Interactive Reading

240
250
Ola left without a word of thanks. He felt too weary
to speak. He stumbled down the mountain, and it was
many weeks before he had the strength to take up his
fiddle again.
But when he did . . .
Years later, a special performance took place in Bergen’s
concert hall. People came from all over Scandinavia to hear
Ole Bull, Norway’s most famous violinist. All the critics
agreed, “Ole Bull has no peer. He is the finest musician in
Scandinavia. The best in Europe. The greatest in the world.”
At the reception afterward a small, odd-looking man
with a mottled green complexion was seen heaping his
plate at the smorgasbord in back of the hall. A Swedish
countess asked him, “Did you enjoy the concert? It
astonishes me that a human being can possess such
natural talent.”
To which the odd little man replied, “Talent? Bah! It’s
courage, dedication, and hard work. Ola couldn’t play a
note when we began. You’ve no idea what I went through
just to teach him to tune his fiddle!”
The fosse-grim is a creature
of fantasy, but how is the
relationship between the
fosse-grim and Ola realistic?
The concluding section of the
story in Bergen’s concert hall
contains a mix of fact and
fantasy. What do you think is
actually true here?
Ola and the Grim 327