[1] It was one of many Norse folk tales included in Norske Folkeeventyr by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe between about 1853 and 1858.

[2] Hans Christian Andersen's "What the Old Man does is always Right" (in Nye Eventyr og Historier, 1861) is another adaptation of this tale.

When Gudbrand arrives in town, he is unable to sell his cow but since he is just as well off as before, he heads back home.

In the Andersen version, called "What the Old Man does is always Right" (sometimes translated "What Father does is always Right"), the essential story is the same though some of the components are different.

George Webbe Dasent, emphasizing the tale's simplicity, notes that "The happiness of married life was never more prettily told" than in this story, "where the tenderness of the wife for her husband weighs down all other considerations".

[7] In 1939, Johannes V. Jensen reinterpreted the story by inverting it: the man begins with a bag of rotten apples and ends with a horse, and his wife is dissatisfied with every trade he made[7] (compare this to the Japanese legend of the Straw Millionaire).