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

Introduction

INTRODUCTION IN THE MODERN world we connect folktales mostly with books and films. There are hundreds of folktale editions; in many countries bookstores reserve a special section for them. From the time children are small, parents and other grownups read folktales to them on the sofa or as a goodnight at bedtime. Often the same tales are read over and over again until the children know them by heart and, fascinated by their own recognition of the story, reject any and all variations. Modern forms of folktale presentation are recitations on the radio and film versions made for television or for the movie theater. In European countries, folktales playa large part in television programming for children (Schmitt 1993). During the nineteenth century folktales began to be included in elementary-school readers, often in the face of strong public resistance (Tomkowiak 1993b; Hagemann 1978). The folktale as booklore was also underscored by the genre's early inclusion in other academic texts, for instance, language textbooks (Ranke 1979b; Kvideland 1987). Since antiquity, some elements of the cultural elite have considered folktales to be children's literature , but folktale scholars maintain that they were in fact intended for adults, and that children were often sent to bed when folktales were told in the evening (Holbek 1989). Many folktale series, as for example Marchen der Weltliteratur (Folktales of the World), have mostly adult readers. The existence of a European folktale society (Europaische Marchengesellschaft), which sponsors numerous local and regional folktale events, demonstrates the abiding adult interest in the genre. Instruction in storytelling plays an important role in these events. Today such instruction is offered in many parts of the Western world. In the United States some people learn how to tell folktales from narrators in ethnic groups where the folktale tradition is still living. Others expand their competence by taking college courses in folklore studies, and 3 4 INTRODUCTION others are self-taught. In Sweden, for example, there are storytelling cafes where folktales are included in the performances. We can see this as proof that oral culture is not dead. Oral culture in fact finds strong support in our most powerful mass mediaradio and television. At the same time there is widespread scholarly reaction against the notion of folktale tradition as anything other than exclusively oral. However, it has probably been several centuries since folktales were passed on mostly by word of mouth. The inclusion of folktales in broadsides, folk calendars, and books has been documented for two to three hundred years- but still many folktale scholars find it difficult to accept the idea of exchange between literary and oral tradition, as German folklorist Rudolf Schenda points out in his most recent book on popular narrative tradition in Europe (Schenda 1993). Schenda also rightly maintains that the telling of folktales belongs to a larger performance context in which the folktale was not necessarily the dominant genre. Wherever people got together, they told stories and they still tell stories today. In the past this happened at home over dinner, at nightfall before the light was turned on, and also later at night when people sat with their handwork and during the day while INTRODUCTION taking a break. Not least, seasonal migrant laborers entertained each other with storytelling when taking their rest. During all kinds of festive gatherings people have told stories. Storytellers of all kinds have also always found an audience among a wider public, for instance, at the pub. 5 All too often it has been assumed that occasions for storytelling were lacking in urban settings; however, stories were in fact told in towns and cities just as much as in the village in Scandinavia, as well as in the rest of Europe. The well-known nineteenth-century Norwegian folktale collector P. Chr. Asbjornsen, for example, gives vivid fictionalized descriptions of storytelling milieux in the Norwegian capital in En aften i nabogarden (An Evening at the Neighbor's) and in En gammeldags juleaften (An Oldtime Christmas Eve). Unfortunately, Asbjornsen never described the actual milieu in his own father's glassmaking shop. As one of Asbjornsen's biographers, Anders Krogvik, writes, many people would come and go in a shop like that, both local people and strangers: "an artisan's house of old was a superb trading post for all kinds of popular traditions, but especially for strange experiences and ideas in folk belief" (Krogvig 1923, 265). Popular narrative comprises all kinds of...