All the World's Reward: Folktales Told by Five Scandinavian Storytellers

Preface

PREFACE WITH THE PUBLICATION of this book on folktales we complete the series on Scandinavian folklore which began in I988 with Scandinavian Folk Beliefand Legend (revised edition, I99I), followed in I989 by Nordic Folklore: Recent Studies. We were motivated to undertake this series because at the time there existed no critical editions of oral folklore covering Scandinavia as a whole. Originally we had planned the present volume as a compilation of tales according to the Aarne-Thompson international tale type index, but after thorough discussions among all the contributors to this volume, we abandoned this idea in favor of a series of individual tale repertoires representing the five major tradition areas of Scandinavia, namely Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Swedish-speaking Finland, and Iceland. It has been our goal to place the tales and their narrators, collectors, and editors in the context of their own cultural environments rather than in a typological context as exemplified by previous editions of Scandinavian folktales in English translation. The book is intended for both scholars and students of folklore, as well as general readers interested in a good story. The volume took shape through extensive discussions among all of the contributors. We wanted the collection to include different types of narrators and their own interests, both larger and smaller repertoires, narrators whose output covered large portions of folktale tradition, and narrators who specialized in a given tale genre, for example, tales of magic or jocular tales. The Norwegian repertoire was selected by the editors, who also wrote the introduction and commentary to the same, as well as the general introduction to the volume as a whole. The Danish repertoire, introduction, and commentary were compiled by Bengt Holbek and edited by Henning K. Sehmsdorf after Holbek's death. The Swedish repertoire and commentary were compiled by Bengt af Klintberg and translated by Henning K. Sehmsdorf. The Swedish Finland repertoire was selected by Gun Herranen, who wrote the introduction and commentary together with Henning K. Sehmsdorf. The Icelandic repertoire was chosen by Hallfreour OmEiriksson; Henning K. Sehmsdorf collaborated with him in writing the introduction and commentary. In translating the texts emphasis has been placed on rendering each storyteller'S personal style as faithfully as possible. The reader may be Xl XU PREFACE startled by the stylistic conventions of some of the texts: repetitions, crudities, awkward grammar. However, to clean up and homogenize the texts would violate folk narrative tradition. A sanitized narrative style would hide the personalities and contexts of the storytellers and, furthermore, would be contrary to the practices of current folktale research (see Hymes 1961). Henning K. Sehmsdorf translated all the tale texts except for the Icelandic texts, which were translated by Robert Cook (University of Iceland) and were edited by Sehmsdorf. We have endeavored to keep references to secondary sources within reasonable limits. When possible we refer to critical studies that discuss Scandinavian materials, for example, Enzyklopiidie des Miirchens, where further references can be found. The illustrations have been culled from older folktale editions, notably the work of two Norwegian artists, Erik Werenskiold and Theodor Kittelsen, who are widely considered the finest of Scandinavian folktale illustrators. A few of the illustrations refer to the tale type rather than to the specific variant published here. We wish to thank our colleagues in Scandinavia and the United States for their continued interest and help in this project. In particular we thank Professor Ann-Helene Skjelbred for her friendship and encouragement . We express our gratitude to Dr. Elizabeth Simpson, who read the entire manuscript and whose sure sense of the American idiom has been of invaluable help. We are grateful for financial support from the Nordic Council on Humanistic Research (NOS-H) and the Nordic Institute of Folklore in Turku, Finland, and for leave time and travel grants from the Universities of Bergen and Washington. We also thank the Nordic Institute of Folklore for including the volume in the series NIF Publications as the second part of a folktale project. The first part, Sagorna (inns overallt (Folktales Are Everywhere), a volume of current articles on the folktale, was edited by Gun Herranen and published by Carlsson in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1995. This book is dedicated to our friend and fellow scholar Bengt Holbek , whose untimely death in the summer of1992 kept him from seeing this project reach completion. REIMUND KVIDELAND HENNING K. SEHMSDORF ...