In their “Subscription Invitation,” before the initial publication of Norwegian Folktales, Asbjørnsen & Moe emphasised the urgency of their work:
Collection of these folk compositions is urgently needed at present, if it is ever to be possible. Among other things, our reawakened, newly outward-looking political life is by necessity hostile to legends and folktales. That these, which shortened many a long winter’s evening around the hearth, and many a long day behind the herds in the forest, should fall evermore silent in our mountain valleys is a fact that, while encouraging as a sign of increasing enlightenment, is certainly regrettable, if no one preserves them before they die on the lips of the folk.
– Published in Den Constitutionelle, 1840-02-23
Modern society is hostile to folklore, they claim; collection of folk narratives should therefore occur before they are lost on the tongues of their respective tradition bearers.
Beginning with Asbjørnsen & Moe in 1837, the collection of folk narratives in Norway had all but died out by 1940.
But is it not just as likely that the written publication of collected folktales and legends did away with the further need for the oral record? Why should we listen to grandma telling tales, when we can read them for ourselves in a book? Also, how can collectors working after widespread dissemination of folktales and legends in written form be sure that what they record from their informants is in fact an oral narrative rather than something the prospective informant has read in a popular book of tales?
I don’t suppose we shall ever be able to answer such questions. Whatever the case may be, though, modern society appears to be inconducive to the oral tradition of the old stories.