The forest woman of Scandinavia: breathtaking from the front, and from behind either hollow as a rotted log or bearing a cow's tail she takes care to keep hidden — the single flaw that gives her away. She is the warden of the deep woods, and encounters run the full range from courtship to catastrophe depending, in the folklore's firm opinion, entirely on your manners.
Herders and charcoal burners who spoke to her politely, shared food, or minded their language in the forest found their fires banked while they slept and their strayed cattle returned. Men who mocked the tail did not always come out of the woods, and those who followed her singing deeper in were sometimes found years later, uncertain how long they had been gone — the Scandinavian file contributes some of the archive's oldest missing-time accounts.
A huldra could marry a man outright — the tradition says church bells at the wedding dropped her tail and made her human, though it traded her beauty for strength enough to straighten a horseshoe. The archive notes, without comment, how many rural Norwegian families historically claimed one in the line.