanted because it was born outside of wedlock, or the parents didn’t have the means to raise it.

**útburðr**: The ghost in Móðir mín í kví, kví is an utburd, found in many variations in Scandinavian folklore. The Swedish call them Myling, and Utburd or útburðr in Norwegian and Icelandic. They can remind of the English Changeling creature.

When Scandinavians were pagans, this was a practice that wasn’t a crime. Even when the pagans on Iceland turned Christian, this was something that they continued to have as a permitted custom until the 11th century. In fact, to have the child would be punished with fines or even death.

The children turned into ghosts, sometimes just to torment their mother, sometimes because they couldn’t enter heaven because they weren’t baptized.

You could hear them crying, and they were believed to have been bad omens.