Handmade Scandinavian Gnome — Swamp Dweller

Not many gnomes choose the swamp. The ground is unreliable, the light is strange, and the plants that grow there are nothing like the pleasant herbs and berries found in more hospitable parts of the forest. But the Swamp Dweller would not trade it for anything.

He has lived here long enough to know every tussock and every channel, every spot where the mist rises first and every hollow where will-o'-the-wisps gather on warm nights. He carries one of those wisps in a jar — it is not captured, he insists, it comes with him because it wants to.

His basket holds herbs that grow nowhere else: mossy things and root-ends and small dark berries that smell of peat and rain. His companion is a large toad named something unpronounceable that he has never successfully translated into common gnome speech.

He is not unfriendly, but he is unimpressed by visitors who come expecting horror and leave surprised by the beauty. He knows what his home is. He is simply tired of explaining it.

The will-o'-wisp in the jar came with him voluntarily, as he has said. What he has not fully explained is that it had already been following him for two seasons before he found the jar, and the jar simply gave it somewhere to sit. He considers this a distinction worth making. The wisp, for its part, seems satisfied with the arrangement.

The toad — whose name is genuinely unpronounceable in common gnome speech, and who has never answered to anything else — has been with him long enough to have developed strong opinions about when it is and is not acceptable to be picked up. These opinions are communicated clearly and the Swamp Dweller respects them entirely, which the toad appears to consider the minimum acceptable standard of cohabitation.