Norwegian Folktales (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library) [Paperback]

Peter Christen Asbjornsen (Author), Jorgen Moe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 1982 | Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up | Series: Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library

Collected here in a contemporary translation. With these tales we meet witches, trolls and ogres, sly foxes and mysterious bears, beautiful princesses and country lads turned heroes. Includes illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Norwegian (translation)

From the Inside Flap

Collected here in a contemporary translation. With these tales we meet witches, trolls and ogres, sly foxes and mysterious bears, beautiful princesses and country lads turned heroes. Includes illustrations.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (August 12, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394710541
• ISBN-13: 978-0394710549
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #195,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marvelous stories for children and adults, February 21, 2000

By 

J. G. Heiser (Sunninghill, Berks) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Norwegian Folktales (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library) (Paperback)

My 9-year old was enthralled with the stories in this book, begging for more every night until we finished it. I disagree with his Freudian interpretation, but Bruno Bettelheim is right that folktales touch something wired within us, fulfilling an innate need children have to comprehend the adult world.

Although not as well-known as the German Grimm's collection in the United States, this book is widely revered in Norway. Both are teutonic cultures, but these stories are different in character and feel from the Grimm Brother stories. While they contain elements common to all european fables, this book is filled with trolls, and the reformation seems like a recent event. Norsk tales have a unique and compelling charm.

My favorite fable is in this collection--the one about the mill that explains why the sea is salty. Read it yourself--I don't want to spoil the ending.

From a purist point of view, drawings detract from stories such as these, but two of Norway's most most well-known illustrators are represented, and the artwork is compelling.

This paperback is a reprint of the original English-language translation from 40 years ago. I have that original text packed away somewhere lost, so it was a real treat to be able to buy a new copy to share with my son.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Norway's Greatest Treasure..., June 28, 2008

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Norwegian Folktales (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library) (Paperback)

...alongside the fjords, is its literary tradition, beginning with the Viking romances and sagas, at full flood in the works of Ibsen, but flowing like an underground river through its grotesque folk tales - eventyr - as collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and the Møes father and son. Asbjørnsen began collecting tales in 1834, in isolated rural areas of Norway, a country whose geography has guaranteed isolation through most of history. The publication of the Grimm Brothers' collection of folk tales sparked further enthusiasm amongst Norwegians, but the 'eventyr' are different in many ways from the traditions rescued by the Grimms, and radically different from the literary fairy tales that soon infiltrated Europe and consigned folk tales in general to the realm of children's literature.

Readers familiar with the Icelandic sagas will find many similarities in these hard-minded and hard-handed stories of peasant kings, eerie maidens, and of course trolls, with their peculiar shrewd stupidity. The pleasure of hearing/reading most of the eventyr is in the sardonic humor, the joy of seeing the come-uppance of the rich and powerful. It's interesting to note that stories collected from men are chiefly rough and humorous, and naturalistic, while those collected from women, as translator Pat Shaw reports, "kept to deep, mystic, or eerie themes."

The original illustrations by Erik Werenskiold and Theodor Kittelsen are reproduced in this collection. Black-and-white pen sketches and etchings, they match the eventyr in wry humor and spooky trollishness. I remember them well from my own childhood, when my grandmothers held me on their laps and read to me in Swedish. These are indeed wonderful, memorable stories to read to children, but they shouldn't be limited to laps, not even the laps of Lapps. Adults will enjoy them equally. Most of them are quite short, especially compared with the wordy Grimm tales, and can be relished a few at a time.

I've reviewed three Norwegian items in the past week - music by Harald Saeverud and novels by Borgen and Christensen. You may wonder why a good Swedish fellow like me would be reviewing works by Norskis. Well now, I'm just trying to show that I'm comfortable with diversity.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One for the Desert Island Library, February 8, 2001

By 

Extollager (Mayville, ND United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Norwegian Folktales (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library) (Paperback)

I'm a middle-aged English professor, but I love this book now, as I did when I was a kid. If I had to whittle my personal library down from its present size (maybe 3000?) to a hundred books, I'm sure I'd still keep this one. I read these stories now to my children and remember how I loved the stories when I was their age. When I'm a senior, I'll remember how I shared this book with my kids, as well.