This morning, the last installment of The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe is going out to my patrons. That marks the end of 37 months of editing. The tally so far is as follows: 150 texts, with original and new notes 458,746 words (excluding introductions and prefaces) 361 images Last night, for a lark, I compiled the whole collection together in one volume, just to see what I would get. 1,647 pages, including: a 14-page table of contents a 14-page bibliography The .PDF is >509MB ..read more

The Three Bears is available to purchase. And here are the addresses: Paperback A paperback is available from Lulu.com. eBook An ePub edition (iNooks, PlayBooks, etc.) is available from Smashwords. The Kindle edition is available from Amazon here (UK) and here (US ..read more

The last thing I want to do with this post is tread on people’s toes, put their backs up, or ruin anybody’s day. However, I do want to correct an error that is propagating on the Internet concerning the provenance of the Danish folktale with the English title “Prince Lindworm.” It is hardly surprising that people misattribute it, when World of Tales says it is a Norwegian folktale, from the collection of Asbjørnsen & Moe, or when TVTropes claims that it is “a 19th century Norwegian Fairy Tale,” or even when The Paris Review reproduces “[t]he version anthologized in the seminal Asbjornsen a ..read more

The protagonist in a good number of Norwegian folktales, Askeladden (often translated as “Boots”, or “the Ash Lad”) is an apparent naïf, though he subsequently shows himself to be witty, shrewd, and fantastically resourceful. The oldest recorded form of the name is Oskefis (“ash-blower” - although “fis” has evolved to mean “fart” in modern Norwegian), denoting one who blows the embers to keep the fire going, a job often reserved for the lowest member of the household. Later oral traditions give the name Oskeladd, Oskelabb, Oskelamp, or Oskefot, where the second stem (-ladd, -labb, -lamp, -fot ..read more

For Norwegians, folklore is synonymous with the works of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. These 19th century friends collected and published folktales from their journeys around the country. Some of the tales are framed in narratives that are intended to convey the context in which the tales had been communicated for generations, while others are presented as narratives on their own. The collected folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe consists of at least 147 texts (some editions join certain texts together), and reading these, it is apparent that Thursday appears conspicuously often. Searc ..read more

There was once a farmer who had fallen into great hardship and misfortune, but when things were at their worst, a man came to him and said that he would give him some good advice: “If you promise to give me the very first gift you receive hereafter, then I shall help you out of your worst distress,” he said. “I can certainly make such a promise,” said the farmer; he looked no further than to his current hardship, and he had no expectation whatsoever of receiving any gift. A little time afterwards his wife was confined and bore him a son. The stranger returned to him and said that he simply wis ..read more

(A Finnish folktale retold. See Runes XVIII–XXV of Kalevala.) Ilmarinen the Blacksmith never grew tired of hammering.1 One day, as he was putting some iron in the forge, a maiden came to his smithy. She stood on the threshold and called out to the Blacksmith: “If you knew what I have to tell you, Ilmarinen the Blacksmith, you’d not put that iron in your forge.” “If you have something good to tell me,” he said, “then I’ll give you a beautiful piece of jewellery, but if it’s something bad, then I’ll drop a piece of red-hot iron right down your throat.” “There are two men out rowing in their boat ..read more

There was once upon a time a girl who was called Maiden Sunrise, and she had been carried away by a troll. Of course, there was a boy who wanted her, but he didn’t know what to do or where to go to save her. Now, someone he spoke to told him that he should go to church for three Thursday evenings in a row; then he might hear some news, they said. So he went to church one Thursday evening, and as he waited there, a little grey fellow came along and stood close to him. The boy thought him fun, but then the grey fellow stuck a needle into the boy’s shirt, and he fell asleep. Now came Maiden Sunr ..read more

Goodness! Six more texts left to edit, and then this phase is over. The tales from the first, third, and fourth volumes are basically finished, along with the attendant notes. Three folktales from the second volume, two of Asbjørnsen’s hulder tales from the fifth, and one from the sixth remain to be done. After that, I have to edit the 15k-word introduction to the first volume, and Asbjørnsen’s 5k-word rebuttal of his Swedish critics (he placed at the head of his second edition of Norwegian Hulder Tales and Folk Legends; I have no idea where to stick it), and various other bits and pieces. Th ..read more

One might think that the merchants of children’s tales would be paragons of virtue and integrity. But such is not the case. Folk are folk, after all. Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, and the way in which he treated one of his most important sources of tales and legends, shows us this side all too well. In the late autumn of 1841, the parson at Vågå, at the head of the valley of Gudbrandsdalen in Oppland, wrote to Bernt Moe, a friend and associate of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, informing him that there were a number of “legendsmen” and “legendswomen” in Vågå. By mid July the following year, Asbjørnsen ..read more