Danish Folklore Data Nexus by Timothy R. Tangherlini (review)

Evald Tang Kristensen was perhaps one of the most prolific collectors of folklore in Europe, with about 3,500 named sources. The schoolteacher, who walked all over Denmark for more than 50 years collecting stories, songs, and detailed descriptions of everyday Danish life, was also notable in that he, unlike many of his contemporaries, noted context and, unlike the far better known Grimm brothers, Kristensen wrote and preserved the exact words of the narrators. Fairy tale scholar Bengt Holbek used tales from ETK, as he called Kristensen, because of these factors, and Holbek’s work is perhaps the main reason American scholars are familiar with ETK at all.

Timothy R. Tangherlini has been studying, translating, and working with the ETK legend collection since before his 1988 JAF article, “Ships, Fogs, and Traveling Pairs: Plague Legend Migration in Scandinavia” (101:176–206). In conjunction with the publication (2013) of his book, Danish Folktales, Legends, and Other Stories(University of Washington Press), Tangherlini has produced an accompanying DVD of the tales, the tellers, and mapping of the ETK legend collection. A version of this same information, which this review addresses, can be accessed online at www.purl.org/danishfolk-tales/. This digital resource is made publicly available by UCLA, where Tangherlini is a professor in the Scandinavian Section, and the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. The sheer scope and detail of this collection might well bring ETK into the minds of scholars who have yet to wade through Holbek’s massive Interpretation of Fairy Tales(Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1987) (though they should). Tangherlini’s Interpreting Legend: Danish Storytellers and Their Repertoires(Garland, 1994) attempted to do for legends what Holbek did for fairy tales: provide an overview of the field and a rubric for interpretation. While that volume is useful, and underutilized by most folklorists, the wealth of information that this new volume and collection provides is even more remarkable.

The maps include a modern street view, an aerial view, and a slider that allows the user to superimpose historical maps onto the contemporary maps. This visual aid adds another layer of context to the legends. Tangherlini includes in his data specific towns and sites that are referenced in the narratives. More than just mapping, the digital archive provides the translation of the information from Danish to English and photos and biographical data for the tellers when available. Those tellers are first and highlighted on the lengthy list that goes from Anders Ålborg to Ole Worm. Tangherlini also provides his own indices to the collection, as well as ETK’s.

In another nod to the detail with which ETK did his collecting, a reference to the field notes that accompanied a particular item is also provided. As Tangherlini, a pretty good raconteur himself, once reminisced of his research in the Dansk Folkemindesamling (Danish Folklore Archives), one can read a Danish legend that ETK noted down, see a smudge of coffee stain on the document, then pull out ETK’s diary and read about how he spilled coffee on his notes that day. The details that are available on this digital resource recall that sort of interaction with the data; in fact, by clicking on the bar beneath the initial date that accompanies each item, the viewer can access the Danish manuscript version, the Danish published version, English translations, and a scanned image of the field notes that accompany the tale, legend, game, or other item. Perhaps the one with the coffee is in there.

At the time of this review, the Web resource relies on Adobe Flash Player, which means it can be problematic to use on some Apple devices. The Web resource is a stripped-down version of the DVD that accompanies the book, which also comes with a download code to install the data nexus locally for those who don’t have an optical drive. The interface is perhaps not immediately intuitive for the average user, but with a certain amount of surfing, it is fairly easily mastered...