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A review by laurenkd89
The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe by Jørgen Engebretsen Moe, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
3.0
These are fun, bizarre Norwegian folktales - simply put. Asbjornsen and Moe were two nineteenth-century collectors of old Norwegian folklore who worked in tandem for most of their folk-telling careers; this is the first English translation of their complete folktales in more than 150 years.
The stories read like a mix of Grimm’s fairy tales, ancient etiological stories, and Greek myths. To me, they’re not the kind of myths that I would have enjoyed reading as a young girl - they’re filled with deception, mischief, murder (quite often), and other wild adventures - but I can see these being popular oral histories for kids of the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of the myths tell tales of “Ash Lad,” the youngest of three sons who was so named because his older brothers said he was only good for digging in the ashes - but as you may expect, Ash Lad is a clever boy, finding novel solutions to problems that stump his older brothers. You’ll find all of the other folktale characters here - damsels in distress, tricky robbers, nasty Norwegian trolls, wise and prophetic old women or men, all set against Norway’s forests and mountains.
Reading the introductory note from the translator gives you a sense of how daunting it must have been to translate these stories - not did Nunnally have to translate from old Norwegian, but she strived to maintain the same simple narrative style that Asbjornsen and Moe used, filled with humor, alliteration, and repetition. She also updated the dialogue to make it less archaic, but still reflective of the homely characters in the stories. Some of Nunnally’s efforts don’t fully succeed, but I was impressed anywhere I could get even a glimpse of the humor and mischief that was present in the original Norwegian tales.
Overall, an entertaining and fun read if you were the kind of kid who enjoyed fairy tales or the kind of high-schooler who enjoyed the Greek epics. Thank you to University of Minnesota Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy.
The stories read like a mix of Grimm’s fairy tales, ancient etiological stories, and Greek myths. To me, they’re not the kind of myths that I would have enjoyed reading as a young girl - they’re filled with deception, mischief, murder (quite often), and other wild adventures - but I can see these being popular oral histories for kids of the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of the myths tell tales of “Ash Lad,” the youngest of three sons who was so named because his older brothers said he was only good for digging in the ashes - but as you may expect, Ash Lad is a clever boy, finding novel solutions to problems that stump his older brothers. You’ll find all of the other folktale characters here - damsels in distress, tricky robbers, nasty Norwegian trolls, wise and prophetic old women or men, all set against Norway’s forests and mountains.
Reading the introductory note from the translator gives you a sense of how daunting it must have been to translate these stories - not did Nunnally have to translate from old Norwegian, but she strived to maintain the same simple narrative style that Asbjornsen and Moe used, filled with humor, alliteration, and repetition. She also updated the dialogue to make it less archaic, but still reflective of the homely characters in the stories. Some of Nunnally’s efforts don’t fully succeed, but I was impressed anywhere I could get even a glimpse of the humor and mischief that was present in the original Norwegian tales.
Overall, an entertaining and fun read if you were the kind of kid who enjoyed fairy tales or the kind of high-schooler who enjoyed the Greek epics. Thank you to University of Minnesota Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy.