Although the following folktale is about shapechanging and a Reindeer, it is not a variant of the Reindeer Prince. It is instead a variant of a common theme in Irish folktales where the shapechanger is a female silkie. A silkie is a being that can be a seal in the water and a human on the land.
One fine summer's day, a man named Len was walking along a meadow. There under the shade of a willow tree, he saw a beautiful woman. He smiled at her, she smiled at him and they sat together under the tree, resting from the heat of the sun. He offered her some bread and cheese from his bag and she offered him some cold milk from the bottle in hers. They sat and ate and drank and neither of them said a thing, just enjoying the bright sunlight, the cool shade and the birds flying about the meadow. After he had been lost in thought while looking at the birds, he turned to say something to her, only to find she was gone as if she had never been there.
He went home and found he could think of nothing but this woman. The next day, Len went into town and asked everyone at the market if anyone knew her. No one did. On his way home, he took the long way about and walked through the meadow where he had seen the woman under the tree. She wasn't there, but he found the blanket she had been sitting on the day before. He picked it up and held it to his heart. He inhaled the smell of her from it before he realized that it was no blanket he had in his arms, but a finely tanned Reindeer skin.
He decided it would be a shame to leave such a valuable skin lying out under the tree where it might get damp and ruined, so he took it home with him. That night, just as the sun was going down and Len was sitting down to a poor meal of bread and cheese and tea, there was a knock at his door. He opened it, and found the woman standing there with tears streaming down her cheeks. He let her in and asked her what was the matter. She didn't say a word, but only pointed at the Reindeer skin. He handed it over to her, explaining that he knew it was valuable, and so he took it home for safekeeping. He hadn't wanted anyone to steal it or for it to be ruined by the dew falling, but since he didn't know her name or where she lived, he took it to his home.
She smiled sweetly at him and said "I am a stranger to these parts. My name would sound strange to you, so you may call me anything you wish."
He looked at her, and smiled and said "I will call you Red after the rich red colors in this skin of yours. Will you teach me how to tan hides as finely as this?"
She got a very strange look on her face at that and only said "It was tanned by my father. I know nothing of such things."
Over the rest of the summer they met every day at mid-day for dinner and company. By the time the fall came, Len knew he was deeply in love with his sweet and wonderful Red, so he asked her to marry him. She agreed, but also asked him if he would be able to trust her love for him, no matter what he heard about her? He swore that he could and thought it a very strange question. The night before they were to be wed, she asked him again "Len will you be able to love me and trust me no matter what anyone else has to say about me?"
"How could you ask that?" he cried, "What could anyone say about you? You are perfect in every way!"
"Could you trust me?"
"Of course."
The very next morning they were wed, and she insisted on going home the long way through the meadow. When they got there, she took a ribbon from out of her hair and tied it to the branches of the willow they had always sat under and continued on their way. When they got home, her new husband asked her "Why did you tie the ribbon to the tree?"
All she replied was "It is good luck to send a wish upon the winds on important days."
They lived together in happiness and joy for many years and she gave him three sons and a daughter. One night in the tavern, an old enemy sat down on the bench next to Len. He asked him "Your wife, she is beautiful, but who are her people? We never see her family, they never come to visit her. Strange woman." Len replied "She was a stranger to these parts who fell in love with me and stayed. Her family is far from here."
"Are they indeed?" asked the man, and then he stood up and walked away.
Len's heart was troubled, he found that the questions had driven straight into his heart and he could not get them out of his mind. He went home and asked his wife "Red, why does your family never visit us?"
"Because they live far away."
"Write to them and invite them to visit. I would like my sons to see their grandparents" he replied to her. She got a strange look on her face, but she sat down and wrote a letter. She sealed it and laid it aside. The next morning, Len offered to take it to town and mail it for her, but she said, "No, I have to go into to town to buy some butter anyway, I'll mail it then."
That morning, instead of going to work in his fields as he normally would, he lurked in the woods beside his house. Soon, his beautiful wife left with his tiny daughter in her arms. She walked gracefully to the willow in the he meadow. There, she placed the child down, and hung the letter in the branches of the tree. She slipped out of her clothes and pulled the Reindeer skin out of her bag. Wrapping it around her, she buttoned it on and was transformed into a beautiful Reindeer doe. He watched as she grazed on the lichens and leaves on the trees, as she ran and leapt in delight and joy. Then when she was done, she carefully unbuttoned the hide, put on her pretty clothes, picked up his daughter and went home as if nothing had happened.
Now, suddenly Len understood why Red was so strange. She was a shapeshifter. He went to work in the fields and the words of his enemy burned into his heart. He found himself wondering if she had a Reindeer husband, and if these children were his own. Sick at heart, jealous and afraid he would lose her to the Reindeer husband he supposed she must have, he decided to destroy the beautiful hide. That night, while she was sleeping, he got up and quietly took it out of the chest she kept it in. He took it out into the fields and he buried it so deeply that no one would ever find it. By the next market day, his wife Red had begun to look sad.
"What ever is the matter?" he asked her.
"Do you still trust me?" she asked.
"Of course" he replied although the very words of his lie dried his mouth and made his heart sink.
"Someone has stolen the beautiful Reindeer hide my father tanned for me. It was my prized possession."
"It is only a thing, I will buy you another hide at the market next fall" he promised her.
She smiled at him sadly and never said anything more about it. Next fall, true to his word, he bought her the softest, best tanned hide in the markets of three towns. She smiled sadly when he gave it to her, and tucked it away in her chest. She never took it out, she never looked at it, and she seemed to hate touching it when he would take it out and wrap around her shoulders on cold winter nights. He didn't really understand, but knew it had something to do with the skin he had stolen from her and the promise he had broken. He loved her deeply, but she grew more and more distant from him. She lived her life sadly now, only smiling at her children at play.
They lived like this for many years, until he was called to Uppsala to see the governor. He packed and told her he would be gone for six months and to be good and take care of his children while he was gone. Red, smiled sadly at Len and told him to return soon, but her heart was not in her words.
Three days after he had gone, her daughter came to her in tears. She had begun to bleed and was frightened. Her mother took her home and explained that now she was old enough to be married and to be a mother. But her mother would like it if she waited until her father returned before she looked for a husband. The girl agreed since she thought of herself as a child still, and went to bed with a bowl of soothing broth.
That night, just as the moon rose in the sky, the mother looked out of her own bed and saw her daughter standing in the shape of a snowy white Reindeer. Red got out of bed and told her daughter "Now you know why I was asking you to wait. It takes a special man to live with a shapechanger, it is easy to be fooled. I thought your father was such a man, but for some reason, he has stolen the hide I need to become my Reindeer self and I am only a woman now. Before we were married, I asked him twice if he would trust me no matter what anyone said. I should have been less trusting and asked him three times, for a question asked three times is binding on your honor." Then she told her daughter everything her daughter needed to know to become a Reindeer, and finished by saying "I wish I could protect you from danger, but without my hide, I can do nothing. Do not ever allow anyone to get a hold on this skin or you will be trapped in the body of a woman just like me. Do not leave our lands, and always hide if you see another human while you wear this skin."
Her daughter danced out the door and ran across the yard, wild and free as any Reindeer, shimmering white in the full moonlight. In the morning, she returned, took off the hide and became a lovely young girl as she had always seemed to be. Her brothers noticed nothing different.
That night, however, before she put on her hide, the young daughter stood in the doorway and prayed as if her heart would crack. With every fiber in her being she prayed that her father would return the hide to her mother so her mother could be free of his jealousy. Every night for a month, she stood in the doorway and prayed like this. The next morning, while she was hoeing the abandoned herb patch out in back of the privy, she found a bit of hair. She dug deeper, and then deeper still and then she reached her hand under the dirt even deeper yet. She found she had her hands on a finely tanned hide. She went back to the house and brought out a shovel. It took her the rest of the afternoon, but she dug up her mother's shape shifting hide and triumphantly brought it home with her.
The mother looked a the hide. It was full of holes where it had been rotting underground, but she gently gathered it up and said "I know how to fix this." She washed it, she patched it with hair from her own head and it was almost as good as new. She then called her sons to her. She explained that she was leaving them to take her daughter to visit their grandparents and she didn't know when she would be back again. She made them promise her three times that they would never hunt Reindeer, and that she promised three times that she would return one day.
Then Red wrote a note to Len telling him that she was free to go now, and that if he had never broken his promise to her, she would never have had to leave. She told him that she loved him very much, that she had never broken her marriage vows to him, she had no Reindeer husband and that his children were his alone. She promised she would return to visit once a year on Midsummer and that she still loved him. But she could not trust him ever again, and she could not live with a man she couldn't trust. With that, she put on her hide and she and her daughter walked out the door to find her herd.
True to her word, they returned every Midsummer and she would bring a feast for her husband and sons. Her beautiful daughter brought her Reindeer husband and children with her when they visited, but they would never stay more than one day and Red would never enter Len's house again. Len lived out the rest of his life sadly with his sons, knowing it was his own jealousy that had cost him the company of the wife who still loved him. Knowing he had only hurt himself with his doubts and fears.
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