The end of the year is often a time of reflection, so I thought I would take some space here to sum up the last twelve months or so. 2025 has been a year different from the last few years; I haven't had all the work on the Asbjørnsen & Moe collections to do. I began the year quite slowly, then, focussing on my well-being more than getting anything done. Eight years of relentless translation, writing, and editorial work (which came to an end in September 2024), on top of a fulltime job, took me several months to recover from.

During this time, I realised that my reading had more or less stalled. Of course, I have read volumes (for the purpose of writing), but by the end of last year, my personal reading for pleasure had dwindled to little more than one book a month. This is no way to live! Digging deep into my soul, I realised that my sluggishness had its root in publicly tracking my reading on Goodreads. Apparently I am put together in a way that rebels at anything that whiffs of obligation or competition, hence the depressed mood. I closed my Goodreads account, et voilà! My reading has increased to a level I now find acceptable. I still log what I read – what I have read, when I began and finished, as well as what I thought of the book – but these records are for my eyes only.

As spring sprang, I felt rested enough to get back into publishing something. My translation of Regine Normann’s Legends from Arctic Norway had been completed in tandem with the production of Asbjørnsen & Moe, but it needed editing and compiling. This I did, and made it available at the beginning of June. An ebook followed at the end of the summer.

Then I had the idea of creating a compendium of brief texts as an advent calendar. The folklore had already been translated, so again, all it needed was editing and compiling, which I did. Christmas in Norway, 2025 is still available, and still as entertaining after advent.

In ancient news, my volume of Erotic Folktales from Norway has this year sold its thousandth copy (it’s taken eight years, but even so…), which makes it my best selling book, which has given me the greatest return, and which has subsidised all the other books. If I have lost money overall, it’s not much – thanks to this book.

The coming year

My plans for the coming year consist of publishing more folktales and legends, and writing articles. Articles on the block include an introduction to three early Norwegian women writers of fairy tales; an essay on (and translation of) the only bisexual/ polyamorous folktale I have come across; and a discussion and translation of a folktale rumoured to be a source of “The Story of the Three Bears,” Robert Southey’s famous fairy tale from 1837.

Bookwise, I have a volume of draug (revenants of the sea dead) legends largely finished, which is in want of brief explanatory introductions to the unfamiliar authors and texts, and then editing. This one has been a long time coming, ever displaced by other projects. But no more!

After that, I have these volumes in the works:

• A volume of forgotten folktales that are in some manner connected to Asbjørnsen & Moe.

• A volume of legends and hulder tales by Astrid and Olaf Thalberg:

Old Jon Berget knew a thing or two; he could make twisted limbs whole again, or recite some words over sick livestock to make it recover. Folk said he owned a black book.

• A second advent calendar. It probably won’t recoup my investment, but it’s my money, and I enjoy putting it out there,

But whatever the coming year throws our way, I hope it is an improvement on 2025, and I hope that yours is a happy new year!

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Since the release of The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe, a year ago this month, I have been quietly correcting errors as I have become aware of them. Most of them are typos, some a misspelled word or the odd Norwegian spelling that has escaped the editing process, etc. Some have been of a more comprehensive nature; my first correction, for example, was a compilation error that resulted in the omission of the table of contents from one of the volumes. But now I am closing this chapter. Any errors that remain (and in a book of more than 2000 pages, overseen only by the author and one editor, there will be some) will just have to stay there.

My decision was prompted by my recent discovery of the collector and informant for the published version of “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” which I found deep in Asbjørnsen’ and Moe’s correspondance (see header image). My immediate impulse was to add the information to the existing edition, but I realised that doing so would disturb pagination, rendering the book unreliable as a source for others to cite. Consequently, I have begun collating additional information for a future second edition of my work. How long it will be before I have a critical mass of new notes, I cannot say; after all, it was nearly a year before I uncovered the names of the previously obscure collector and informant of a single folktale.

Watch this space, I guess.

An established term that causes headaches even as its use is widespread, “fairy tale” is frustratingly vague. In her remarkable 2022 book, Fairy Tales 101, Jeana Jorgensen defines the fairy tale as “fictional, formulaic narratives involving transformations, magic, and quests.” (p. 9). She allows them to inhabit literature as well as folklore, and they permeate human culture, transcending both history and geography. This definition is mitigated throughout the rest of the book, however: “If fairy tales aren’t technically defined by the presence of fairies in them, why is the word ‘fairy’ in the bloody title?!” (p. 24).

Dr Jorgensen does take a passing foray into the words used in three other languages (German, Russian, French), but is rather imprecise: “we have in German the word märchen which basically means fairy tale” (p. 24–25). First, as “Märchen” is a noun, it should be capitalised. Secondly, the word does not basically mean fairy tale; “-chen” is a diminuative suffix, which means that the “Mär-” it is affixed to is minor or held dear. “Mär” denotes “an often repeated untruth, a fable, a false narrative,” or “tidings, news,” as well as the “tale, fairytale, fable” definition that Jorgensen refers to. There is thus a deeper dimension to Märchen than fairy tales.

The French “contes de fées” (accounts of fairies) receives special treatment as the direct antecedent to the English term “fairy tale,” but Jorgensen does not problematise the term; French parlour tales, from the writers of which the term comes, made use of received, rather than recorded, tropes and motifs in their own compositions. For this reason, “contes de fées” ought not to include folkloric narratives. In my opinion, that is.

Despite only a brief treatment of these languages, the idea of learning how non-English speakers talk about the narratives we call fairy tales, to inform our own usage, is sound. After all, the various languages “have their own nuance”?

For instance, the common term in the Germanic Nordic languages is “æfintýr” (Old Norse), “eventyr” (Danish and Norwegian), “ævintýr” (Faroese), “ævintýri” (Icelandic), and “äventyr” (Swedish). All of these ultimately derive from the Latin “adventūra,” which is defined as “things that will happen,” and which is also the source of the English word “adventure.” Nordic fairy tales are thus “adventure stories.”

Further classification of the “adventure stories” umbrella follows the German model (also briefly touched on by Jeana Jorgensen, p. 25): we have art-adventures (“kunsteventyr” – narratives with a known author), as well as folk-adventures (“folkeeventyr” – narratives collected from the folk). “Folkeeventyr” may also be broken down into smaller categories: “dyreeventyr” (animal tales), “undereventyr” (wonder tales), “skjemteeventyr” (joke tales), “novelleeventyr” (novella tales), “legendeeventyr” (legend tales), and so on. Each of these categories has its own set of defining features, but common to all is that they have been recorded from folk-raconteurs. (See Ørnulf Hodne. Det norske folkeeventyret: fra folkediktning til nasjonalkultur. Oslo: Cappelen, 1998.)

No newly adopted term is likely to replace “fairy tale” in English. Jeana Jorgensen admits that we have to do the best we can with what has been given to us; we cannot readily change centuries of English usage. Still, we do have a lot to learn from how other languages speak of these tantalising narratives.

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