The Princess and the White Bear King

Far away in the distant North, a beautiful young princess embarks on a breath-taking adventure. Come to the land of ice and snow, and follow as she searches for happiness in a land which lies east of the sun and west of the moon.

The Princess and the White Bear King is the mixing and melding of three traditional wonder tales - the Norwegian "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" and "The White Bear King" and the Scottish, "The Black Bull of Norway", all of whom have their origins in the most potent and famed of love stories, the Greek myth of Eros an Psyche.

I first came across the story as a child in it's variant "The Black Bull of Norway" and to this today hold this story responsible for my yearning to ride about the countryside of New Zealand on the back of a large, black bull. As "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" with the heroine being carried across the four directions of the world on the breathe of the tempestuous winds, it was one of the first stories I told as a performance storyteller, and as "The White Bear King" it was shared with me in Kenya by a Norwegian drama practitioner, reminding me of the power of story to transform and transport as we sat sweating on the dry, dusty shores of Lake Victoria, our minds inhabiting a frozen northern, icy kingdom!

The story begins with a dream, and ends as all good fairytales should, with love and laughter and happy ever afters.

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