Ekke Nekkepenn

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A "merman" in a picture from the 17th century

Ekke Nekkepenn (also: Eke Nekepen , next to it in other different spellings) is a North German legend .

Ekke Nekkepenn depicts a merman who lives together with his wife Rahn on the bottom of the North Sea and with seamen and residents of the North Frisian in the most common literary form since the middle of the 19th century, which goes back to the Sylt local historian, folklorist and graphic artist Christian Peter Hansen Islands drifting joke. In Theodor Storm in 1866 published novel The Regentrude plunges fire little man named corner corner Penn on that with his black magic for the withering makes the fields.

Material history

CP Hansens Meermann Ekke Nekkepenn

The best-known implementation of the Ekke-Nekkepenn material today goes back to Christian Peter Hansen , who condensed and reshaped various legends from the North Frisian area in his Legends and Tales of the Haidebewohner on Sylt , published in 1858, into his own continuous story. The first section of this story is entitled "Der Mermann Ekke Nekkepenn".

The story begins when Ekke Nekkepenn asks the wife of the captain of a Sylt ship sailing to England in a storm for help with the birth of his child. The beautiful and helpful captain's wife is led by the merman to his wife Rahn, who lives on the bottom of the North Sea, and after a successful birth comes back to the surface of the sea richly presented with gold and silver. The skipper and his wife can continue their voyage in the best weather and later return safely and safely to their home in Rantum on Sylt.

Many years later, Ekke Nekkepenn remembers this incident and decides - in view of the fact that Rahn has now become "old and wrinkled" - to take the captain's wife instead of her. When he sighted the Rantum captain's ship one day, he persuaded Rahn, who was sitting on the seabed, to grind salt, and the Sylt skipper and his crew perished in the strong vortex that was created.

On the way to the captain's wife, Ekke Nekkepenn, who has transformed into a handsome seafarer, meets her virgin daughter Inge on the beach near Rantum. Against her will he puts a gold ring on each finger, hangs a gold chain around her neck and declares her to be his bride. When the girl tearfully asks him to release it, he replies that he can only do this if she can tell him his name the next evening. But nobody on the island knows the unknown stranger. When Inge, desperate, walks along the beach the next evening, she hears a voice from the mountain on the southern tip of the island near Hörnum , singing:

Today I am supposed to brew;
I'm supposed to bake tomorrow;
The day after tomorrow I want to have a wedding.
My name is Ekke Nekkepenn,
My bride is Inge von Rantum,
And nobody knows that but me alone.

in Sylter Frisian ( Sölring ):

Delling skel ik bruu;
Miaren skel ik baak;
Aurmiaren wel ik Bröllep maak.
Ik jit Ekke Nekkepen,
Min Brid es Inge fan Raantem,
End weet nemmen üs ik aliining.

Then she runs to the agreed meeting point and calls out to the stranger arriving there: "Your name is Ekke Nekkepenn and I'll stay Inge von Rantum." The merman fooled in this way has been very angry with the islanders of Sylt since that time and always drives when he feels like his mischief. He destroys their ships in a storm, lets them sink in Rahn's maelstrom and damages the Sylt coast from the floods that he unleashed.

Ekke Nekkepenn and Norse Mythology

CP Hansen already dealt with Nordic mythology as part of his work on the Chronicle of the Frisian Uthlande (1856) and, according to his own statements, referred to the work The Nordic Mythology , published in Leipzig in 1847 after a series of lectures by Carsten Hauch (* 1790 †) 1872). In his “Materials on a Frisian Mythology” published in 1850, Hansen wrote: “The god of the sea was called Ögis by the Germans, Eiger by the Danes, Eie or Eia by the Frisians, and also Ekke or Nekke. […] His wife was the goddess Ran, who blessed the beach, drew the castaways into her nets and after whom the old beach and dune village of Rantum might be named. Incidentally, Rane means something like robbing in Nordic. According to a Frisian legend, the Ekke once got free to a rantum woman named Inge, but got a basket. "

In fact, all of these references made by Hansen - as Willy Krogmann convincingly demonstrated in his afterword to a volume of Sylter sagas in 1966 - are errors. The place name Rantum cannot be traced back to the Old Norse word Rān , nor is there any evidence of an etymological connection between the name of the Old Norse sea god Ægir and the word “Ekke”. Krogmann calls the figure Ekke Nekkepenn an invention of Hansen.

With regard to Hansen's connection to the Norse goddess Rán , Krogmann specifies: “Just like the sea god Ekke Nekkepenn, Hansen also invented the sea goddess Raan or, as he writes, Raand. In this case the place name Raantem had a triggering effect. The name of the Norse sea goddess Ran, as his -t- already shows, has nothing to do with him. The old north. Ran , the same word as the neuter Ran "robbery, looting" and on germ. Rahnan * is based, would have on the shape of Sylt * Riin match. "

The history of its origins: Hansen's templates

Hansen's Meermann Ekke Nekkepenn is based on two different legends, between which there was originally no connection. The first part of the story is based on a saga about a water man (in Krogmann, Sylter Sagen , No. 36, p. 17), while the second part depicts a North Frisian variant of the well-known Rumpelstiltskin fabric (in Krogmann, No. 27, p . 13). The original Aquarius legend is largely similar to the portrayal in Hansen, but ends with the happy return of the captain's wife on board her ship. Hansen combined it with the North Frisian Rumpelstiltskin variant by turning the original dwarf into the "merman" Ekke Nekkepenn. As a connecting link, he invented the motif that Ekke Nekkepenn let the Sylt captain perish in order to marry his wife. To make the narrative appear more realistic, Hansen added the exact place names on Sylt. That Ekke Nekkepenn was originally a dwarf becomes clear when Hansen lets him sing in a mountain, which for a merman is a rather unmotivated behavior.

The Rumpelstiltskin variant used by Hansen belongs to a widespread complex of fairy tales and legends. In most of these fairy tales, a dwarf or other creature helps a girl spin a certain amount of flax. The North Frisian original form of the material - which Hansen follows in its design - does not contain precisely this element. This means that it can be assigned to a relatively small group of forms, which includes legends from Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Tyrol, Lower Austria and Schleswig-Holstein.

Common to all fairy tales from the complex mentioned is the secrecy of the dwarf's name. The dwarf puts a woman (usually a queen) under pressure and only when she can say his name is she free. The name itself is also an unusual made-up word with repetition of syllable sounds. In addition to "Rumpelstiltskin", names such as "Siperdintl", "Zirkirk", "Ettle-Pettle", English "Tom Tim Tot" or Swedish "Titelituri" appear here. The term "Ekke Nekkepenn" joins this line. If one assumes that the name of the figure goes back to the Rumpelstiltskin version, this also rules out the relationship between the name Nekke and the Old High German nihhus , niccus or nicchessa , Old English nicor and Old Norse nykr . Because this means "water spirit, water animal" and is also known as Niss , Neck or Nöck and in the female form as mermaid , which in turn has no relation to the dwarf of the Rumpelstiltskin saga. The name would then come from Ekke and play around this onomatopoeic. Accordingly, it is most likely that Hansen was inspired to merge the legends through the consonance.

Eckeneckepenn as the fireman in Storm's novella Die Regentrude

Only eight years after the appearance of Hansen's legends and stories of the Haide residents on Sylt , Theodor Storm picked up the original figure of the dwarf from the Rumpelstiltskin material in his novella The Regentrude and designed it as a malicious goblin . While Hansen turns the dwarf into a merman, Storms Eckeneckepenn is a little fireman whose magic causes the fields to wither. The figure itself is described as a “gnarled little man in a fiery red skirt and red pointed cap ”, with a “pumpkin head”, red beard and a “lumpy body” on thin “spindle legs”.

With his shrill laughter and jumping from one leg to the other fire little man just shows that behavior that the reader already from 1812 for the first time in the " fairy tales " of the Brothers Grimm in print published fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin was known. Deviating from other forms of the figurine of the Fireman, originally from the mythical world of southern Germany, Austria and Tyrol, Storm's goblin lives in a dwarf hole underground and is reminiscent of the dwarf of the North Frisian saga variant used by Hansen. Similar to Hansen, the spinning element is missing in Storm, but otherwise the design of the fabric follows the usual pattern: The little fire man believes he is not being watched and reveals a rhyming spell through his boastful loud singing, which is the key to the success of the protagonists - here of the lovers Andrees and Maren - will.

See also

literature

  • Gundula Hubrich-Messow: From Ekke Nekkepenn to Martje Floris - fairy tales and legends of North Friesland. In: Thomas Steensen (ed.): The great North Friesland book. Ellert and Richter, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-89234-886-3 , pp. 268-273.
  • Willy Krogmann : Afterword. In: Willy Krogmann (Ed.): Sylter Sagen. In the original version according to CP Hansen et al. (= Monuments of German folk poetry. Vol. 7, ZDB -ID 504250-1 ). Schwartz, Göttingen 1966, pp. 29-64.
  • Christian Peter Hansen : Legends and stories of the Sylt Frisians. In addition to a description of the island of Sylt as an introduction. Lühr & Dircks, Garding 1875 (unchanged reprint. Sendet, Walluf near Wiesbaden 1972, ISBN 3-500-25510-8 ).
  • Christian Peter Hansen: Legends and stories of the Haide residents on Sylt. In: Christian Peter Hansen: Frisian legends and stories. Wendeborn, Altona 1858, pp. 148-194.
  • Theodor Storm: The Regentrude. A midsummer fairy tale. With drypoint etchings by Carsten Gille, afterword by Gerd Eversberg . Rohrwall, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-9806685-2-5 .

Web links

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on November 13, 2005 .