Guro Heddeli is a song cykle/rural tale about the Titular Character Guro, daughter of a wealthy farmer in the county of Telemark, Norway, set during one of the epidemics connected to The Black Death. The story, and poems connected to it, was written by rural author Jørund Telnes in 1880.
Guro is the wealthy heiress of the greatest farm in the valley of Grunningsdalen, Seljord county. She is arguably a Rich Bitch, who can pick and choose between her suitors, and she is, of course, beautiful as well as wealthy. The young men fight it out over her because of both the girl and her farm, which she actually seems to run on her own.
Guro is so attractive and important that even the priest waits for her before he begins his sunday services - she even pays him for this. When she arrives in church, she gets the best seat, and is commonly adored.
The men in the area, and even from valleys further off, fight over her, with fatal results. The first one to actually love her, is her childhood friend Tore Smylemoen, a fiddler with no income to speak of. He cares for her, but has no actual hope of wooing her. The next in line is Tor Sundbø, who actually gets her wows after a sermon, and moves in with her - for the time being. Then along comes Targjei Uppstad, who takes it pretty far, challenge Tor to a Combat by Champion, and kills him with an axe - before he proceeds to marry Guro. The arrangement is necessary, but she is far from happy about it.
Because of vengeance rules, Targjei gets his, when Tor´s brother Leiv puts him down at a village feast, killing him with a knife. From then on, Guro runs the farm on her own.
Tore, her oldest friend, has retired from the village entirely because of all this, not coping with his broken heart. He lives as an outlaw in the mountains, suffering from fits of madness. He eventually dies from this condition.
At this point, the plague hag arrives, sweeping all human life away from the valley, killing everything in her path. The last song in the cycle tells how the hear her broom at the doorstep, and look out to see her there - "and soon they all lay dead".
Tropes to be found in this work:
- The Ace: Guro comes down as a female version of this from the beginning, she is the prettiest, the richest and the coolest of all the girls in her area.
- Based on a True Story: Telnes built his poems on actual folk tales from his home area. The valley exists, as does the remains of Guro´s farm.
- Broken Bird: Guro, especially after the death of Targjei, but the events of the story seem to gradually break her.
- Buy Them Off: The local church postpones the service until Guro has arrived - and is paid to do so.
- Character Title.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Tore and Guro - it comes down to nothing because of societal rules.
- Combat by Champion: Targjei Uppstad and Tor Sundbø fight over Guro with axes, retold in a truly epic Medieval Ballad style.
- Downer Ending: It is set during a plague epidemic, what else would you expect?
- Foreshadowing: Before the end, people in the area begin to notice weird occurences, foreboding something really bad.
- Humanoid Abomination: The Plague Hag. "An old bent hag, horrid and big, and dark as earth..."
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Keep Circulating the Tapes: Although the book was published in 1880, a new edition was not available until 1972. Meanwhile, the songs, and the story, got so popular the texts entered local tradition, and the Guro songs are still popular traditional tunes in her home area. - Kill the Cutie: Guro is dead at the end, like everybody else.
- Love Hurts: For Tore and Guro, and it kills in stride.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Tore, poor man.
- Love Makes You Evil: More than once, all the fighting and killing considered.
- Rich Bitch: Guro, although she is also a Lovable Alpha Bitch with few actual choices.
