A Yuletide Tale

It was a cold, snowy yuletide eve and, in the great hall of King Olaf, hung with hollywreaths and jingling bells, he was celebrating with his guests, drinking mulled wine and mead, feasting upon wild boar and singing yuletide songs while a yule log blazed upon the hearth of a large fireplace.
But, on the other side of a dark forest, upon a frozen lake there lived a giant troll called Gruntag who could hear the sound of their yule festivities through his enormous ears and the troll hated nothing more in all the world than the sound of people being happy and so, putting on a magic coat of white fur that made him invisible he stole into the house of King Olaf and he kidnapped his daughter, Inga.
When the king discovered what had happened, he sent a band of his 7 bravest men to rescue his daughter from the troll.
But as the Kings warriors were crossing the Trolls frozen lake to rescue his daughter, to their horror, beneath the ice they saw the giant shape of a lake monster moving; an enormous water dragon called The Krix that, with fiery breath melted the ice beneath their feet so that they fell through the ice and those who were not killed by the icy water beneath were killed when the lake monster swallowed them up whole.
Then, with breath of ice the lake monster froze up the lake again so that, looking at it, you could not tell that it had been melted.
When the King found out what had happened, he began to despair.
"7 of my strongest warriors gone and killed all at once", he thought, "How can I ever defeat that Troll and rescue my daughter while the Troll lives at the centre of that frozen lake and his beast lives below it".
But then he saw his youngest son, Adric, beneath the yuletide tree that was decorated with images of the gods and bright candles, opening the yuletide gift that lord Odin had brought him; a pair of ice skates and it was as if a torch had been lit within his mind for then he had a brilliant idea.
And the next day he went up to the frozen lake all by himself and, putting on a pair of ice skates, started to skate across the lake.
And, as he was skating, looking down he could see the enormous shadow of the Krix moving below him but, instead of panicking, he started to skate faster and, so fast did he move across the ice that the giant serpent could barely keep up with him.
Then, whenever he saw the beast stopping to melt the ice, he would leap high in the air so as to avoid falling through it.
Eventually, angry and frustrated at not being able to trap king Olaf, the beast burst upwards, shattering through the surface of the frozen lake and roaring like a geyser but, when he did, Olaf, turning,  skated quickly towards him, leaping onto him.
Trying to shake him off, the monster shook its gigantic head from side to side, but King Olaf dug into the serpents flesh with both his sword and the blades of his ice skates using his experience of climbing fijords to help him climb up to the monsters icicle horned head.
Ofcourse, then the creature tried submerging itself again beneath the icy waters below the frozen lake to drown and freeze the king to death.
Fortunately, the king was close to the serpents ear and, as it started to dive, he crawled into its ear to keep warm and while in its ear he hacked his way through its serpent skull and then, finding its brain that, like the brains of most monsters, was no bigger than a cabbage, he split it in two.
Fortunately, then the dragon rushed up to the surface again to scream and, when he did, King Olaf leap out of his mouth.
But then the king, taking off his ice skates, ran the rest of the way across the frozen lake towards the house of the troll.
And when he entered the house he found his daughter, bound and gagged with a holly wreath upon her head like a crown but the troll was nowhere to be seen.
"He is wearing his white fur coat", said his daughter Inga, once he had freed her , "That makes him invisible".
Then he heard the Troll, from somewhere round about him, laughing.
"Ha! You can't kill what you can't see, you fool", said the troll.
Just then however. King Olaf saw the holly wreath that he had thrown onto the ground moving.
The troll you see, had accidently stepped upon the wreathe, putting his foot through the middle of it and he was hopping about, trying to shake it off of his foot when, seizing the opportunity, King Olaf stabbed at him with his sword.
And the moment he did that, the trolls own blood spurted out, staining his fur coat of invisibility red so that he could no longer hide.
Ofcourse, the troll was still bigger and stronger than King Olaf but the King was an experienced and brave warrior who had fought and slew many men in battle and before long he had slain the Troll aswell.
But then, as the King and his daughter were leaving the Trolls house, suddenly, they saw the frozen lake begin to crack.
"The ice is starting to thaw", he said to his daughter, "We must hurry or we won't make it back across the lake".
And so they both ran as fast as they could back towards the edge of the lake but the lake was breaking up and melting faster than their legs could run and the King feared that both he and his daughter would be killed.
Just then however, from over head, they heard the sound of sleighbells jingling and deep, booming laughter and, looking up, they saw old father Odin flying down towards them in his sleigh, pulled by his eight legged horse Sleipnir and, landing his sleigh beside them upon the water of the melted lake, he told them to get into the back of it.
Then, his sled, rising up into the air again, he flew them both back home to King Olaf's hall.
After that, the King, his daughter Inga and his young son Adric all had a very merry yuletide day.