TPO20 第三篇讲座

主题：Folktales （Norwegian）- 民间故事-挪威

考点：定义/并列 /对比/举例/强调/转折

识记词汇重点：

feature Identify / engage / Be made up /distinct / contrast / imaginative

orally /revealing /illustrate/ domestic /wild /retain  /internal /arise

characteristic/ catagory /invibile cloak /transformation /heroine

stock /conventional / occur /resemble /supernatural /comical/ playful

amusing /overall /worthy /reflection  /renewed /

拓展阅读：“Norwegian Folktales and Legends” ｜Author: Birgit Hertzberg Johnsen

文篇梗概

作为挪威文化遗产宝库中的瑰宝，广为流传的民间故事是挪威文化的一个重要标签。

本文作为TPO20Lecture 3 的拓展，除了详细介绍挪威民间故事的风格，种类（TPO讲座内容），还涉及探究挪威民间故事早期起源，挪威民间传说在近现代的记录与传承（讲座中未涉及），挪威民间传说之所为挪威一独有符号的原因，文章后半段还涉及讲述者-storyteller，民间传说，历史传说，神话传说，以及传说的“历史变迁”和人们对传说的态度！

本文作者系 挪威民俗档案管，文化研究部教授

TheNorwegian cultural heritage holds many treasures. Popular story telling may bethe among the finest of these treasures. Even today this literature isimportant to Norwegians. It shows us where the roots of our culture lie, andforms part of our identity. Folktales and legends form, in addition tofolksongs, the bulk of our more ancient literature.

Folktalesare free ranging and imaginative stories which have passed from storyteller tostoryteller from time immemorial. They depict the relationship between people,expressed in fantastic and symbolic terms. Like all good literature, they arebased on real life, yet never confined to reality or what people consider trueand reasonable. They often feature supernatural and extraordinaryelements.

The style of the folktale

Thefolktales have a style all of their own, with a standard opening formula. Themost common are: “Once upon a time”, “Once there was a king and a queen”, or“There was once a time when all things could speak”.

Similarly,folktales tend to have a standardized ending. Often bringing us back to thereal world again. Sometimes this formula tells us what happened after the mainstory was over: “And if they are not dead by now, then they are still alive”,or “The salt mill lies at the bottom of the ocean and it goes on grinding tothis very day, and that is why the sea is salty”.

Simplificationand schematization are common in folktales. The stories have a limited array ofstock characters. A king or queen, a princess or a prince, three brothers orthree trolls. The roles are further schematized by type casting. Askeladden, isthe most important of all the characters. The young lad always starts offportrayed as a ne’er-do-well, but he has great hidden talents which allow himto perform great feats. He always waits for just the right moment, then hesteps forward and does what no one else can. The plot is often schematized too,and usually there are only two people in the plot at any given time.

Thefolktale uses short characterizations and employs repetition to emphasize whatis important. The number “three” recurs; we meet three brothers, threeprincesses or three trolls. In the story about “White Bear King Valemon”(Hvitebjørn Kong Valemon) we are told that the bear carries off threeprincesses, on three successive Thursday evenings. Repetition is oftenaccompanied by escalation; the dangers and difficulties increase each time theyare mentioned, and the solution is normally reached the third time round. Thefolktale starts and ends calmly, and poetic justice is seen to be done. Thegood are rewarded and the evil are punished. There is always a happyending.

The various types of folktales

There are several different types of folktale. We usually divide them intothree groups: animal stories, tales of the supernatural, and comicalstories.

Theformer have animals as their main characters, both domestic and wild animals.The animals are able to talk and they behave like human beings while retainingsome of their animal characteristics. Norwegian folktales of this sort focusmainly on the bear, the wolf and the fox – and some of the best known storiesinvolve these animals.

Most of the stories explain the origin of a particular feature of the animal.One well-known story tells how the fox was able to fool the bear into going icefishing with his tail. The ice froze around the bear’s tail and when he triedto pull it up quickly to land a fish, he pulled it off, which is why to thisday the bear has such a short tail. Equally well-known is the story about thefox who tried to steal butter. Instead the churn topples over, spilling milk onthe tip of the fox’s tail, explaining the white marking on the fox’s brush.Similarly there is the story of the house mouse and the field mouse. The wellknown Greek fable about the monkey who was proud of her children becomes astory about a sandpiper in Norwegian.

Ofthe domestic animals, cats, goats and chickens are the favorites. A story whichmay be unique to Norway is about the three billy goats Gruff, (de tre bukkeneBruse), who outsmarted and destroyed a big troll on their way to summerpastures.

Storiesabout the supernatural and magic form the biggest and most important group offolktales. They tell about specific beings such as giants, dragons, trolls,witches and humans with supernatural powers. They also describe specificsupernatural phenomena such as seven league boots, cloaks of invisibility,table cloths which bring forth food when they are laid, glass mountains,castles made of gold and all manner of fantastic and wonderful things. Thesestories of the supernatural also tell the tale of specific events, such asjourneys made through seven times seven kingdoms, people who sleep for ahundred years, people who are turned into animals, into stone and so on.

The structure of these adventures follows a fixed pattern and the differentsequences of the plot have their predetermined positions. First comes theaccount of some mishap, loss or accident; such as a princess being carried offby a troll. Next the hero or heroine becomes endowed with special aids orpowers. The seemingly good-for-nothing boy, Askeladden, drinks a magic potionwhich allows him to wield an enchanted sword, with which he can chop off thetroll’s head.

Next we are told about how the heroine meets the prince, or the hero meets theprincess, and how complications arise causing delay and preventing the two frombeing together. After these ordeals, the main character overcomes alldifficulties or opponents and, as the saying goes, “Wins the princess and halfthe kingdom”.

The transformation stories tell how humans are turned into animals or othercreatures. “East of the sun and west of the moon” (Østenfor sol og vestenformåne) is one of the best known, and this and similar stories have roots whichgo back to the Greek legends about Amor and Psyke.

Ofthe stories where a difficult task forms the main theme, there is only onewhich is common in the Norwegian tradition, namely the story of “The husband’sdaughter and the wife’s daughter” (Manndattera og kjerringdattera). Best knownof the wonder-tales is “Table, set thyself!” (Bord dekk deg!) and the storyabout “The salt mill at the bottom of the ocean” (Kvernen som står og maler påhavsens bunn).

Thecomical stories form the third large group og folktales. This type og tale hasfewer supernatural aspects compared with the other types. On the other handthere is no other part of this literature which contains so many strange ideasand wonderful jests, as stories like “Gudbrand on the hill” (Gudbrand i Lia),or “The old woman who always had to have her own way” (Kjerringa mot strømmen).

The oldest traces of Norwegian folktales

Theproliferation of folktales over almost the entire globe shows that this is oneof the oldest forms of lore. The Norwegian word for folktale; “eventyr”, cropsus as early as the twelfth century in the form “ævintyr”, borrowed from theLatin word adventura, meaning event or strange occurrence. In Old Norseliterature one often comes across features reminiscent of folktales or withfolktale motifs. In Odd Snorresøn’s prolog to the Olav Trygvasson’s saga we aretold that “it is better to listen to sagas than to tales about stepmothers,such as shepherd boys tell. In such stories one cannot tell what is true andwhat is not and also the king often tends to come out of such storiesbadly”.

Clear evidence of the existence of folktales or stories similar to folktales,about stepmothers at the time of the sagas, is also to be found in the sagaabout King Sverre. In the seventh chapter we are told about the king’s journeyto Värmland: “on this journey he experienced many bad things. It was much likethe old stories of what goes on between royal children and their wickedstepmothers”.

Despitehaving old roots, folktales were not written down in Norway until thenineteenth century, owning to the fact that folktales were held in low esteemamong the educated classes. Even the leading eighteenth century Norwegianwriter Holberg deemed folktales fit only for the nursery; they were “withoutmerit and ought to be banned”. This view only changed with the advent of theromantic movement in Germany. The romantics saw folklore as the most obviousand clear reflection of the soul of the people.

Thefirst to see that folktales had scientific value, were the German ethnologistsJacob and Wilhelm Grimm. A loyalty to the popular tradition became the Grimmbrothers’ main preoccupation when they collected and published German folkstories. The first Norwegian collectors of folk stories, Peter ChristenAsbjørnsen and Jørgen lie, followed in the footsteps of the Grimmbrothers.

Asbjørnsenand Moe’s collections.

As early as in the 1840’s Asbjørnsen and Moe published their first smallpamphlets. The first edition of their collected folktales came in 1852. Thebook successfully unites genuine and unassuming characteristics with a readilyaccessible style. Asbjørnsen and Moe’s folktales have established ourimpression of what a Norwegian folktale is like, a picture which comes close tothe real thing. The large number of new editions and new selections fromAsbjørnsen and Moe’s collections have become the classic expression of the Norwegianfolktale tradition. With the brilliant illustrations they were to receivelater, they have become representative of Norwegian folktales, both in Norwayand abroad.

Asbjørnsen and Moe’s collection of stories have kept from becoming outmoded byremaining true to their sources, and by stemming from a deep understanding ofthe value of folktales. The collection contains around one hundred folktales, alittle less than half of all those now known in Norway. They are, however, notwholly representative geographically, most of the stories being from EasternNorway.

Asbjørnsenand Moe underline the difference between compiling or writing down andretelling. “Compilers and retellers” they called themselves. Retelling implieschanging the dialect the stories were told in. And yet they always sought toretell the tales “faithfully so as to reflect what we had heard from theteller”. Asbjørnsen and Moe only wrote down short outlines of the plots and thequotes, primarily to assist the memory. They put themselves in a class withgood storytellers and told the stories in their own individual way, just as thebest story tellers used to do.

Over the years, their works have been published in many editions and each timethe language and the style have been revised so that the work remains fresh andnew.

Laterfolktales have been collected throughout the country and numerous collectionsof stories have been published, the majority of them in Nynorsk (the second ofNorway’s two official languages) or dialect and some in the Sami language.There more recent works have never been able to complete with Asbjørnsen andMoe in terms of popularity or circulation, either in Norway or abroad.

How Norwegian are our folktales?Attemptsto show what is characteristic of Norwegian folktales are often somewhat lessthan convincing. This is because the folktale, in addition to being national incharacter, is also cosmopolitan. The stories migrate from one place to anotherover large parts of the globe. If one picks up a collection of folktales fromanother country, one may well find many features which one thought werespecifically Norwegian.

Itis often hard to determine what stems from a prototype version of the folktaleand what has evolved in the Norwegian variant. The style and the individualcharacter of the storyteller has bearing on this.

The typical Norwegian folktale style is above all objective in its manner.However fantastic the subject matter may be, the style of the narrative remainsrealistic. The environment in which the stories take place is Norwegian, andthe King in the story bears a striking resemblance to a Norwegian landowner,just as the seemingly ne’er-do-well, Askeladden, resembles the typical tenant’sson. The illustrations to Asbjørnsen and Moe’s folktales, in particular thoseby Erik Werenskiold, have also given Norwegian folktales an air of Norwegiandown-to-earth realism.

Similarly,feelings are rarely mentioned in the folktales, and the narrator seldomexpresses sympathy or commiseration with the characters. The realistic style isalso short on detail and description is rudimentary.

Storytelling and storytellers

Research has shown that it was not everyone who told folktales in the oldendays. Telling these stories required special gifts and the storyteller mightwell be compared to a craftsman. Few people were able to tell the long andcomplex supernatural or magical folktales.

Thenarrators had to have both a good memory and be able to tell a story well. Eachstoryteller had his or her special hallmark or way of telling a story. Astoryteller never tells the story the same way from one time to the next, andeach tells the story differently from all others. The consequence of this isthat there is no single version of a folktale which is the correct one.

Therural working class clung to the old agrarian culture the longest and this isthe culture in which the folktale is at home. At the time when folktales beganto be collected it was particularly in the lower strata of the rural populationthat the storytellers were to be found. They were day laborers, tenant farmers,servants and travelers.

There was apparently some connection between the gender of the teller and thatof the main character in the story, particularly male storytellers preferred totell stories where the hero was a man. This is probably because tellingfolktales can be a way of expressing oneself in the guise of the fictitiouscharacter, who is able to do the things that the teller would like to havedone. In addition the folk stories can be a collective day dream. Thestoryteller draws up the framework of a fantasy world which the listeners candream themselves into.

Folk legends 

The folktale is a branch of folk literature which has much in common with theother main section of popular storytelling, the folk legends. Unlike thefolktale, the legend often claims to be factual, and often describes things ina way that people can believe in. The legend is generally shorter than thefolktale and is usually fixed in time and space.

In the older historical topographic literature we have both legends and storiesabout the legends. The first independent Norwegian collection of legends isAndreas Fayes’ “Norwegian Legends” (“Norske Sagn”), from 1833. He relied onmany oral and written sources. However, his rendering did not catch the spokenstyle of the popular storyteller’s art. P.C. Asbjørnsen, on the other hand, wasable to do this in an artistic way in “Norwegian Ghost stories and Folklegends”(“Norske Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn”), which was published in two volumes in1845 and 1848. Within the framework of travelogue and ethnographic account,these two volumes contain a rich selection of legends, particularly fromEastern Norway. This was the first Norwegian collection of legends. Subsequentlya large number of collections from all over Norway have been published.

Mythical legendsAspectsof the Norwegian countryside are a constant topic in Norwegian legend. To thisday such legends remain vital in the local communities, and some are known throughoutthe country. Legends connected with natural phenomena are common in allcountries, but a rugged and mountainous country like Norway probably has aparticularly rich tradition in legends. Geological features can often seemstrange and wonderful, stimulating the popular imagination. If a mountain tophas a hole right through it, as is the case with the Torghatten mountain inNorthern Norway, this would seem to require an explanation.

Legendswhich refer to supernatural beings and spirits (vetter) are often referred toas mythical legends. Previously, academics used to think that the supernaturalbeings in the legends were actually the descendants of the old gods, hence thename, mythical legend. In fact only one of the Norwegian legends refers the oldgods, which is about the god Thor. By the Totak lake in the country ofTelemark, there is an enormous rock scree, called the Urebø scree. It issupposed to have been created when Thor smashed the mountain above,obliterating the little farm below with a pile of rocks.

Thereare several other legends about supernatural beings in the Norwegian tradition.Many of the legends are connected with the sea. There are many about the seamonster, the best known of which was about the monster in Lake Mjøsa. In recenttimes it is particularly the lake at Seljord that has become Norway’s LochNess. Otherwise there are tales about various creatures of the sea, the mostcommon being about the sea ghost, Draugen. He is considered to be the ghost ofsomeone who has drowned or the personification of all who have died at sea. Draugenis described as a headless fisherman dressed in oilskins. He sails the seas inhalf a boat and wails when someone is about to drown.

Ininland lakes and rivers lives the river sprite or Nixie. He is dangerousbecause he tries to lure people into the water with him. Like Draugen, he alsogives warning of when someone is about to drown. He represents what isdangerous and unpleasant about water. This awe-inspiring creature ismasterfully portrayed by the painter T. Kittelsen. He has also painted theriver sprite in the guise of a white horse, a form in which the river spritecould appear according to several legends.

SpecificallyNorwegian traditions are legends about the spirit which plays the fiddle, (Fossegrimen),who lives in waterfalls and who can teach would-be fiddlers how to play.Aspiring fiddle players must go to the waterfall and offer food to the Fossegrimen.The legends often tell why this did not succeed – for example when the foodoffered was so inadequate that the Fossegrimen only taught the fiddler to tunehis instrument, but not how to play it.

Greatnumbers of mythical creatures inhabit the mountains and forests, and legendsabout landmarks created by troll exist all over the country. Sometimes thetrolls themselves remain standing in stone. Marks left by the trolls alwaysshow how big they were, such as the Giant Cut (Jutulhogget) in the Østerdalvalley in Eastern Norway, or great rocks they have thrown at a church or someother troll.

Thepixies, (haugfolket), or the subterraneans, (de underjordiske), undoubtedlyplay the biggest role in Norwegian legend. They consist of a large group ofsupernatural beings (vetter). They have many names such as bergfolk – themountain people, haugfolk – the hill people, underjordiske – those who livebelow ground, huldrefolk and tusser. Legend has it that these people are thedescendants of the children that Eve hid from God. When He discovered that theyhad been hidden, God proclaimed that what had once been hidden should remainhidden. Another legend tells that those who live underground were angels whomthe Lord had expelled from paradise.

Thosewho live underground are usually considered as being of a lesser order thanhumankind, and they are envious of the people who are able to live out in thesunlight (i solheimen). They are often smaller than humans, and they dress inblue or grey. Their world is much like the world of humans, they tend animalsand farms, by the sea they are fishermen with boats. As their name implies,they live underground or inside mountains, and many legends tell how one canhear them from inside the mountain or about coming across them above ground,seeing their flocks or similar stories. Henrik Ibsen used material from suchlegends in his “Peer Gynt”. The huldre-people can enter into our world and socan the things they own. Legends tell about men who marry huldre-girls or howthey obtained beautiful silver objects like drinking horns or bridal crowns bythrowing a piece of steel over the objects thus breaking the power of thesupernatural over them. Many legends relate how people were taken underground,some to remain there, others eventually returning to the real worldagain.

Ofthe house spirits which follow the clan or the farm, the gnomelike nisse is thefocus of a rich tradition of stories. He fights nisser from other farms andtries to get revenge if he is offended. Nevertheless, he looks after the farm andthe livestock, sometimes plaiting the horses’ manes.

Historical legendsTheother major set of legends from the Middle Ages relates to the Black Death, theepidemic which struck Norway in 1349 – 50. This plague is often personified inthe guise of an old woman who traveled the country with a rake and a broom.Where she used her rake some survived, but where she used her broom all wereswept away. The legends also tell us a lot about the impact of theepidemic.

Onetouching legend is about the a horse from Rauland in Telemark, which, unguided,brought the dead across the mountains to the nearest churchyard. Many legendstell us how only one or a handful of people remained in a village or a valley,if anyone remained at all, and there are many place names connected with theselegends. The best known is about the Jostedalen Grouse (Jostedalsrypa). She wasa girl who lived alone in the Jostedal valley, and she was as shy as a wildbird when outsiders found her.

Anothergroup is the clan legend. In sources from the 1700’s we hear that Norwegianfarmers were very interested in historical clan traditions. The bishop ofBergen, Erik Pontoppidan, tells us in 1753 that the Norwegian farming families“took quite good care to preserve the information which they had traditionallymaintained about their family trees”. The clan legends were written down after1850. They do not have the same quality as the Icelandic sagas, even though theNorwegian sagas are also about strife, land, women, killing, vendettas, and outlaws.

The stories are about the farmers who owned considerable tracts of land. Manyof them were giants who had killed someone and were outlawed. The greatestnumber and the best of the clan sagas are from the inland areas of southwesternNorway and the valleys in eastern Norway.

Another large group of historical village legends concern officials, but thestories which are best remembered concern strange priests. Clergy who were inconflict with their villagers, or those who were reputed to have knowledge ofwitchcraft, were prime characters. The priest and poet, Peter Dass, isfrequently referred to.

Migratory legendsCulturalresearchers make no stipulation that a story has to be old in order to qualifyas a legend, but previously there was a tendency to link “legends” with“ancient”; with peasant society a prerequisite element. Society has changeddramatically during the last 100 years and this has resulted in a renewal ofthe traditional legend. In our age a type of legend which we call migratory legendspredominate. Such legends are often spread through the newspapers and othermass media, but they are only seemingly modern because their content is attunedto our modern way of life. As a rule they tend to follow the old epicframework.

Do people believe in legends?  

Unlike the folktales, which take place in a make-believe world, legends seemplausible and tell about events which could have taken place. Research showsthat some people believe in them, while others are sceptical. Legends exist ina borderland between fact and faith, or fantasy. Thus, credibility, which issubjective, is no prerequisite for legends. We have to make formal distinctionsin order to identify a story as a legend. The legend is told in such a mannerthat it acquires a ring of truth. It has happened to an acquaintance, it tookpace in a particular place and so on.

Arethe legends based on real events? This is a question which we are seldom ableto answer. They are often told as if they were true. However, when the frame ofreference of the legend changes, so does the basis of belief which it restsupon. Legends which tell how people were taken underground by supernaturalbeings were credible as long as people believed that such creatures existed.When this popular belief waned, the legends were told merely for the sake ofentertainment, and no one continued to believe in them.

Thelegends give us insight into the storytellers perception of the world. They aregroup fantasies which fill the gaps in peoples’ knowledge. Stylisticallylegends are objective, but on another level they express the attitudes andvalues of the storyteller.

Theauthor of this article is professor, dr. philos Birgit Hertzberg Johnsen,Department of Cultural Studies, director of Norwegian Folklore Archives.

Norwegianname: Norske folkeeventyr og legender.