East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
Children
Book language: English
124 pages
East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North is a collection of Norwegian folk tales gathered by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, including the title story. These tales blend everyday life with trolls, magic and fate in a simple, evocative style. They are worth listening to for their enduring charm and imaginative vision.
For teachers and schools: paste the code into your site or blog.
Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
He too saw the image in the water; but he looked up at once, and became aware of the lovely Lassie who sate there up in the tree. Page 70 1 EAST OF THE SUN AND WEST OF THE MOON OLD TALES FROM THE NORTH ILLUSTRATED BY KAY NIELSEN NEW YORK GEORGE H DORAN COMPANY 2 PREFACE
A folk-tale, in its primitive plainness of word and entire absence of complexity in thought, is peculiarly sensitive and susceptible to the touch of stranger hands; and he who has been able to acquaint himself with the Norske
Folkeeventyr of Asbjörnsen and Moe (from which these stories are selected), has an advantage over the reader of an English rendering. Of this advantage Mr. Kay Nielsen has fully availed himself: and the exquisite bizarrerie of his drawings aptly expresses the innermost significance of the old-world, old-wives’ fables. For to term these legends, Nursery Tales, would be to curtail them, by ninetenths, of their interest. They are the romances of the childhood of Nations: they are the never-failing springs of sentiment, of sensation, of heroic example, from which primeval peoples drank their fill at will.
The
quaintness,
the
tenderness,
the
grotesque
yet
realistic intermingling of actuality with supernaturalism,
3
by
which
the
original
Norske
Folkeeventyr
are
characterised, will make an appeal to all, as represented in the pictures of Kay Nielsen. And these imperishable traditions, whose bases are among the very roots of all antiquity, are here reincarnated in line and colour, to the delight of all who ever knew or now shall know them.
Permission to reprint the Stories in this book, which originally appeared in Sir G. W. Dasent’s “Popular Tales from the Norse,” has been obtained from Messrs. George
Routledge & Sons, Ltd. The Three Princesses in the Blue
Mountain is printed by arrangement with Messrs. David
Nutt; and Prince Lindworm is newly translated for this volume.
Readnara
