The present volume is a compilation of twelve papers on legend from a symposium on Celtic, Nordic, and Baltic folklore held five years ago in Iceland, and is intended to illustrate ways in which scholars in Ireland, Scotland, the Scandinavian lands, and Estonia (joined by legend scholars from England and the USA) approach the folk legend today. Terry Gunnell, a British folklorist at the University of Iceland, edited the collection and provides an informative introduction.

Jacqueline Simpson (England) leads off with “A Ghostly View of England’s Past,” a brief exploration of ghosts in English folklore and literature. She remarks that haunting by ghosts of persons from the distant past became prominent only in the nineteenth century; those that haunt outdoors tend to be frightening, whereas the indoor ghosts that haunt aristocratic houses are more stately, like the houses themselves, and the owners of the houses calmly accept them. Such spirits are held to be the souls of persons who for one reason or another cannot find rest. Several towns are regarded as particularly haunted, just as some structures are, and the association may be locally exploited. For example, Pluckley claims to be the most haunted village in England, although the Pluckley ghosts “draw upon a simplified, romanticized view of the past, populated by stereotyped figures such as the tragic lady, the love-sick monk and the bold highwayman” (32).

Anna-Leena Siikala (Finland) is next with “Reproducing Social Worlds: The Practice and Ideology of Oral Legends,” in which she summarizes field observations made in three dissimilar cultures: a Polynesian island community, a Finnish agrarian village, and a Finno-Ugrian people living in northern Russia. She shows how the three groups differ in the kinds of legends they tell, in the functions their narratives play, and in the sorts of person who relate them.

In “Form and Other Aspects of Legends” Ulf Palmenfelt (Sweden) looks at form and content in stories of metamorphosis found in a nineteenth-century Swedish legend collection. Among the themes he discusses are transformations of something valuable into something worthless (and vice versa) and transformations as a penalty for misbehavior. Along the way he makes interesting observations about the role that transformation plays in the real world of a self-sufficient society, in which everything has a use and everything is potentially something else.

Arne Bugge Amundsen (Norway) follows with “Translating Narratives: The Interpretation of Legends in Recent Norwegian Folklore Studies.” He gives an overview of a previously published collection of scholarly essays, Sagnomsust: Fortelling og Virkelighet (Oslo 2002), the theme of which is how different generations of Norwegian scholars approach the study of legend. Among the summarized articles of interest to historians of folkloristics is that by Bjarne Hodne, which contrasts the ideologies and careers of Knut Liestøl and Reidar Christiansen. Liestøl, who inherited the chair of Moltke Moe, was an energetic nationalist whose work emphasized continuity with mediaeval Norway; in contrast, Christiansen, archivist at the Norwegian Folklore Archives, was an internationalist whose studies were open to the possibility of external influence upon Norse narratives. As Amundsen points out, academic results are situated in time and space, and the conflict of nationalist and internationalist is a recurrent theme in Norwegian folkloristics.

In “The Formation of a Celtic-Nordic Folklorist: The Case of James Hamilton Delargy/Séamus Ó Duilearga (1899–1980),” Séamus Ó Catháin (Ireland) gives an account of the education and career of James Delargy, beginning with a day in 1921 when the Irishman (then a student in Celtic Studies at University College, Dublin) chanced to meet Reidar Christiansen in a Dublin bookshop buying up books on Irish folklore. Carl von Sydow secured for Delargy a stipend to come to Scandinavia to see folkloristic work there, and in 1928 he spent half a year in Scandinavia, where he learned Swedish and the other Scandinavian languages, met the prominent folklorists of the region, acquired a knowledge of Nordic folkloristic methods, and returned to Ireland, where he laid the foundation for the collecting and study of Irish folklore.

“From Philology to Process: The Collection of Finlands Svenska Folkdiktning as a Representation of Finland-Swedish Folklore” by Ulrika Wolf-Knuts (Finland) treats the twenty-two volume Finlands Svenska Folkdiktning (The Swedish Folk-Poetry of Finland) and its chief editor, Karl Wikman. The work was published by the Swedish Literature Society in Finland, which had been modeled after the Finnish Literature Society, publisher of the Kalevala. Wolf-Knuts describes in particular the conflict between Wikman, who favored a philological, text-based approach, and another editor of the work, Gunnar Landtman, who favored an anthropological approach. Each editor organized the volumes under his control in accordance with principles that reflected his own ideology.

“Folk and the Others: Constructing Social Reality in Estonian Legends” by Ülo Valk (Estonia) and “The Beggar, the Minister, the Farmer, his Wife and the Teacher: Legend and Legislative Reform in Nineteenth-Century Denmark” by Timothy R. Tangherlini (United States/Denmark) focus upon legends collected in Estonia and Denmark, respectively, in times of political and social change. The authors interpret Estonian and Danish legends of the day as symbolic of social tensions and changes. Since Estonia lacks an early literature, folk legends played an unusually important role in the expression of Estonian identity and attitudes. In the case of Denmark, Tangherlini argues that some legends were set in an earlier period but in fact expressed current concerns.

Bengt af Klintberg (Sweden) contributes a fascinating study of the treatment of supposed revenants in “Legends of the Impaled Dead in Sweden.” The familiar novelistic and cinematic motif of killing a vampire by driving a wooden stake through its heart is a secondary development inspired by the actual practice, attested from prehistoric times to the eighteenth century, of pinning a corpse to the ground with a stake to prevent it from haunting. The practice was regional; elsewhere you might cut up and/or burn such a corpse. The author focuses upon Swedish legends of the impalement of the dead, or undead. What happens, for example, if someone pulls up the stake?

Similar in spirit and equally fascinating is the essay by John Lindow (United States) entitled “Changelings, Changing, Re-exchanges: Thoughts on the Relationship between Folk-Belief and Legend.” Lindow contrasts folk and learned attitudes towards certain kinds of children who exhibited abnormalities of appearance and behavior: an uneducated person might see a changeling, whereas an educated person might see a child afflicted with a disease such as rickets; nevertheless, there was no way for anyone to be sure. The author poses several interesting questions (why would supernaturals wish to exchange their baby for a human baby? why are changelings mostly male? etc.) and offers well-reasoned answers.

In “‘Gaelic/Norse Folklore Contacts’ and Oral Traditions from the West of Scotland” John Shaw (United States/Scotland) presents an extensive survey of the evidence (historical, linguistic, place-name, etc.) for early contacts between Norse and Gaelic-language traditions. Whereas the tendency has been to look for Celtic influences in Norse tradition, recently scholars have also shown an interest in Norse traits in Celtic tradition. The present study emphasizes Scottish Gaelic traditions, since previous studies have tended to focus upon Ireland. In general there is a pan-Gaelic portrayal of the Norse as The Other, as a folk appearing from a mysterious land.

Bo Almqvist (Sweden/Ireland), in his "Midwife to the Fairies (ML 5070) in Icelandic Tradition" and "Midwife to the Fairies in Iceland: A Variant List," presents a detailed study of the widespread and very popular migratory legend of the human whom a supernatural being (fairy, elf, etc.) asks to come and help deliver a child; the person does so and sometimes brings home a gift, which may be material or non-material. One kind of non-material gift is future success in midwifery or healing. Some Icelandic midwives, doctors, and folk healers have told this story of themselves, remembering the events as an actual experience of their youth that accounted for their subsequent success in their profession.

Finally, I should mention that the volume is framed by a pair of poems. Bengt af Klintberg starts the book off with Getingen (The Wasp), a poem about a nineteenth-century fiddler so nicknamed, and Dáithí Ó hÓgáin winds it down with Kilstiheen (On the Coast of Clare), which alludes to a castle with a locked door on a distant island and to a key lying hidden at the bottom of a lake.

For its overall fine quality as well as its pleasant variety of topic and approach, Legends and Landscape makes an excellent read for scholars and students of folk-narrative. Terry Gunnell is likewise to be commended for his careful work as editor.

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[Review length: 1425 words • Review posted on November 3, 2009]