Scandinavian Folktales and More

Folktales of different cultures

The Scandinavian Folktales

Most of the Scandinavian folktales are from a single Norwegian collection, titled East o' the Sun and West o’ the Moon.

These stories were gathered in the early 1840s by Peter Christian Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe.

These Billy goats ‘’trip-trapped’ across the troll’s bridge to eat the green grass on the other side in a tale that is a perfect example of folktale structure: the use of three Billy goats.

The increasing size of each one, and the anticipated downfall of the mean old troll. Fast action and an economy of words lead directly to the storyteller’s conventional ending. Another story that delights young children is Nancy Polette’s the Little Old Woman and the Hungry Cat.

When his owner leaves him alone, the cat eats the sixteen cupcakes she left cooling and proceeds down the road eating everyone and everything in its path. When he meets his owner, he gobbles her up as well.

Her sewing scissors save the day when she can cut her way out, and she and the rest of the cat’s victims escape. Free they all have a party except for the hungry cat, who must stitch himself up.

Eric Kimmel has placed one of Asbjornsen's tales in a pioneer setting in Easy Work. A husband thinks his wife has it easy staying at home each day. When he chides her, she offers to exchange jobs with him.

At first, he thinks it is ‘’easy work’’ and devises some Rube Goldberg inventions to help him mind the baby, churn the butter, bake the biscuits, and watch the cow.

When his overconfident macho attitude ends in disaster, he finally admits how hard his wife must work. George Dasent’s East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon is a complex tale in which a poor man gives his youngest daughter to a white bear, who promises to make the family rich.

The white bear comes to her every night and throws off his beast shape, but he leaves before dawn, she never sees him. When her mother tells her to light a candle and investigate his face, she sees a handsome prince.

Three drops of hot tallow awake him, he must return to the castle that lies east of the sun and west of the moon and marry the princess with along nose.

So, the girl seeks the castle, finally arriving there on the back of the North Wind. Before the prince will marry the one who sets one condition; he will only marry the one who can wash out the tallow spots on his shirt.

Neither his long-nose troll bride-to-be nor an old troll hag can do it, but the girl who has posed as a beggar can wash it as the snow.

The wicked trolls burst, and the prince and princess marry and leave the castle that lies east of the sun and west of the moon. In many Norwegian tales, the hero is aided in the accomplishment of such seemingly impossible tasks by animals or people who have been kind.

The hero of Eric Kimmel’s Boots and His Brothers sets out with his two brothers, Peter, and Paul, to seek his fortune. They meet an old woman along the way who tells them that their fortune can be gained from an old king who needs an oak tree chopped down and a well dug.

The two older boys push the old woman out of the way and hurry off. When Boots stops and takes time to talk to her, she gives him three magical objects and some good advice.

These help him chop down the enchanted oak tree, dig a well in iron rocks, and fill it with cool clear water from a hundred leagues away. The king is so delighted with Boots; that he gives him his weight in gold and half his kingdom. For the greedy brothers, the king has a job as a dog keeper.

Scandinavian tales often reflect the harsh elements of the northern climate. Animal helpmates assist heroes in overcoming giants or wicked trolls.

Frequently heroes are human beings who are held by many trolls, or magical objects and are fast-moving. The youngest son performs impossible tasks with ease and a kind of practical resourcefulness.

French Folktales

French folktales were the earliest to be recorded, and they are also the most sophisticated and adult. This is probably because these tales were the rage among the court society of Louis XIV. In 1697.

Charles Perrault, a distinguished member of the French Academy, published a little volume of fairy tales. The title page bore no name, and there has been some debate as to whether they were the product of Charles Perrault or his son. Pierre.

While the stories were probably close to the ones told to Pierre by his governess, they have the consciously elegant style of the ‘’literary tale’’ rather than the ‘’told tale’’ of the Grimm.

The fairy godmother in Cinderella is Perrault’s invention, as are the pumpkin coach, the six horses of dappled mouse grey, and the glass slipper. In this French version, Cinderella is kind and forgiving of her two stepsisters, inviting them to live at the palace with her.

Marcia Brown was faithful to the French setting and the original text in her Caldecott Medal-winning illustrations for Perrault’s Cinderella. The sister story to ‘’Cinderella’’ is the well-known ‘’Sleeping Beauty,’’ and Perrault’s version closely parallels the one collected by the Grimm.

It is interesting to compare the wishes that the fairies gave to the newborn baby. In the German tale, they endow Briar Rose with virtue, beauty, riches, and ‘’everything in the world she could wish for’' In the French version, they bestow on her beauty, an angelic disposition and the ability to dance, sing, and play music.

In both versions, the jealous uninvited fairy predicts that the child will prick her finger on a spindle and die. This wish is softened by the last fairy, which changes it to the long sleep of a hundred years to be broken by the kiss of a prince.

The folktales of France are usually not the tales of the poor but those of the rich. Most have all the trappings of the traditional fairy tale, including fairy godmothers, stepsisters, and handsome princes. Tales of romance and sophisticated intrigue, they must surely have been the ‘’soap operas’’ of their day.

Russian Folktales

Folktales from Russia feature universal patterns of tasks and trials, tricks, and transformations. Elizabeth Winthrop’s retelling of the Little Humpbacked Horse is quite complex and begins with a tale of how a modest hero, Ivan, tamed a mate with a golden mane.

In return for her freedom, she gives him three horses, two fits as gifts for the tsar, and the other a little humpbacked horse. These gifts take Ivan to the tsar, where he becomes the stable master, but it is the little-humpbacked horse that becomes Ivan’s helpful companion and helps him through many trials to his final triumph.

Russian folklore is replete with other stories of poor but lucky men. With the help of an irresistible magic sack, an old soldier outwits some devils in Michael McCurdy’s The Devils Who Learned to Be Good, and another soldier saves a helpless tsar in Uri Shulevitz’s Soldier and Tsar in the Forest.