Norske eventyr — the folk tales almost lost forever

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe met as schoolboys at the rectory school at Norderhov and spent the 1840s walking the eastern valleys with notebooks, sitting at farmhouse hearths and writing down tales that country people had told aloud for generations and never written down. The tales survive only because the two of them did.

The first installment of Norske Folkeeventyr came out of Johan Dahl’s shop in Christiania A hand-coloured 1814 aquatint of Christiania from across the water — the small grid-planned capital along the far shore under green hills, travellers pausing on a country road in the foreground. John William Edy, City of Christiania (1814), Boydell's Picturesque Scenery of Norway — National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Capital of Norway from 1624 to 1925 — the rebuilt town that King Christian IV laid out west of the medieval Oslo after the fire of August 1624 destroyed the old city. Christian founded the new town on a grid plan beneath Akershus fortress, named it for himself, and ordered the surviving Oslo burghers to move into it. Christiania was the capital's name through the four-hundred-year night, the brief war of 1814, the constitutional Eidsvoll moment, the ninety-one-year personal union with Sweden, and the first two decades of fully independent Norway after 1905. In 1877 the spelling was modernised to Kristiania; in 1925 the city formally returned to the medieval name Oslo. The Kvadraturen district preserves Christian IV's grid intact today. On the trip Days 1–2 in Oslo bring both groups through Christiania — Christian IV's seventeenth-century planned grid, still visible today as the Kvadraturen district just below Akershus fortress. Also discussed in The 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedThe Constitution That Saved a Nation — five radical weeks at Eidsvoll, 1814800,000 Norwegians Leave — the century that built a Second NorwayThe Quiet Revolution — how Norway won its independence without a warWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayStedssagn — local legends, told as warningsUtburd — the unbaptized child that will not rest in December 1841 — ninety-six pages, no title page, no editors’ names — with more to follow in 1843 and 1844. The model was the Brothers Grimm, who had done the same for Germany a generation earlier.

The tales were far darker than the picture books that came after. De tre bukkene Bruse — the Three Billy Goats Gruff — ends in the printed text with the biggest goat goring the Troll Stylized watercolor in reds and greens: beneath an ornamental border, a troll's pale wide-eyed face peers from under a bridge-band, its hair streaming down like a waterfall, while three grey goats cross among flat patterned trees — signed G. Munthe. Gerhard Munthe, De tre Bukkene Bruse (1896), Nasjonalmuseet NMK.2019.0410 The supernatural mountain-dweller of Norwegian folketro — sometimes gigantic, like the valley-striding jutul, sometimes small — living inside mountains and deep forest. Legends set the troll against the church: it hurls boulders at church buildings and flees the sound of church bells. Sunlight turns a troll caught above ground to stone. Andreas Faye's Norske Sagn (1833, expanded as Norske Folke-Sagn in 1844), Norway's first legend collection, put the tradition on paper; Asbjørnsen and Moe's Norske Folkeeventyr (1841–44) fixed the man-eating troll of the tales in print — "De tre bukkene Bruse" was first printed in 1843. Theodor Kittelsen (1857–1914) gave the troll its modern visual form; his Skogtroll (1906) is in the Nasjonalmuseet. Also discussed in Troll — the monsters of the mountainsStedssagn — local legends, told as warningsSoria Moria — the shining castle always out of reachHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secretBytting — the changeling left in the cradleVardøger — your double, arriving a few minutes before youTradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year ’s eyes out with his horns, crushing him to bits, body and bones, and pitching the remains into the falls. Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne — East of the Sun and West of the Moon — turns on a white bear who is a man by night, a candle the heroine is forbidden to light, and the three drops of hot tallow that betray her. Askeladden, the Ash Lad, the slow brother who lies in the cinders by the fire, is the one who wins the kingdom in the end — usually after his older brothers have tried first and failed through impatience or pride.

What reads now as a children’s book was also nation-building. Educated Norwegians in the 1840s still wrote in Danish, thirty years after the country had left four centuries of Danish rule, and the schoolroom language was Danish too. Asbjørnsen and Moe split the difference — Danish spelling carrying Norwegian words and Norwegian sentence-rhythm — and the compromise they invented to make trolls sound Norwegian on the page fed straight into Bokmål Title page of the 1852 second edition — Norske Folkeeventyr, samlede og fortalte af P. Chr. Asbjørnsen og Jørgen Moe, Anden forøgede Udgave — in blackletter type over the Christiania imprint of Johan Dahls Forlag and the year 1852. Norske Folkeeventyr, 2nd enlarged ed. (Christiania: Johan Dahl, 1852), title page; Nasjonalbiblioteket Book language — one of the two official written standards of modern Norwegian. Descended from the written Dano- Norwegian (Dansk-norsk) that served as the literary and administrative language of educated Norwegians through the late Danish period and through most of the nineteenth century. Across a series of language reforms between 1907 and 1959, the standard was progressively shifted toward spoken eastern Norwegian usage and away from Danish orthography, and the name Riksmål (the older form) was replaced by Bokmål in 1929. Today roughly 85–90% of Norwegians use Bokmål as their primary written language. Bokmål and Nynorsk have equal official status; municipalities and schools choose between them, and any Norwegian student is required to learn to write both. Also discussed in The 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantLanguage basics — just enough Norwegian to be polite , one of the two written forms of Norwegian in everyday use today. The second edition was dedicated to the brothers Grimm, and Jacob Grimm wrote back calling the collection die besten Märchen, die es gibt — the best folk-tales there are.

The images came later and never left. The first illustrated edition appeared in 1879; Erik Werenskiold Friedrich Müller's 1880 Munich studio portrait of Erik Werenskiold at twenty-five — wire spectacles, full beard, checked wool coat, arms folded, on the atelier's printed carte mount. Friedrich Müller (Munich), portrait of Erik Werenskiold (1880), Nasjonalbiblioteket (CC BY 2.0) Norwegian painter and illustrator (1855–1938), born in Eidskog near Kongsvinger, who with Theodor Kittelsen gave the Asbjørnsen and Moe folk tales the pictures Norwegian readers have known ever since. He drew for the first illustrated edition of 1879, led the illustration of the three-volume Eventyrbog for Børn through the 1880s, and brought Kittelsen into the folktale work in the early 1880s. His painting En bondebegravelse (Peasant Burial), shown at the 1885 Autumn Exhibition and bought at once by the National Gallery, became a principal work of Norwegian naturalism; from 1896 to 1899 he led the team of artists illustrating the folk edition of Snorri's Heimskringla. brought in Theodor Kittelsen Theodor Kittelsen's 1891 self-portrait — the painter in a round cap and blue jacket, red-bearded, meeting the viewer's eye. Theodor Kittelsen, Selvportrett (1891), Nasjonalmuseet Norwegian painter and illustrator (1857–1914), born in Kragerø, who more than any other artist fixed the visual identity of the country's folklore beings. Erik Werenskiold brought him into the illustrated Asbjørnsen folktale editions in the early 1880s. A stay at the Skomvær lighthouse on outer Lofoten (1887–89), where his brother-in-law served as assistant keeper, fed Troldskab (1892). His plague-hag drawings, begun after an encounter with an old woman on the island of Skåtøy, were published as the book Svartedauen in 1900. The same year, at Lauvlia in Sigdal, he painted his Soria Moria pictures; the national collection bought them at once. Nøkken (1904) — two pale eyes in a black lily-pool — is held by the Nasjonalmuseet; Da Huldra forsvant (1908) paints her vanishing. Also discussed in Pesta — an old woman walking from farm to farmDraugen — the drowned man who never came homeHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secretNøkken — the water-spirit who pulls you underSoria Moria — the shining castle always out of reach , and by 1900 Kittelsen had painted his twelve pictures of Soria Moria castle at his cabin in Sigdal. Norwegian children have grown up reading the tales with Kittelsen’s trolls on the facing page ever since.