The Gelded Bear
ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A MAN traveling to the mountains with a flock of fat wethers¹. As the man had gone a bit of the way, he encountered a scrawny bear who asked how it could be that his rams were so fat.
“Oh, it’s because I gelded them this spring,” the man replied.
“It would be a fine thing to grow that fat,” thought the bear, and so he began to implore the man to geld him as well.
“No, I dare not do that,” said the man. But the bear kept on beseeching him, and finally, the man had to venture to geld the bear. The gelding went well, and the man went on his way again with his flock of wethers.
In the autumn, when the man was on his way home, he met the bear again. But now the bear was in a foul mood. His groin had grown sore and inflamed, and he wanted to kill the man then and there.
“Good heavens, you mustn’t kill me,” said the man.
“Oh yes, today you shall lose your life, for you gelded me this spring and brought such wretched misery upon me,” said the bear.
The man then begged and pleaded if he might go home first and say farewell to his wife before he died.
“You may have leave to do so, provided you come back swiftly,” said the bear.
“You can be as sure of that as you are sitting there,” said the man.
When the man reached home, he told his wife how things had gone with him and the bear. But when the wife heard this, she put on men’s clothes and went to the bear in the man’s stead.
“Ouch, now I’ve been gelded too,” said the wife when she met the bear.
“Let me see how your wound is fashioned,” said the bear. The wife then lifted her skirt and showed him her cunt. The bear thought this wound looked ghastly, and while he stood there marvelling at it, a limping puss² came hopping by.
“You can stand here and blow on the wound while I am away finding some large leaves to lay upon it,” said the bear.
The puss did as he was told, but as the bear was placing the leaves on the wound between the woman’s legs, she let out a fart.
“Oh, now another hole just burst open!” cried the puss.
¹ Castrated rams.
² A hare.
The Castration of the Wild
At first glance, “The Gelded Bear” appears as a crude jest tale, but beneath the surface dwells a somber reflection on humanity’s manipulation of natural forces. It illuminates the ontological gap between human cunning and animal naivety. The bear, symbol of untamed power, seeks civilization’s fruits through a technological and surgical shortcut. The result is a loss of essence—an existential castration that leaves the subject in a state of painful decay.
The story is an old folk tale from Norway, written down in the 1800s.