Onwards!

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Mockup covers

So now that The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe has been released (details here), I am now able to move on to the other publishing projects that I have in various stages of readiness.

First on the block are Regine Normann's legends, which I am calling Arctic Legends from Norway, a compendium of two volumes she published in the late 1920s. The legends are strange and unsettling, giving accounts of various preternatural intrusions in the lives of simple fisher farmers who populated the coastal regions of the north at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The manuscript is currently awaiting final editing, and the book will be published in the first half of the new year.

Next on the list is a volume of draug legends. Ostensibly the revenant of the sea dead who cannot be interred in consecrated ground, the draug haunts the seas, looking to cause calamity to those who travel by water, or perhaps it merely acts as a psychopomp to the fey (doomed to die). In either case, there are a good number of legends concerning these creatures, and my volume will bring them together in English for the first time.

The translation work is complete on most of these texts, and it shouldn't take too long to ready the work for editing.

Third is a volume of previously unpublished variants of Norwegian folktales. These incorporate some surprising elements, such as a gossiping squirrel running up and down the great linden tree in “Faithful and Unfaithful,” the troll confronting the billy-goats after they have eaten themselves fat, and even a shocking title – “The Princess Who Should Commit Fornication and Murder” (collected by Jørgen Moe, who later became a bishop).

The majority of these tales exist in sketches or even raw records, which means that I have to actually compose them so that they are readable and entertaining (the sine qua non of folk narratives). Although I have begun, there is still a way to go with this volume, and I dare not give it a deadline.

Lastly, there is the furtherance of my work on Asbjørnsen & Moe. I want to produce an ebook edition, and I want to release various selections of the folktales and legends – perhaps even a series of single tales. As the texts are already in publishable form, these projects will give me something to fiddle with while I am procrastinating.

There is enough work to fill my time, then, and it’ll all keep me off the streets until I’m done. Keep an eye out here for news of new releases.

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Categories Publishing, Folklore