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| Asbjørnsen and Moe | |
|---|---|
| Name | Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe |
| Birth date | 15 January 1812 (Asbjørnsen) / 22 April 1813 (Moe) |
| Birth place | Christiansand, Norway / Romsdal, Norway |
| Death date | 6 January 1885 (Asbjørnsen) / 27 March 1882 (Moe) |
| Occupation | Folklorists, collectors, writers |
| Nationality | Norwegian |
Asbjørnsen and Moe Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe were Norwegian folklorists and writers central to 19th-century Norwegian cultural revival. They collected and edited traditional narratives and legends, collaborating amid contemporaries such as Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, and Edvard Grieg while engaging with movements including Romantic nationalism and Scandinavism. Their work influenced later figures such as Knut Hamsun, Sigrid Undset, and Arne Garborg, and intersected with institutions like the University of Oslo, the Norwegian Academy, and the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.
Asbjørnsen was born in Christiansand in the same era as contemporaries Hans Christian Ørsted, Søren Kierkegaard, and Thomas Carlyle, while Moe hailed from Romsdal akin to contemporaries Ole Bull, Marius Müller, and Marcus Thrane; both studied at the University of Oslo alongside students of Camilla Collett, Ludvig Kristensen Daa, and Ivar Aasen. Their careers unfolded during reigns of Charles XIV John and Oscar I, involving collaborations with figures such as Niels Henrik Abel, Johan Sebastian Welhaven, and Johan Sverdrup, and periods concurrent with events like the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War. Asbjørnsen worked with archives connected to the National Library of Norway and the Norwegian Parliament, while Moe later joined clerical circles linked to the Church of Norway and institutions such as Nidaros Cathedral and Bergen Cathedral School. Both men maintained correspondences with European collectors like Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, and Elias Lönnrot, and were acknowledged by societies including the Royal Society of Arts and Academy of Sciences.
Their partnership combined fieldwork methods resembling those of Jacob Grimm, Elias Lönnrot, and Giuseppe Pitrè, drawing on ethnographic approaches promoted by Alexander von Humboldt, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. They travelled through districts such as Telemark, Gudbrandsdalen, and Setesdal, recording storytellers from families comparable to the Ibsen, Bjørnson, and Aasen networks, using notebooks similar to those of Folklore Society members like William Thoms and Andrew Lang. Editing practices reflected influences from the Romantic philology of Friedrich Schlegel, August Schleicher, and Jakob Grimm, negotiating textual variants in a manner akin to Karl Lachmann and, later, Franz Boas. Their methodology balanced fidelity to informants from rural parishes under dioceses such as Hamar and Tromsø with editorial shaping informed by publishers in Christiania like Johan Dahl and Jacob Dybwad.
Their principal volumes, beginning with Samling af Sagn og Eventyr (often paralleled to Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen and Lönnrot's Kalevala), compiled narratives from regions including Østerdalen, Hallingdal, and Nordland and featured tale types comparable to ATU classifications used by Antti Aarne, Stith Thompson, and Hans-Jörg Uther. The collections included motifs familiar from works by Charles Perrault, Giambattista Basile, and Alexander Afanasyev, presenting characters resonant with Celtic cycles like the Mabinogion, Arthurian romance, and Norse sagas such as Heimskringla and the Poetic Edda. Editions were disseminated via presses linked to Gyldendal, Aschehoug, and Cammermeyer, reaching readers of magazines like Skilling-Magazin and Norsk Folkekalender and influencing composers such as Edvard Grieg and painters like Adolph Tidemand and Hans Gude.
Their corpus shaped national culture alongside poets and dramatists including Henrik Wergeland, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, and Henrik Ibsen, and informed scholarship at institutions such as the University of Bergen, the University of Trondheim, and the National Theatre. Folklorists and anthropologists from Franz Boas to Stith Thompson acknowledged methodological echoes, while literary modernists such as Knut Hamsun and Olav Duun engaged with their material. National movements like Norwegian independence and language reforms by Ivar Aasen intersected with their legacy, and their tales entered curricula at schools influenced by ministries and academies such as the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training and the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.
Contemporaries including Johan Sebastian Welhaven and Camilla Collett debated their editorial choices, while later scholars such as Andreas Heusler, Walter Anderson, and Marianne Harðarson critiqued their romanticized retouching relative to field recordings collected by collectors like Axel Olrik and Petrus Ahnlund. Critics compared their interventions to textual edits found in editions by Jacob Grimm, Elias Lönnrot, and August Strindberg, and questioned nationalizing tendencies similar to debates involving the Norwegian Language Council and political figures like Johan Sverdrup. Defenders referenced archival materials in the National Library of Norway, municipal records from Christiania and Bergen, and contemporaneous reviews in Morgenbladet and Aftenposten.
Their tales were adapted by composers and artists such as Edvard Grieg, Rikard Nordraak, Adolph Tidemand, and Hans Gude and staged by organizations like the National Theatre and Den Nationale Scene; filmmakers in the tradition of Victor Sjöström and Ingmar Bergman treated related motifs. Illustrators from the Golden Age of Illustration, akin to Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen, visualized episodes comparable to scenes in the Prose Edda, Beowulf translations by William Morris, and Shakespearean dramaturgy, while sculptors and public monuments in Oslo and Trondheim commemorate their cultural roles alongside statues of Henrik Ibsen and Ludvig Holberg.
Their works saw editions by publishers such as Gyldendal, Aschehoug, and the Norwegian Academy Press and translations into languages used by readers of English, German, French, Russian, and Finnish, following translation traditions shared with Grimm, Perrault, and Afanasyev. International translators and editors—echoing efforts by Andrew Lang, Edward Clodd, and W.F. Kirby—produced annotated versions consulted by scholars at institutions including Harvard University, University of Cambridge, and Sorbonne University, and facsimiles preserved in archives like the Royal Library of Denmark and the British Library.
Category:Norwegian folklore Category:Collectors of fairy tales