12 writing prompts from Norse and continental folklore
Twelve writing prompts from Norse and continental folklore, each tied to a real source — the Eddas, the Grimms, the Lorelei, the Erlking — with dates.
We have gathered writing prompts from Irish legend and from Welsh and Scottish tradition. This set turns north and east, into Norse myth and continental European folklore. As before, each prompt is tied to a real, named source, with its tradition and, where it applies, its date — so you can read the original before you write from it. Spellings follow the common English forms; where a text has a firm date, it is given.
From the Norse Eddas
Two medieval Icelandic collections carry most of Norse myth: the Poetic Edda, a set of anonymous mythological and heroic poems preserved chiefly in the thirteenth-century Codex Regius, and the Prose Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson around 1220. Read them in a modern translation before drawing on them.
1. The death of Baldr
In Snorri’s Prose Edda (the Gylfaginning), the beloved god Baldr is made invulnerable to everything except mistletoe, overlooked as too young to swear an oath; Loki puts a mistletoe dart in the hand of the blind god Höðr and guides the throw. Prompt: write about a single thing left out of a universal promise — the one exception nobody thought worth naming — and the person who finds it.
2. Sigurd and the dying dragon
In the Fáfnismál of the Poetic Edda, Sigurd slays the dragon Fáfnir, and the mortally wounded creature talks — warning his killer against the smith Regin and prophesying his doom even as he dies. Prompt: write a conversation between a killer and the thing he has just struck down, in which the dying one knows more about the future than the victor does.
3. The wolf who agreed to be bound
In the Gylfaginning, the gods bind the wolf Fenrir only by trickery; he consents to the final fetter on condition that a god place a hand in his mouth as a pledge, and Týr alone will do it, losing the hand when the wolf is betrayed. Prompt: write about keeping a promise you always knew would cost you a hand — the only honest person in a room full of liars.
4. Ragnarök and the world after
The Völuspá (Poetic Edda) has a seeress foretell the end of the gods — and then, past the fire and flood, a green earth rising again and a few survivors. Prompt: write the morning after the end of the world, from the point of view of someone who was told the whole thing in advance and lived to see the part nobody dwells on: what comes next.
From the Brothers Grimm
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales) in stages: the first volume in 1812, the second in 1815, revised across seven editions up to 1857. They also collected Deutsche Sagen (German Legends), 1816–18.
5. Frau Holle at the bottom of the well
In “Frau Holle” (KHM 24, first published 1812), a girl falls down a well into an otherworld ruled by an old woman; how the two sisters serve her — one diligently, one grudgingly — decides whether they return covered in gold or in pitch. Prompt: write about a household spirit who rewards exactly what you do, not what you say, and a person who has always relied on saying.
6. The robber bridegroom’s house
In “The Robber Bridegroom” (Der Räuberbräutigam, KHM 40, 1812), a bride-to-be visits her fiancé’s house in the forest, is warned by a caged bird and a hidden old woman, and witnesses a murder from behind a barrel. Prompt: write about learning the truth of someone you are promised to while hidden in their own home — and having to walk back out as if you know nothing.
7. The juniper tree
“The Juniper Tree” (Von dem Machandelboom, KHM 47, 1812) is one of the darkest tales the Grimms printed: a murdered child, a mother’s grave beneath a juniper, and a bird that sings the crime aloud until justice falls. Prompt: write about a truth that will not stay buried, told not by a witness but by a bird, a tree, a song — a testimony that comes from the landscape itself.
From continental legend
8. The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The oldest accounts fix the loss of Hamelin’s children to the year 1284; a piper, cheated of his fee for ridding the town of rats, leads the children away and out of the record. The Grimms preserved it in Deutsche Sagen, and it may distantly remember a real medieval catastrophe. Prompt: write from the town’s side, a generation later — a place organised entirely around an absence, and a debt it can never now repay.
9. The Lorelei
The rock on the Rhine became a legend surprisingly late: Clemens Brentano invented the enchantress “Lore Lay” in his novel Godwi (1801), and Heinrich Heine gave her the famous poem in 1824. A siren whose song wrecks boatmen below her cliff. Prompt: write a modern origin myth deliberately, as Brentano did — a “legend” you know to be newly made, and what it means to build one on purpose.
10. Undine, the water-spirit who wanted a soul
In Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s novella Undine (1811), a water-nymph can gain a human soul only by marrying a mortal — and stands to be destroyed if he is unfaithful. Prompt: write about someone who can only become fully human at another person’s mercy, and what that dependence does to love.
11. The Erlking
Goethe’s ballad “Erlkönig” (1782) rides a father and his sick child through the night forest while an unseen king of the alders lures the boy; the father hears nothing, the child hears everything, and only one of them survives the ride. Prompt: write a journey in which one traveller perceives a mortal threat the other cannot — and the disbelief is itself part of the danger.
12. Krampus, the companion of the feast
In Alpine tradition, the gift-giving saint of early December travels with a horned, chain-rattling punisher of the wicked, a figure documented across Austria, Bavaria and the Alps and still paraded today. Prompt: write about the dark half of a kindly ritual — the figure whose whole job is to be the threat that makes the reward mean something.
How to use these
The point of tying each prompt to a real source is the same as with our earlier sets: read first, invent second. A modern translation of the two Eddas, a good annotated Grimms, and a paragraph on the legend behind Hamelin or the Lorelei will give you texture and specific detail that “generic Norse warrior” or “spooky German forest” never will. And note how young some of these “old legends” are — the Lorelei is barely two centuries old, and the more chilling Grimm tales were softened edition by edition. Knowing the real date and the real source is not pedantry; it is where the good, strange, usable material actually lives.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Eddas?
The two main sources of Norse myth: the Poetic Edda, a set of anonymous poems preserved chiefly in the 13th-century Codex Regius, and the Prose Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson around 1220.
When were the Grimms' fairy tales published?
The Kinder- und Hausmärchen appeared in volumes in 1812 and 1815 and was revised across seven editions up to 1857; the Grimms also collected the Deutsche Sagen (1816–18).
How old is the Lorelei legend?
Surprisingly recent. Clemens Brentano invented the enchantress in his 1801 novel Godwi, and Heinrich Heine gave her the famous poem in 1824.
Is the Pied Piper based on a real event?
The oldest accounts fix the loss of Hamelin's children to the year 1284, and the legend may distantly remember a real medieval catastrophe.
What is Goethe's Erlkönig?
A ballad of 1782 in which a father rides through the night forest with his sick child while an unseen alder-king lures the boy; the child perceives the threat the father cannot.
