In northernmost Arctic Norway, the Pasvik Folk High School continues a two-century teaching curriculum dedicated to traditional survival skills.

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, successful documentarians (“Jesus Camp”), spent a year there, focused on two dog sledding instructors and three students.

For the filmmakers, “Folktales” also proved to be educational.

“We were watching and learning, like we were going to Folk High School ourselves,” Ewing said. “The movie was really hard because I don’t think we anticipated any of the technological difficulties in this area, with this age group. In this weather, in this place.

“Every time was a new test, a puzzle we had to solve. Every shoot had a challenge for us. I was also surprised,” she admitted, “by how intimately close we got to the students. I didn’t expect to feel so much love with these young people, as we do.”

“As a New Yorker,” Grady enthused, “I was extremely pleasantly surprised to see what happens to your body when there is no noise pollution. Or light pollution.

“When you get there it (Arctic Norway with its months’ long polar night) resets you.”

“Folktales” began when Ewing heard author Blair Braverman on a podcast discussing her book, “Welcome to the Goddam Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North” (2016).

“She was talking about her book. About going down the trail and how the sled dogs were making the decisions, and I said to my husband, ‘Who was that!’

“Then I got the book and she spoke how she went to the Folk High School when she was 17 and how it changed her life.

“So I called Rachel and we started our research.”

Not only is “Folktales” a window into an exotic culture, its three students with their remarkable candor are heartbreaking.

Choosing them was quickly apparent. “All three, Grady said, “the first time we interviewed each of them, they said something that was stunningly intimate.

“So there was a hook right away for us. Like when Peter said he didn’t have any friends, my eyes just filled up with tears. Because no one’s ever said that aloud to me; people don’t say that to each other. They were so generous with their vulnerability. We chose them right away.”

“They each,” Ewing added, “articulated that they wanted something different in their lives. We thought, ‘Okay, these people don’t know how to achieve their goal but they have something they want here. There’s a reason to be here – not just to have a gap year and relax.

“And we wondered, ‘Are they going to find what they want here?’”

“Folktales” is in theaters Aug. 1

A scene from “Folktales.” (Photo Tori Edvin Eliassen/Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.)