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Overview
The first sister lives in a mountain cave with the captive cow Búkolla. Her arrival shakes the cave. She kills Sigridr and Signy for taking food, but keeps their younger sister Helga alive because Helga has not stolen anything. She then demands a brooch, a chess set kept by her sister the Dale-queen, and household work whose objects cannot ordinarily be moved.
The Dale-queen receives Helga in a palace and commands a knife, fork and cloth to attack her. The implements answer that they cannot because she has made the protective sign advised by Dordingull. Three wolves pursue her afterwards and die on eating the food she brings from the palace. Dordingull finally reveals the cave ogress’s hidden life-egg. When Helga breaks it, the cave sister dies and thunder-like rumbling marks the Dale-queen’s death too: the two have the same life-egg. This explicit shared vulnerability does not make either sister identical with Dordingull or the cow.
Origins & earliest records
Icelandic Legends, collected by Jón Árnason, translated by George E. J. Powell and Eiríkr Magnússon, second series (1866), Bukolla, pp. 511–519.
Records & interpretation
Complete first Búkolla narrative in the alternate surviving copy. The shared life-egg and discarded enchanted shape occur on pp. 518–519.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Icelandic Legends, second series: Bukolla, pp. 511–519
Complete Helga account, distinct from Another Story of another Bukolla on pp. 519–522.
Family, evolution & connections
Cave ogress and Dale-queen in the first Bukolla tale
The cave ogress calls the Dale-queen her sister. At the ogress’s death, Dordingull explains that the queen is dying too because both sisters share the same life-egg. Their parentage is not supplied.
Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body
The first Bukolla tale places both sisters’ lives in one egg under the ogress’s pillow. Dasent’s giant hides his heart in an egg within a duck in a distant well. Breaking the egg kills its owner in each account; the hiding sequence and shared ownership differ. No historical influence is established.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textIcelandic Legends, second series, alternate surviving 1866 copyResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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