In between fiddling with this website, I translate and edit and publish Norwegian folklore. Within the next year, I shall be publishing the end result of what has been my primary project for the last twenty years: The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe, which will appear in three volumes. Every folktale published by Asbjørnsen & Moe, every so-called hulder tale published by Asbjørnsen, every note the duo published, and every preface, foreword, and introduction. It’s a big book, with a page count upwards of 1800 pages.
Two things have got me reevaluating my plan to simply publish and perish:
- Someone on Mastodon mentioned that books of upwards of 600 pages are difficult to negotiate, and something less than enjoyable to read.
- In his third edition, Asbjørnsen departed from the publishing model of the second edition, which he and Moe published with all the ancillary texts mentioned above. His reason was that a general readership is interested only in the folktales and legends; there is a limited interest in the notes and scholarly texts.
I ought to address these caveats. And so I have made some decisions, the most important of which is that there will be a full version as detailed above. This has been my goal from the very beginning, and it is something I would produce, even if no one else bought a copy. As it happens, though, scholars have been looking for such a beast. Quite soon afterwards, however, further editions will appear:
- A three-volume edition of just the folklore texts. This will follow a historical Norwegian publication, meaning the texts will appear in a different order, and a very few texts will be replaced with others (fully documented in the above edition).
- A three-volume children’s edition, which also follows a historical Norwegian publication. This edition omits the most explicit of the texts (sexual explicitness, that is; violence is fine, of course!), and features a larger type, more whitespace, and bigger images.
Speaking of images, all three editions will be fully illustrated with artwork by Theodor Kittelsen, Erik Werenskiold, Otto Sinding, Hans Gude, Adolph Tidemand, August Schneider, Johan Eckersberg, etc.
Which edition will you buy?