Literary Hub: The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe

Excerpt from the Foreword of The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe

A new, definitive English translation of the celebrated story collection regarded as a landmark of Norwegian literature and culture

I keep trying to write a measured and sensible introduction to this book, and I keep failing. I keep failing because in order to find out what I think I pick up the proofs and start to read—or rather, at this point, to reread and to rerereread—any one of the Norwegian folktales waiting between these covers, and then I’m swallowed by them. I don’t read them critically. I don’t even put my compare-this-story-from-this-tradition-to-this-other-story-that-it-somehow-resembles hat on. I just start to read, and I’m following the adventures of Ash Lad, or the Girl Whose Godmother Was the Virgin Mary, and I feel satisfied.

Someone is telling me a story.

 

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