This small but very handsome hardback book from the University of Minnesota Press is the first translation from Norwegian into English of Theodor Kittelsen’s volume of short essays and accompanying illustrations from 1892. Kittelsen is one of the illustrators primarily associated with the collection of Norwegian folktales published in the mid 1800s by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. The translator of this book, Tiina Nunnally, has also translated that collection of Norske Folkeeventyr by Asbjørnsen and Moe, more famously translated in 1859 by George Webbe Dasent as Popular Tales from the Norse. In Kittelsen’s Troll Magic, Nunnally includes a very helpful “Translator’s Note” (vii-x), in which she offers biographical information about Kittelsen pertinent to the book, and comments on the differences between Kittelsen’s texts and the folktales collected by Asbjørnsen and Moe, stating that Kittelsen’s pieces “turned out to be very different, and it was challenging to translate them into English” (x).
Part of the challenge Nunnally faced was the fact that many of Kittelsen’s texts were not really stories but rather short essays, descriptions, or even prose poems intended to describe the “hidden folk” of Norway’s mountains, forests, and seas. The short, written compositions were evocative descriptions of these supernatural beings and their lives. Kittelsen wanted his readers to consider the beings themselves rather than simply view them as antagonists in folk narratives. The Norwegian word Troldskab means “supernatural being,” and Kittelsen’s intent was to illustrate them for us, both visually and verbally.
It is the visual dimension of this book that is the real treasure here, understandably, as Kittelsen was primarily a visual artist. In a very helpful “Chronology of the Life of Theodor Kittelsen” that closes the book, Kristian Tvedten, acquisitions editor at the University of Minnesota Press, comments on how the many illustrations included in Troll Magic came to be. He writes: “Kittelsen had originally planned for these illustrations to be accompanied by writing by Norwegian author Jonas Lie, but when Lie’s text never arrived, Kittelsen wrote the book himself” (89). In other words, the illustrations were primary in Kittelsen’s view while the textual material was secondary. Nevertheless, the textual content of the book is actually quite good, demonstrating Kittelsen’s talent as a writer.
Kittelsen’s texts are more like folk legends than folktales. There are eighteen short chapters in the book, each prefaced by a wonderful, framed print of his pen and ink drawing of the magical creature at the center of each text. Often the text is followed by a smaller drawing that again comments visually on the subject of the chapter. These supernatural creatures include trolls, waterfall spirits (fossegrimen), a dragon, changlings, nissen, huldra, mermaids, witches, jutlar, nøkken, and sea serpents. The texts themselves do contain some traditional narrative motifs—the sack that keeps refilling, music that lures people into water, the Smaug-like dragon guarding treasures, the witches’ sabbath, trolls with many heads. But the texts are most valuable in adding poetic description to the creatures and landscapes at the heart of each short chapter.
My own ties to this book arise from years of using the Dover edition of Dasent’s East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon in teaching about folktales. The Dover edition includes fifty-nine tales from the Norwegian collection and seventy-seven illustrations by Theodor Kittelsen, Erick Werenskiold, Per Krohg, and others. Dover did a great service in making these illustrations—famously cherished for years in Europe—available to American readers. Kittelsen is my favorite of the illustrators, and this small book of previously unknown illustrations and essays adds to that store of visual treasures.
Kittelsen’s Troll Magic, translated by Tiina Nunnally, with its thirty-three illustrations (including a color “Self-Portrait” of Kittelsen at the very end) is a fine addition to the libraries of folklorists, art historians, and Scandinavian studies scholars. Anyone who wants to know more about the traditional supernatural creatures of Norway will appreciate the verbal texts Kittelsen offers and especially his wonderful illustrations, here published some 130 years after Kittelsen first created this excellent little volume.
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[Review length: 670 words • Review posted on February 16, 2023]