Folklorist Timothy Tangherlini’s new book on traditional narrators and their stories in late-nineteenth-century Denmark focuses upon the individual lives and stories of five talented storytellers and ballad-singers. They are a varied and interesting lot, three men and two women who differ in age, fortune, and profession: “Bitte Jens” Kristensen, clog-maker and smallholder; Kirsten Marie Pedersdatter, farmer’s daughter wed to a smallholder; Jens Peter Pedersen, impoverished day laborer who supplemented his meager income by clog-making and lathe-turning; Ane Margrete Jensdatter, impoverished widow of a day laborer who sustained herself by agricultural work; and young Peder Johansen, bachelor, fiddler, and journeyman miller.
In an informative introduction Tangherlini orients the reader succinctly to the conditions of life in nineteenth-century rural Denmark, the history of folklore studies in Denmark, the principal genres of interest (legends, folktales, ballads), and issues touching upon the relationship of informant and repertory. The nineteenth century was a period of dramatic change in Danish society, the country changing from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional democracy, from a controlled to a free-market economy, and from widespread illiteracy to widespread education and literacy, all accompanied by a reconfiguration of the class structure.
The five narrators featured here were among the star informants of the extraordinary collector of folklore in late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century Denmark, Evald Tang Kristensen (1843-1929), hereafter ETK. Unlike many other folklorists of his day, ETK took an interest in his informants as persons, eliciting biographical information from them and taking photos of them. Moreover, he collected not only ballads (and their melodies) and folktales but also legends and other genres of folklore that were less fashionable among folklorists of his day; indeed, he attempted to collect his informants’ entire repertories.
Tangherlini laments the fact that published collections of folk narrative have typically been organized by topic rather than by informant, obscuring connections between the storytellers and their stories. In order to bring out these connections the author groups together the stories of each storyteller, and characterizes individual narrators in terms of their genre preferences, theme, and style. Happily, he also prints the texts in the order in which each narrator related his or her stories to ETK, which has the effect of making the reader feel almost present at the storytelling. Thus, among the stories of Kirsten Marie Pedersdatter, whom I found to be a particularly charming narrator, are two legends about conjuring a revenant, which are followed by three narratives concerning strange sights, then two stories about encounters with elves, various other legends, and next a series of three folktales, which lead in their turn into several narratives about cunning men, and so on.
In his role as editor Tangherlini clarifies a number of cultural and narrative obscurities in the narratives with a footnote here and there. In some cases, especially with the stories of Bitte Jens with which the book begins, I would have been happy for more frequent help, but overall the stories make for clear and enjoyable reading.
The book is accompanied by a DVD, or more accurately the DVD, referred to as the digital content or more specifically as the Danish Folklore Nexus, is accompanied by a book. For contrary to the usual case in which a scholarly book may be supplemented by a disk, here it is really the DVD that is the principal publication, offering a thick, immersive experience in the ETK collection with an emphasis upon individual informant repertories, whereas the book is in fact a series of excerpts from the digital content. So the DVD is the more substantial publication. Whereas the book features an introduction in several parts, the digital content offers substantial essays on nineteenth-century Denmark, the rise of folklore scholarship, the life and works of ETK, the genres of folklore, the mapping of folklore, and so on. And whereas the book offers a selection of the stories collected by five fine storytellers with large repertories, the Danish Folklore Nexus gives all the stories that ETK collected from them (in the case of Kirsten Marie Pedersdatter, 102 stories, compared to the book’s twenty-six) as well as stories he collected from other informants. In all, the digital version includes an impressive 907 stories from 568 different tellers, including 434 stories from the five storytellers featured in the book.
When one launches the Danish Folklore Nexus on one’s computer, the left-hand side of the screen fills with a map, mostly of Jutland, with arrows pointing to the places where the five featured storytellers dwelled. One is then in the Data Navigator, as opposed to the Topic and Index Navigator. On the right-hand side of one’s screen there appears a list of the 568 narrators. If one clicks, for example, upon Peder Johansen, the young miller, one gets a window with a photo of him, a short biography, and a link to a fuller biography, while the map on the left zeroes in on the region where he lived. From here one can click on “places,” whereupon the text will list all the places Johansen mentions in his tales and the map will show exactly where they are. If instead one clicks on “stories,” the window on the right will list references to all the stories that ETK collected from Johansen.
To illustrate: I click arbitrarily on Peder Johansen’s story #212, which turns out to be a narrative about an old rope-maker. I see immediately a transcription of ETK’s fieldwork notes for the story, abbreviations and all, in addition to the text in the form in which the story was eventually published. Additional options at this point are to click on “English translation” of the fieldwork notes or of the published version to get a translation from the Danish. The page also contains a brief explanatory note on the story by Tangherlini and a reference to a related story. Clicking “manuscript images” brings up a photographic image of ETK’s handwritten fieldwork notes for the text, while the map on the left shows the location of Fuldbro Mølle (Fuldbro Mill), where ETK collected the story from Johansen. At the bottom of the screen, I click on “fieldtrips” and learn that ETK collected the story in the course of fieldwork done in February 1888, and the map even shows the places ETK visited on that trip as well as his presumed route.
If I now switch from the Data Navigator to the second option, the Topic and Index Navigator, I find, via a number of keyword lists and indices, some of which were devised by ETK and others by Tangherlini, all the texts that feature a particular element (for example, “elves”), or I can click on “genres” in order to locate all the legends or folktales in the collection or texts with such minor genres as “games” and “recipes.”
Tangherlini’s book and DVD, published jointly by the University of Washington Press and by the Museum Tusculanum Press in Copenhagen, are welcome contributions to folk-narrative scholarship. The book is an enjoyable and authentic read for persons with a casual interest in Danish folklore, while the Danish Folklore Nexus is a rich resource for the serious researcher as well as for lovers of the wonders of technology.
--------
[Review length: 1193 words • Review posted on April 2, 2014]