Norwegian Folktales by Asbjornsen and Moe

I read this book slowly, as perhaps folktales books should be read – often no more than a tale a day, and generally before bed.

A lot of the tales in this collection were reminiscent of the Russian folktales I read earlier this year. That is to be expected – people travel, after all, and stories travel along with them. But, more than that, people are all people, and their imaginations work in remarkably similar ways.

But similarities apart, there is local flavouring, there is uniqueness in detail. Jacob Grimm himself said that Norwegian Folktales were among the finest in the world – “they have a freshness and a fullness that surpass almost all others.” I can certainly understand where he was coming from. These tales also have a very particular sense of humour that I appreciated a lot – “The Old Woman Against the Stream” is a good example.

One of the things I liked best about this collection is how the geography of the land is imprinted in these stories. There are mountains and forest, snowy landscapes and fjords. And there are echoes of Nordic mythology as well – almost every other tale features a troll.

My favourite story in this collection was probably “The Companion” – a story in which a young man goes in search of the woman of his dreams – quite literally. On his way he finds a town in which there is a block of ice with the frozen body of dead man inside, and all the townspeople spit on it as they walk past it. When he enquires about it, he is told that the body belongs to a cruel man. The young man thinks that, despite that, it is time that the poor man gets a proper burial, and he spends all his savings arranging for that to happen. As often happens in fairy tales, his good deed is soon repaid, and he finds the help he needs to fulfill his quest.

Other favourites of mine include “Squire Per”, a version of Puss in Boots with a very fundamental difference concerning the cat, “The Golden Bird” (which is remarkably similar to the Russian tale of the Grey Wolf and the Firebird) and “The Boy with the Beer Keg” – a story I’d read last year when I was investigating variations of Godfather Death.

I was a little surprised that this collection did not include “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” – my favourite, and probably the best-known, Norwegian Folktale. It did include, however, a tale called “White Bear King Valemon”, which I suppose could be considered a variation of this tale.

Finally, the tale “The Twelve Wild Ducks” was a delightful mixture of elements of Snow White and The Six Swans.