Norwegian teens learn survival skills and husky care in ‘Folktales'
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Decades later, Grady and her filmmaking partner,
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While Ewing and Grady captured many aspects of the school's operations, the film focuses on the paths of three students, each in their late teens. They are Hege, who is struggling with her father's sudden death; Bjørn Tore, a self-described 'nerd' who has been told he tends to annoy others; and Raimon, a young man from the Netherlands with an utter lack of self-confidence.
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Hege and Odin in "Folktales."
Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo
The school staff encourages the students to figure things out on their own – both physical challenges and emotional – and trusts that they will.
'Try to fall in love with your heart,' says one of the classroom instructors to Raimon.
The sled dogs are a big part of the story. Each student is assigned to their own husky, and the bonds they forge are poignant.
'You are more than good enough for that dog just the way you are,' says the trainer. 'The dogs teach us to be more human.'
On a Zoom call to discuss the film, Grady is using her phone while she walks her tiny dog Morty in a park near her home in Brooklyn. Morty is a Chiweenie – half Chihuahua, half Dachshund.
'She saw a squirrel a half-hour ago,' Grady explains when she toggles out of selfie mode to show the dog, whose back is turned to the camera. The dog is still distracted.
The distractions of youth underscore 'Folktales,' as the students worry about how they appear to others and what their lives have in store for them.
The latter question, especially, has been a recurring theme throughout much of the two filmmakers' work together with their production company, Loki Films, which they founded in 2001. Among the many films they've made, 'Jesus Camp' (2006) — about young Christians attending a summer camp in North Dakota — was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary.
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'What are the events or the moments in your life where you're just open enough to hear something and believe it, and follow a path?' asks Ewing. 'All of us have had those moments — a parent, a teacher, something you saw overhead that illuminated something about who you want to be.
'What makes you tick?' she continues. 'Do you choose door A or door B?'
Many viewers have noted that 'Folktales' introduces audiences to a setting that's clearly archaic, in which young people learn about a traditional culture that predates cell phones by millennia. Ewing and Grady say they're not sure what to believe in the ongoing debate about the digital natives' preoccupation with their phones, and how harmful that may be.
Bjørn Tore and Tigergutt in "Folktales."
Tori Edvin Eliassen
'We've filmed many young people over a couple of decades,' says Grady, who has a 14-year-old son. Many of the challenges of maturation are eternal, she says, 'which is kind of a motif of the film — the cycle of life, over and over.
'But being a 20-year-old in 2025 is specific. When my son comes of age like [the subjects of her film] in six years, it could be again a different world.'
Ewing recently hosted her brother's family at a place she has in upstate New York. Off-road, their car got stuck in mud, and everyone had to get out in the snow and try to free the tires from the rut.
Her 12-year-old niece, who had been doom-scrolling all weekend, was elated by this unexpected predicament.
'She was running around the car going, 'This is amazing!'' Ewing recalls. ''This is real life!' It was, like, the greatest moment of her entire weekend.
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'And I thought, 'Huh. Maybe we are gonna be OK.''
'Folktales' opens and closes with references to the Norse mythology of the Norns, the three goddesses who shape human destiny and care for the holy 'tree of life.'
According to the film's version of the legend, the Norns can bestow gifts, including access to knowledge, wisdom, and storytelling ability. Each of the young adults featured in the film earned some measure of those gifts at the Folk High School, the filmmakers say.
Not surprisingly, it reminded Grady of her long-ago Outward Bound adventure.
'These things don't break you like a horse,' she says. 'But they do break you a teeny bit.'
James Sullivan can be reached at
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