In 1870, while Peter Christen Asbjørnsen was in Granvin in Hardanger, he recorded a folktale told to him by Lars Larsen Røynstrand. Upon review of his manuscript, Asbjørnsen noted in the margin that in his opinion, the tale was “swinish—useless—obscene” Consequently, the manuscript of “The Girl Who Served as Soldier and Married the King’s Daughter” remained in the archives of the folkloristic departments at the university in Kristiania/ Oslo. The same fate befell the majority of the tales in the present collection; the frank treatment of the sexual aspect of human experience rendered such tales more or less unpublishable.
Some of the tales were distributed, however, albeit privately. Asbjørnsen contributed a number of his erotic tales to Kryptádia (1883), where they were presented in German translation. And Reidar Th. Kristiansen printed three tales in Brudenuggen (1943). Each of these publications had limited print runs (200 and 13 copies, respectively), and each was privately distributed. Erotiske folkeeventyr (1977) was the first general publication of a comprehensive collection of Norwegian erotic folktales, thanks to the archival and editorial work of Oddbjørg Høgset. It is this publication that the present volume is based on.
The designation of the tales as erotic is quite misleading. The erotic concerns an intention of arousing sexual excitement; a cursory perusal of this volume will belie any claim that sexual arousal could be the intention behind the tales. They may be many things, but sexy they are not. Many of them poke fun at the many varieties of human sexuality; others unblinkingly treat the sexual dimension as just one of many facets of human experience. In any case, there is little focus on the sexual act itself. Perhaps a designation as bawdy tales, or as ribald tales would thus be more accurate.
Gershon Legman, a pioneer in the study of this kind of folklore, would go so far as to erase the distinction between sexual and other folklore:
The idea that there is a special kind of folklore that is sexual as differentiated from all other kinds, is an optical illusion caused by the operation of a purely literary censorship. No such separation exists in fact. In the field, the sexual material is offered along with all the other material.1
The experiences of the Norwegian collectors are consistent with Legman’s statement. Wherever folklore has been collected in Norway, the erotic varieties have nested themselves amongst the more socially acceptable tales, legends, anecdotes, folksongs, and beliefs. There are at least ten collectors represented in this volume, none of whom has intended to collect illicit material. Their intentions have had little influence on the tales told to them, however. With various degrees of tolerance, they have all recorded what they implicitly understood was not publishable.
The other collectors represented in this volume echoed Asbjørnsen’s acknowledgement of the offensive, unpublishable nature of some of their material. Some struck out certain words in their manuscripts, until they became indecipherable; others spelled out these offensive words in Greek letters or even Futhark runes; some even protested in their notes. At the bottom of “The Sexton and the Boy on the Parson’s Wife,” the collector, G. O. Aaland complained: “I was against writing this, but was pressed to do it.” Unless the informant had any compromising material with which he could pressure Aaland, it probably means that he would not give him any publishable tales until he agreed to record the naughty tale in question. In each case, however offended and appalled they were (or appear to have been), the collectors still archived their manuscripts, implicitly understanding that someone in the future would read them.
We are fortunate that certain people have been interested in bringing these kinds of tales out of the archives, for they are bearers of cultural- and literary significance, as well as being ridiculously entertaining. Their significance rests in their frank treatment of topics that society has deemed unseemly, and proscribed. However, their frankness is a double-edged sword, for on one hand, we have tales that complement what we already know of earlier Norwegian society and culture, whilst on the other hand, some tales appear to be little more than thinly veiled excuses to tell tales of sexual abuse in its various guises.
“The Girl Who Served as Soldier and Married the King’s Daughter” is a good example of tales that demonstrate that we still have a lot to learn about our past. As Psyche Ready notes, it is a type of folktale that “does not often appear in published collections, although it has been continuously told for about three thousand years.”2 It is also widespread: “Variants have been collected from locations as distant from one another as Chile, Norway, and Russia.”3 The protagonist is a lesbian who ultimately changes sex, and the tale is ripe for feminist, queer, transgender readings, as it subverts patriarchal precedences of gender rôles, the male–female dichotomy, and family structures.
Other tales, too, merit reading from various perspectives. In “The Girl Who Knocked Up the Giant,” we are left wondering just how much consent the girl gives prior to the boy “brushing her pussy.” Despite her being eager enough after the fact, there is little doubt that she in her turn sexually abuses the giant; psychological perspectives on this tales would be quite interesting. I must note, too, that this tale is one of the most sophisticated, and one of the funniest in the entire collection; there are reasons for reading that transcend any moral or literary value, after all.
Certain tales in the collection add little to our knowledge of the past, though they do confirm what we already know. Tales such as “The Piglet,” in which the boy satisfies his lust at the expense of the naïve girl, were considered entertaining, and communicated as such. The same kind of everyday sexism is all too common, even today.
“The Soldier Who Went with a Complaint to the King” is in the same vein. Here, though, what we assume is a rape is extraneous to the plot—take it out, and the tale does not change. In fact, I considered excising this last tale from the collection due to the gratuitousness of the rape episode. After careful consideration, I did not remove the tale. I have instead added a variant (entitled “Hans from Tinn”) that motivates the rape by foreshadowing the hero’s match with the king’s daughter; however, despite the tighter plot, this variant throws up further interpretive problems by equating rape and marriage.
We must remember that all of these tales reflect the culture that brought them forth. In this regard, the rapey tales4 are as valuable as the tales that we find more appealing and acceptable. Having said this, the majority of these tales are absurd, hilarious sketches of Norwegian folk-life and -lore in the nineteenth–early twentieth century, that incorporate every aspect of society, not just those considered seemly. I present them, therefore, for what they are: insights into the culture, the place, and the time that brought them forth, and a source of—admittedly sophomoric—entertainment.
Bibliography
- Abjørnsen, Peter Christen. Brudenuggen og andre eventyr. Oslo. 1943.
- Asbjørnsen, Moe, Nauthella, et al. Erotiske folkeeventyr. Oddbjørg Høgset (ed.). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1977.
- Kryptádia: Recueil de documents pour servir à l’étude des traditions populaires. Heilbronn & Paris. 12 vols, 1883-1911.
- Legman, G. The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography. New York: University Books Inc., 1964.
- Ready, Psyche. “She Was Really the Man She Pretended to Be”: Change of Sex in Folk Narratives. MA Thesis. George Mason University, 2016.
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