Dancing Fairies

The time for spooky stories has just begun!

In Dancing Fairies, Swedish painter August Malmström changes a misty, moonlit landscape into a scene of supernatural enchantment. Pale fairies dance across the meadow and hover above the water, their translucent figures seeming to emerge directly from the morning mist. One bends toward the surface of the water as if trying to catch her own reflection. Malmström was fascinated by Nordic history, mythology, and folklore, and it is clearly visible here.

Yet these graceful creatures were not necessarily as harmless as they appear. In Swedish folklore, elves and fairies were associated with forests, hills, meadows, and other wild places, and encounters with them could be dangerous. They were imagined as beautiful and alluring but also unpredictable, easily offended, and capable of bringing misfortune to people who treated them disrespectfully. Scandinavians even used protective signs known as älvkors (“elf crosses”) to guard themselves and their livestock against their influence. Malmström combines these older beliefs with the 19th-century Romantic fascination with mysterious, untamed nature, creating a landscape that is beautiful and unsettling—the fairies may look delicate as they dissolve into the mist, but they belong to a world humans enter at their own risk.

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P.P.S. Looking for more mysterious Nordic magic? See how the Northern Lights have inspired artists throughout history.