Svendt Grundtvig

Danish Fairy Tales Svendt Grundtvig

These Danish folk-tales were originally collected by Svendt Grundtvig, a Danish professor and philologist (1824-1883). He found that throughout all the country districts, men and women were telling stories and reciting ballads that they had learned from their grandmothers, who, in their turn, had heard them from crooners of old songs, and tellers of old tales. Professor Grundtvig realized that these echoes of an earlier time were precious; that, if they were not perpetuated in written form, they would be lost. It was a labor of love on his part to collect these tales; a labor that lasted over twenty years, and that enlisted the aid of many of his countrymen. Grundtvig says that he has kept the simplicity and artlessness of the oral tradition; and that, in the case of varying versions from different parts of the country, he has taken the purer and more complete form, but has always preserved the epic unity. The translator of these tales spent a part of his boyhood in Denmark, where his father was United States Minister. There he heard many of these stories, which were told him by a manservant who came from Jutland. Jensen had not read any of these tales; but they, with many others, were stored in his memory. He had always known them, he said.