Folktales was watched as part of Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival 2025! It has its showing on Saturday, April 26th as part of the festival.
Sometimes, people take a gap year after they finish high school and before college. (Sometimes it is forced because they didn’t get in anywhere, or forgot to apply). Some people never go to college at all and go straight into the workforce. Some people choose to study abroad, in some level. Some people switch from college to college. Some people even get to study abroad while in high school!
And some people choose to “study abroad” in a folk high school in Norway!
This is a school that exists within the Arctic circle, and is a full school year type program. On my own looking it up, people from all over can attend these schools. Most of the people must live in the country itself and the EU, but they accept a small amount of people (Around 10% it seems) from other countries as well.
And for this type of folk school, survival is the goal. You are meant to learn skills to live off the land. Building and maintaining fires. Dealing with cold weather and getting out of ice. And of course, dog sled travel! You will learn to bond with the animals, to take care of them, to direct them along the path and how to fix problems as they come up, like falling over.
Will the students at these schools decide to then go and live in the Arctic circle full time, living off on their own in the wilderness? Probably not. A lot of them likely won’t use the specific skills at all. But the learning experience, the confidence gained, I am sure is one of the bigger components for students after these things are over.
And you get to be surrounded by good boys. Far better than a normal school (with bad boys)!
As like many a documentary, this one focuses on the entire program, and specifically three students. We have two native Norway students, and one from the Netherlands, (a woman and two men) amongst their many classmates. We get to see them before they head to school, why they decided to go, and the many trials and tribulations throughout the year. Including when they don’t get to have sun for a long period of time. You think your school is bad? This one takes away the sun, so maybe you should just write your essay.
The students picked are a pretty good mix of archetypes, including one student who has the ultimate of lows with having to withdraw from the program. The decisions behind that, and the pressures can really get to people. Especially when they go on excursions and actually force the students to make their own fires, melt their own ice for water, and cook their food. There isa time for hand holding, and there is a time for showing yourself, and not everyone is willing to trust their own abilities to achieve that higher level.
Now I wonder if anyone has ever died during these school trips. I am most certain that things would never get that dire, and they would intervene at that point. But there is certainly a line!
I admit, the school sounded cool, and depending on the price, it honestly sounds like an experience one would never forget, and give every life lesson possible that one might need to go into the world confident and ready to excel. I might have already looked up how my own kids could go.
The documentary itself has some incredible shots. Including shots of the drivers of the sled dog team, and aerial shots of the campers on a journey, and one particular beautiful shot of just laying up and watching the aurora borealis.
In conclusion, Folktales is a documentary that isn’t set out to push an agenda, but just inform of something rather neat out in the world that people likely didn’t know about. And that is how this documentary came across, as something rather neat!