Week 11: More European Folk Tales

Please choose carefully! If you can't decide for yourself, let the Fates decide... Then, when you have made your choice, you can start the Week's Assignments.

The Danish folktales included here cover a variety of folklore genres - some belong to the "and so they lived happily ever after" type of story, in which a hero and his magical helper are able to overcome all kinds of supernatural obstacles. But in addition to these hero tales, this section also contains several stories about fools and foolishness - like the big bumbling good-hearted giant named Hans who never quite figures out how things work, or the man and the woman who want to raise their calf Peter as if he were their little boy, or the man who tried to imitate the magical powers of the trolls (the man's three daughters just happen to be married to trolls, a situation which the story just seems to take for granted!). If you like humorous stories in addition to fantastic wonder tales, this would probably be a good unit for you to choose this week.

'What a wicked little girl you are!' said he; 'but you shall be none the better of this. I shall give you three wishes, and choose them for you. First, I shall say, "Ugly are you, but you shall become so ugly that there will not be an uglier one on earth." Next I shall wish that every time you open your mouth a big toad may fall out of it, and your voice shall be like the roaring of a bull. In the third place I shall wish for you a violent death.' ...

The first thing the wizard now did was to lead the horse away to a smith to get a red-hot nail driven into its mouth, because after that it could not change its shape again. When the horse saw this it changed itself to a dove, and flew up into the air. The wizard at once changed himself into a hawk, and flew up after it. The dove now turned into a gold ring, and fell into a girl's lap. The hawk now turned into a man, and offered the girl a great sum of money for the gold ring ...

When this was done the troll again said some words to him, and at these he turned into a fish, and sprang into the river. He swam up and he swam down, and thought it was pleasant to let himself drive with the stream. In this way he came right out into the sea, and swam further and further out. At last he came to a glass palace, which stood at the bottom of the sea. He could see into all the rooms and halls, where everything was very grand; all the furniture was of white ivory, inlaid with gold and pearl. ...

Most of the Tales from Estonia are longer fairy-tales, more intricate, in which different types of stories have been woven together. For example, "The Child Who Came From An Egg" starts out as the story of a king and queen who cannot have a child and who end up producing children in a weird and magical way... but then the mother dies, and a Cinderella-type starts to unfold. Or in "The Dragon from the North," the hero has to steal a magic object in order to defeat the dragon... but just when you think his quest is over, the story starts up again when a character from the beginning of the story comes back to haunt the hero. This is one way of displaying artistry and a kind of originality in the composition of traditional stories: it takes real skill to find the linking points where one type of story can be stitched together with another type, creating longer and longer tales using already familiar story patterns.

The dragon from the North had a body like an ox, and legs like a frog, two short fore-legs, and two long ones behind, and besides that it had a tail like a serpent, ten fathoms in length. When it moved it jumped like a frog, and with every spring it covered half a mile of ground. Fortunately its habit, was to remain for several years in the same place, and not to move on till the whole neighbourhood was eaten up. ...

Oh! what a noise and a whirr rose afresh among the serpents. Thousands of heads were reared, and tongues were stretched out to sting the intruder to death, but happily for him their bodies were so closely entwined one in the other that they could not disentangle themselves quickly. Like lightning he seized a bit of bread, dipped it in the bowl, and put it in his mouth, then dashed away as if fire was pursuing him. On he flew as if a whole army of foes were at his heels, and he seemed to hear the noise of their approach growing nearer and nearer. ...

... absolute stillness reigned everywhere. Not a rustle or a sound could be heard. Here and there he noticed a bird sitting on a branch, with head erect and swelling throat, but his ear caught nothing. The dogs opened their mouths as if to bark, the toiling oxen seemed about to bellow, but neither bark nor bellow reached the prince. The water flowed noiselessly over the pebbles, the wind bowed the tops of the trees, flies and chafers darted about, without breaking the silence. ...



Modern Languages / Anthropology 3043: Folklore & Mythology. Laura Gibbs, Ph.D. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You must give the original author credit. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
Page last updated: October 9, 2004 12:52 PM