Book Condition: Very Good in Near fine DJ with minimal evidence of shelf wear. one small (1mm) nick in top edge DJ. Slight tropical speckling to page edges, Otherwise, clean, clear text in tightly bound volume. No internal inscriptions, markings or stains. First Edition, First Printing. Bibliography: p.199-209. Includes index. This book mixes folktales with historical narrative, analysis and interpretation. It gives background information, implications, cultural information, explanation, and information both geographical and religious. It also describes trolls, gives a bibliography for troll-lore, and describes the decline of troll lore in the culture. It gives stories about trolls as explanations for occurrences, variations within folklore, descriptions and cultural setting for the lore. It relates the troll figure to that of the devil (156) and lets us know that "trolls are the least known of the nature-beings, and the ones who are most likely to do harm to humans they encounter" (55). FROM THE PUBLISHER - SWEDISH LEGENDS AND FOLKTALES is a collection, in English translation, of some one hundred short texts of the sort commonly termed legends (German Sagen, Swedish sagner) by folklorists. Shorter and less complex than fairy tales (Marchen), such legends were far more popular in Swedish oral tradition and were related closely to the everyday lives of the community. The legends in this book deal primarily with the supernatural and are indicative of Swedish folk beliefs widespread in rural areas until fairly recently. They are presented in three categories: stories about This World (the physical environment, fate and portents, disease), The Other World (nature beings, including giants, trolls, forest, sea and household spirits, and their interaction with humans), and The World of Religion (Satan, witches, and ghosts). Although the choice has of necessity been rather selective (there are literally thousands of such tales), it is representative and provides a sound introduction to the most popular genre of Swedish oral narrative tradition. The tales were collected from rural oral tradition during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in most cases as verbatim field recordings in dialect, and many were printed in scholarly journals or obscure collections no longer readily available. The translations are intended to be literal and to give a fair approximation of the oral style of the originals. Variant texts are provided for comparison. These tales are placed in ethnographic and folkloristic context by a lengthy general Introduction, and each tale is accompanied by a note indicating (where known) the source, collector, date and location of the recording, and summarizing the relevant comparative and interpretive data. Bibliographic references are unobtrusively provided throughout and are gathered into a useful bibliography. SWEDISH FOLKTALES AND LEGENDS fills the gap of Swedish folklore available in English and offers comparatists, folklorists and the general reader a valuable collection of migratory legends, international folktales, and memorates collected in rural Sweden.
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