Wicked Gauper

         Long ago, in the town of Medalen in Lom, Norway, lived a man loved by some, but feared by many.  His name was Ola Trondsson Gauper. To his family, he was known as “Old Man Gauper” or even just the “Old Man”.  However, to the villagers, he was known as “Wicked Gauper”.  This name is entirely misleading and was born from the rumors and imaginations, mostly after Ola’s death.  Many claimed he used sorcery and, in extreme cases, poison, in numerous traditions.  In reality, Old Man Gauper was a very intelligent chemist, medicine man, inventor, and mechanic.  He was misunderstood and, therefore, feared by most of the village.
         Medalen was a very tranquil village.  Its rolling hills were packed with lush green trees.  Rivers and streams broke apart the land every so often.  The houses were quaint; built with logs and grassy thatch roofs.  The people of Medalen are just as peaceful.  They worked hard and everyone did their part.  Nothing was out of the ordinary, that is, except for Ola.
         Ola Trondsson Gauper was a unique man.  It’s hard to tell what fact from fiction in the legends is.  He lived on a farm called South Gauper.  He was given this farm after his mother died when he was 8 and his father died when he was 14.  Some say he had a small garden amongst a pile of rocks.  It was said that within this garden there was a collection of various items; including a human skull he stole from the graveyard within which he grows grain for breads.  Some say he was a wicked man and killed a woman from Kleiven using poison, but the case was dismissed by courts, according to the legend.  What is for certain is that Ola was born in 1784, died in 1873, and was very smart.
         In the prime of his life, Ola was a wise looking man.  His brown hair curled into a pile on his head.  His blue eyes shone like an ocean at sundown.  Glasses shielded his eyes and were cracked due to the lack of carelessness Ola often portrayed.  Ola loved to study chemistry and medicine.  All of his knowledge was, however, self taught.  He conducted numerous experiments using various herbs and chemicals.  He read multiple books on chemistry and took plenty of notes in between words on the pages.  Due to his knowledge, Ola often served as a doctor to anyone who was brave enough to see him.  Ola was also a very handy man.  At Sulheim, an old potato grinder and grain sifter he built are still standing.  In his blacksmith shop inside South Gauper, Ola built an impressive steam engine.  Due to the lack of need for a steam engine at the time, it is almost certain that this is one of the first steam engines in Norway.
         One day, a man named Artur was fixing the roof of his house when he fell off.  Landing on the ground with a thud, Artur instantly knew he had broken his left arm.  Upon looking at his arm, he also noticed multiple cuts and scrapes of different sizes.  Seeing as there was no doctor for miles, he decided to attempt to clean the wound and mend it himself.  He washed it off with the water from the stream because it was the cleanest that was available.  He cut a strip of fabric from the bottom of one of his shirts and wrapped it around his arm as a sling.  Then Artur went back to fixing the roof.
         A week passed and Artur’s arm still hurt, maybe even more than before.  He unwrapped it and shouted out some dirty words that don’t need to be repeated.
         “What are you cussing and moaning about now, Artur?” his wife, Catherine, blurted out while carrying a bucket of slop for the pigs into the shed where Artur was sitting.
         “It’s my arm.  It still hurts and now it’s gone all green and slimy around the scrapes.”
         “Let me take a look,” Catherine explained as she dropped her bucket and walked over to her husband.  A quick examination and she immediately knew what had happened, “Well look at that, it’s gotten infected.  I told you to just take the half-a-day horse ride down to the doctor in Dridik, but you’re such a stubborn old man and now look at you.  You could lose your arm!”
         “Alright, alright!  That’s all in the past and has no need.  The important thing is what I do now.”
         “Well—“
         Arthur interrupted, “Without going to Dridik.”
         “The only thing close to a doctor around here is that old man down at South Gauper.  You remember Elsa?  She told me her husband, Olan—remember him?  Well, she told me that he was feeling sicker than death and he went over to South Gauper.  Three days later he came back skipping.  Skipping!  All the way back to the farm.  She says he’s never been healthier.”
         Artur pondered this for a while.  He roughed up his brown hair and looked into his wife’s sincerely worried, chocolate brown eyes.  For her sake, he replied, “Well, maybe just a quick trip down there.”
         So Artur packed up a sack of the necessities, and a little bit of smoked ham that his wife had made a few days before, and mounted his horse.  After a quick kiss goodbye from Catherine, he headed off to see this old man who Artur expected to heal him.
         Two hours later he was at the gate to South Gauper.  He tied his horse to the fence and opened the gate that creaked eerily.  Walking up to the door of a relatively large house, he suddenly felt awkwardly uncomfortable.  He knocked on the door twice and waited for it to open.  Nobody came to answer and he suddenly felt as if the farm was completely empty.  He knocked again for good measure, though.
         “Oh! Come in!”  A yell and a crash of glass echoed out an open window and Artur jumped.  He twisted the handle and nudged the door open anyways.  Inside was a man in old, stained clothes slaving away over a pot on a stove.  Artur instantly realized that the crash he had heard was a broken glass tube filled with some sort of grass or herb.
         “I’m, uh, I’m Artur.  I heard that there was a man here who could help me.”  He shouted over the man’s back. 
         “Sick or dead, I help them all.  Now tell me son, why do you call?”  He recited like he must have done a thousand times before.
         “I was fixing my roof…”
         “I help humans, not houses, boy.”  The old man interrupted.
         “I’m not done.  I was—“
         “Oh! That’s it!”  He jumped in the air and filled another of his glass tubes with a green goop that must have been boiling in the kettle.  He wrote something down in a book and closed it.  Artur examined the cover.
         “Handbook in Chemistry by Nicolai Tychsen; Second, greatly expanded and improved edition,” He recited the title out loud, “Ah, you’re a chemist?”
         “More of a hobby than anything.”  The old man covered the pot and placed his crumpled and cracked glasses on the table before continuing, “Now, what were you saying about a roof?”
         “Well, Mr. Gauper, I—“
         The old man interrupted once again, “No one calls me ‘Mr. Gauper’, it’s just ‘Old Man’.”
         “Mr. Gaup—“  The old man flashed him an irritated look and Artur instantly corrected himself, “Old Man, as I was saying, I was fixing my roof when I fell off.  I’m no doctor, but I’m positive that my arm was broken.  I mended it best I could, but now it’s turned lots of awful colors and hurts worse than before.”
         “Let me look at it.” He repositioned his glasses atop his nose and gently poked and prodded Artur’s arm. He scowled slightly and sighed, “Well, my boy, you arm isn’t broken, just sprained.  It has, however, gotten quite infected.  I’ll do what I can, but I can’t guarantee that I can heal you.”
         The old man opened up the book he had just written in and flipped to a page towards the middle of the book.  He scanned the page with his finger and tapped the book when he found the answer.  He mumbled to himself as he walked over to a cabinet to get the necessary supplies.  Glasses clanked and Artur just sat and waited for his treatment.
         “Ah!  Here we are!”  The old man left the cabinet and dropped three containers on the table.  He opened a bottle and poured a yellow, sticky substance all over the infection.
         Artur smelled it immediately, “Honey.  It’s honey, isn’t it?”
         “Takes away the sting.”  The old man explained continuing his work.  He opened a small box and sprinkled on a handful of leaves.  “These tea leaves take down the swelling.”  He then opened a small pouch and pulled out a few strips of what appeared to be bacon.
         “Bacon? What, exactly, does the bacon do?”
         “It feeds the germs.  Makes them leave the wound.  Don’t worry.  It’s fresh.”  The old man winked as he wrapped a couple strips on the scrapes.  He then wrapped a bandage around Artur’s entire arm.  “And there,” he sighed as he finished his work, “Leave that on until tomorrow morning and then make sure to clean it twice a day after that. Your arm should be better in no time.”
         Artur left the farm immediately.  He thought the man was crazy and didn’t want to stay there any longer than he had to.  Being as careless and stubborn as Artur was, he didn’t clean or care for his wound at all.  The infection got worse and a few weeks later he died from blood poisoning.
         One day, shortly after Artur’s death, the old man from South Gauper was preparing for a horse ride from his farm to a place called the Glimsdal home just across the river.  After having finished the last of his many drinks that day, the old man mounted his horse and set out to cross the river.
         To go over the bridge would take an extra hour so Ola decided to just cross the river where he was.  However, the water was much faster and much stronger than he expected and both his horse and he drowned in the river; the same fate his father had many years before.
         Ola’s death sparked many rumors.  It was a common occurrence for a conversation to stray to the subject of Ola.  One man may have said, for example, “Did you hear of that man down at South Gauper?”
         And another may reply, “Yeah, Jonai said that he killed that farmer; what’s his name? Artur! That’s it.  Rumor is he poisoned the poor man when Artur disturbed his sorcery.”
         “I heard he bewitched a farmer named Olan.  The poor man was on his death bed.  That wicked old man possessed the man and forced him back to his farm.”
         And so the legend of Wicked Gauper was born.  If he was able to defend his good name, there is no doubt that Ola would have protected his dignity and validity until his last breath.  To those who he did help, Ola was a great man with the intelligence of a thousand men.  However, to the people of Medalen, Ola Trondsson Gauper was a wizard; an evil one at that.