Tales from the Fjeld: A Second Series of Popular Tales

Peter Christen AsbjørnsenProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
502K words
Chapters
51

Tags

English Originals Folk Literature Adventure JourneyImaginationFolktalesNordic LegendExotic CultureFolk Customs

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Tales from the Fjeld: A Second Series of Popular Tales by Peter Christen AsbjørnsenAuthor: Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen, 1812-1885,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Jun 11, 2011

Editor's review

This work is the second collection of Norwegian folk tales compiled by Asbjørnsen after the first series, a typical product of nineteenth-century folklore collecting. Its value lies not in polished prose but in preserving the raw texture of Nordic oral literature: trolls, giants, cunning farmers, and supernatural forest beings together form a premodern worldview. As an English translation, the language is plain and direct, retaining many of the repetition structures and dialogue rhythms of folk narrative, so it reads with the quality of a storyteller speaking at one's ear. For readers who want to understand the genealogy of European folk literature and compare tale motifs, this book offers a Nordic sample distinct from the Brothers Grimm; the coarseness and moral ambiguity of some episodes also make it more interesting for study than sanitized children's editions. The public-domain electronic edition is convenient for searching and comparative reading, and is suitable as supplementary material alongside courses in folklore and comparative literature.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read three to five tales first to build a feel for the language, then select stories with similar motifs for side-by-side comparison.
  2. Jot down recurring numbers, objects, and character types as you read to make it easier to sum them up.
  3. Read alongside the Brothers Grimm or books on Norse myth to observe variants of the same motif.
  4. Look through the tales yourself before telling them to children, and skip those with overly cruel endings.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51

FAQ

How is this book different from the Brothers Grimm? Both belong to the nineteenth-century European tradition of folk-tale collecting, but Asbjørnsen's records stay closer to the Norwegian oral original: the narrative tone is colder, supernatural beings are more savage, and traces of moral instruction are relatively few, so it reads more like hearing an old villager tell a story firsthand.
How difficult is the English? What level is needed? The translation relies mainly on everyday vocabulary, with short sentences and much repetition; readers at roughly CET-4 level can get through it with a dictionary. The main difficulties are a few Norse proper nouns and archaic spellings, which do not affect overall comprehension.
Is it suitable to read aloud to children directly? Some tales are, but original folk stories often contain violence, deceit, and dark endings, which differ from the standards of contemporary children's publishing. Parents are advised to screen them in advance and choose tales with lighter plots and clear endings.

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About the author

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen Author · Norwegian · 1812–1885

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812–1885) was a Norwegian writer, zoologist and collector of folk tales, born in Christiania (now Oslo). Together with Jørgen Moe, he travelled on foot throughout Norway collecting folk tales, and the two compiled Norwegian Folk Tales (1842–1844). This work became a milestone in the development of Norwegian literature and language, with an influence far beyond the country's borders, and it helped preserve and spread Norway's oral storytelling tradition. Besides folk tales, his works also touch on Norwegian legends and Christmas customs, written in a plain, vivid style rich in local flavour. In his later years he served as a forestry official and promoted forest protection in Norway. Three of his works are held in this collection; public information is limited, and further details of his life remain to be verified.