In that warm land once lived savages, who hunted amid ice and snow the reindeer, and with the reindeer animals stranger still.
And now I will tell you a fairy tale: to make you understand it at all I must put it in the shape of a tale.

I call it a fairy tale, because it is so strange; indeed I think I ought to call it the fairy tale of all fairy tales, for by the time we get to the end of it I think it will explain to you how our forefathers got to believe in fairies, and trolls, and elves, and scratlings, and all strange little people who were said to haunt the mountains and the caves.
Well, once upon a time, so long ago that no man can tell when, the land was so much higher, that between England and Ireland, and, what is more, between England and Norway, was firm dry land.

The country then must have looked--at least we know it looked so in Norfolk--very like what our moors look like here.

There were forests of Scotch fir, and of spruce too, which is not wild in England now, though you may see plenty in every plantation.

There were oaks and alders, yews and sloes, just as there are in our woods now.