Badly Translated Norwegian Sayings, #210:
Here smells it owls in the moss!
@thor This is wonderful! What does it mean? And what of the other ones, too?
@mirabilis That one in particular is "Her lukter det ugler i mosen" in Norwegian and is a corruption of the Danish "Der er uller i mosen", where "uller" is a Danish dialect word for "wolves" and "mosen" is Danish for "the mire". So, "I smell / there are wolves in the mire."
It was used by Danish traders about dubious trades. In Norwegian, it means to smell trouble. I didn't know what the Danish meaning was until I checked Wikipedia.
@mirabilis ...and I wouldn't expect most other Norwegians to know of its origins either. We just treat it as a silly figure of speech, and there being owls in the moss is sort of weird, so it makes sense, sort of, even when corrupted.
@thor @mirabilis there may not be owls in the moss, but there are owls in the roadhouse...