Danish folklore
Encyclopedia
Danish folklore consists of folk tales, legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...

s, songs, music, dancing
Folk dance
The term folk dance describes dances that share some or all of the following attributes:*They are dances performed at social functions by people with little or no professional training, often to traditional music or music based on traditional music....

, popular beliefs
Superstition
Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any process in the physical world linking the two events....

 and traditions comuminicated by the inhabitants of towns and villages across the country, often passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

. As in neighbouring countries, interest in folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

 grew with an emerging feeling of national consciousness in 19th century Denmark. Researchers travelled across the country collecting innummerable folktales, songs and sayings
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...

 while observing traditional dress in the various regions. Folklore today is part of the national heritage, represented in particular by national and local traditions, songs, folk dances and literature.

History

As in the rest of Europe, interest in Danish folklore was a result of national and international trends in the early 19th century. In particular, the German Romanticism
German Romanticism
For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...

 movement was based on the belief that there was a relationship between language, religion, traditions, songs and stories and those who practiced them. Common roots encouraged a country's inhabitants to share the concept of a modern nation. The approach spread to smaller, oppressed countries whose politicians and intellectuals worked towards developing the population's awareness of a common ethnicity. This applied to Denmark after the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

 and the loss of Norway in 1814 and above all after the loss of Schleswig
Southern Schleswig
Southern Schleswig denotes the southern half of the former Duchy of Schleswig on the Jutland Peninsula. The geographical area today covers the thirty or forty northernmost kilometers of Germany up to the Flensburg Fjord, where it borders on Denmark...

 to Germany in 1864. A new awareness of common origins was born, encouraging researchers to investigate the everyday lives of countryfolk, at a time when folktales, poetry, songs and beliefs were beginning to disappear. By documenting folk culture
Folk culture
Folk culture refers to the lifestyle of a culture. Historically, handed down through oral tradition, it demonstrates the "old ways" over novelty and relates to a sense of community. Folk culture is quite often imbued with a sense of place...

, these intellectuals believed they had safeguarded an asset which had been passed on by oral tradition
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

 since the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

 or even earlier.

Today it is recognized that only a fraction of the sources can be traced back further than the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

. Furthermore, traditions changed with time while new trends were born. The research and archieves compiled in the 19th century by Svend Grundtvig
Svend Grundtvig
Svend Hersleb Grundtvig was a Danish literary historian and ethnographer. He was one of the first systematic collectors of Danish traditional music, and he was especially interested in Danish folk songs. He began the large project of editing Danish ballads. He also co-edited Icelandic ballads. He...

, Henning Frederik Feilberg
Henning Frederik Feilberg
Henning Frederik Feilberg , was a Danish pastor, author and folklorist. His research and publications represent significant contributions to the field of Danish folklore.-Biography:...

 and Evald Tang Kristensen
Evald Tang Kristensen
Evald Tang Kristensen was a Danish folklore collector and author. Working first as a schoolteacher and later solely as a collector, he assembled and published a huge amount of detailed information on all aspects of folklore as he visited country people throughout his native Jutland.-Early...

 have nevertheless contibuted to a better appreciation and understanding of Danish folklore.

Music and folk dancing

Over the centuries, dancing has formed a key part of celebrations in Denmark. Festive gatherings often took place in farmhouses where chain dances or rotational sequences provided opportunities for everyone to join in even if the room was packed. In the 17th and 18th centuries, music in Denmark could only be performed in most areas by offically appointed town musicians (stadsmusikanter) who played together with their apprentices at family gatherings, local festivities and even in churches. There were however a few exceptions including Bornholm
Bornholm
Bornholm is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea located to the east of the rest of Denmark, the south of Sweden, and the north of Poland. The main industries on the island include fishing, arts and crafts like glass making and pottery using locally worked clay, and dairy farming. Tourism is...

, Amager
Amager
Amager is a Danish island in the Øresund. The Danish capital, Copenhagen, is partly situated on Amager, which is connected to the much larger island of Zealand by five bridges.-History:...

 and Fanø
Fanø
Fanø is a Danish island in the North Sea off the coast of southwestern Denmark, and is the very northernmost of the Danish Wadden Sea Islands...

 which maintained their own traditions. As the town musicians disliked traditional instruments such as drums, bagpipes
Bagpipes
Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes of many different types come from...

 and hurdy gurdy
Hurdy gurdy
The hurdy gurdy or hurdy-gurdy is a stringed musical instrument that produces sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to a violin...

s, the fiddle was increasingly used for dance music.

By the second half of the 17th century, pair dances from Poland were introduced, especially the pols, a variant of the polska
Polska (dance)
The polska is a family of music and dance forms shared by the Nordic countries: called polsk in Denmark, polska in Sweden and Finland and by several names in Norway in different regions and/or for different variants - including pols, rundom, springleik, and springar...

, soon to be followed by the minuet
Minuet
A minuet, also spelled menuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, and may have been from French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular...

. Dances which became popular in the 19th century included the waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...

 and Danish variants of contra
Contra dance
Contra dance refers to several partnered folk dance styles in which couples dance in two facing lines...

 and square dance
Square dance
Square dance is a folk dance with four couples arranged in a square, with one couple on each side, beginning with Couple 1 facing away from the music and going counter-clockwise until getting to Couple 4. Couples 1 and 3 are known as the head couples, while Couples 2 and 4 are the side couples...

s such as the hopsa, rheinlænder, galop, sveitrit and schottish.

Those taking part in the festivities wore their best Sunday costumes, which differed somewhat from region to region but were invariably made at home from flax, wool or linen. In the middle of the 19th century, both the traditional costumes and the dances began to die out. But by the beginning of the 20th century, when there was renewed interest in the national heritage, a number of groups began to revive the music, the dances and the costumes. In 1901, the Society for the Promotion of Danish Folk Dancing (Foreningen til Folkedansens Fremme) was founded in Copenhagen, leading to local dancing societies throughout the country. Today there are some over 12,000 folk dancers belonging to 219 local clubs which provide courses in music, dancing and dressmaking.

National costumes

The traditional costumes of Denmark, though varying from region to region, date back roughly to the period between 1750 and 1900 when clothes were often home-made from yarn spun from wool or flax. In rural communities, the fabrication of garments for both family members and servants was an important part of everyday life. They were usually made of woolen fabric, woven by the women themselves or by a professional weaver. Many of the patterns, based on a limited range of colours from vegetable dyes, were common to almost all parts of the country. Variations in costume between the regions can best be seen in women's best Sunday attire, especially in the arrangement of the ever present headdress, either in the form of a bonnet or a scarf. The headpiece often consisted of a bonnet, a piece of linen underneath and a scarf to hold it in place, either in broad lace or in embroidered tulle
Tulle netting
Tulle is a lightweight, very fine netting, which is often starched. It can be made of various fibres, including silk, nylon, and rayon. Tulle is most commonly used for veils, gowns , and ballet tutus. Tulle comes in a wide array of colors and it can also easily be dyed to suit the needs of the...

. On the island of Zealand, there was a tradition for trailing bonnets embroidered with gold and silver thread.

Skirts or petticoats were long, worn by the layer and invariably covered by an apron of fine silk or embroidered mull
Gauze
Gauze is a thin, translucent fabric with a loose open weave.-Uses and types:Gauze was originally made of silk and was used for clothing. It is now used for many different things, including gauze sponges for medical purposes. When used as a medical dressing, gauze is generally made of cotton...

. The upper part of the body was covered by a fabric jacket or blouse, A close-fitting bodice
Bodice
A bodice, historically, is an article of clothing for women, covering the body from the neck to the waist. In modern usage it typically refers to a specific type of upper garment common in Europe during the 16th to the 18th century, or to the upper portion of a modern dress to distinguish it from...

 fastened by hooks or laced at the front was worn in some regions. Skirts, jackets and bodices were edged and decorated with flat or patterned silk tape while light scarves were worn around the neck to cover the shoulders and throat. Like the women, men's clothing was made mainly of flax and wool but their knee-breeches
Breeches
Breeches are an item of clothing covering the body from the waist down, with separate coverings for each leg, usually stopping just below the knee, though in some cases reaching to the ankles...

 were often of leather. Long home-knitted white wollen stockings reached above the knee. In addition to long shirts, men wore several jerseys and jackets. The well-off displayed buttons made of silver although usually they were of tin or even horn. Men and women both generally wore clogs while men often had long, leather top-boots and both men and women wore leather dress shoes with a buckle in front.

The artist Frederik Christian Lund
Frederik Christian Lund
Frederik Christian Lund , commonly known as F. C. Lund, was a Danish genre and history painter...

, who had travelled across Denmark as a soldier in the First Schleswig War, took an interest in sketching people in local costumes in various parts of the country. He completed his collection of 31 coloured sketches in 1864, publishing them as coloured lithographs in Danske Nationaldragter (Danish National Costumes).


Folk tales and legendary figures

In 1817, the art historian and writer Just Mathias Thiele
Just Mathias Thiele
Just Mathias Thiele was a Danish writer and art historian. A central personage during the Danish Golden Age in the first half of the 18th century, he contributed to Danish cultural life in a number of capacities...

 began to undertake calaloguing work on a voluntary basis at the Royal Library in Copenhagen where he compiled a short work titled Prøver af danske Folkesagn (Samples of Danish Folktales). This was to lead to far more significant research, inspried partly by the fairy tale collections of the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...

 and partly by Denmark's growing interest in Romanticism. He travelled around the country, recording and writing up legends, attracting the support of influential figures such as the literary historian Rasmus Nyerup, who wrote a foreword emphasizing the mutlifaceted siginificance of the enterprise. His four-volume collection of Danish Folktales (Danske Folkesagn) was published between 1819 and 1823. The manner in which he presented the stories, recording the narritives given by the local people he met, served as an example and working method for subsequent work by Svend Grundtvig
Svend Grundtvig
Svend Hersleb Grundtvig was a Danish literary historian and ethnographer. He was one of the first systematic collectors of Danish traditional music, and he was especially interested in Danish folk songs. He began the large project of editing Danish ballads. He also co-edited Icelandic ballads. He...

, Evald Tang Kristensen
Evald Tang Kristensen
Evald Tang Kristensen was a Danish folklore collector and author. Working first as a schoolteacher and later solely as a collector, he assembled and published a huge amount of detailed information on all aspects of folklore as he visited country people throughout his native Jutland.-Early...

, Axel Olrik
Axel Olrik
Axel Olrik was a Danish folklorist, and a pioneer in the methodical study of oral narrative.His Principles for Oral Narrative Research, recently translated by K. Wolf and J. Jensen, Bloomington, Ind., 1992, was first published in 1921, after Olrik's early death...

 and Hans Ellekilde who further documented legends and folk tales across Denmark. As Nyreup had foreseen, the work had an added dimension: "Providing material for poets and themes for further development." His collection did indeed have a profound influence on the Danish Golden Age, providing inspiration for Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...

's fairytales, Steen Steensen Blicher
Steen Steensen Blicher
Steen Steensen Blicher was an author and poet born in Vium near Viborg, Denmark.- Biography :Blicher was the son of a literarily inclined Jutlandic parson whose family was distantly related to Martin Luther....

's short stories, Johan Ludvig Heiberg
Johan Ludvig Heiberg (poet)
Johan Ludvig Heiberg , Danish poet and critic, son of the political writer Peter Andreas Heiberg , and of the novelist, afterwards the Baroness Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, was born in Copenhagen....

's plays and Christian Winther
Christian Winther
Rasmus Villads Christian Ferdinand Winther , was a Danish lyric poet.He was born at Fensmark near Næstved, where his father was the vicar. He went to the University of Copenhagen in 1815, and studied theology, taking his degree in 1824. He began to publish verse in 1819, but no collected volume...

's poetry. Indeed, it laid the foundations for Denmark's Modern Breakthrough
Modern Breakthrough
The Modern Breakthrough is the normal name of the strong movement of naturalism and debating literature of Scandinavia near the end of the 19th century which replaced romanticism....

 and the regional literature movement that dominated elite literary circles later in the 19th century.

Numerous Danish folktales contain mythical figures such as troll
Troll
A troll is a supernatural being in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore. In origin, the term troll was a generally negative synonym for a jötunn , a being in Norse mythology...

s, elves
Elf
An elf is a being of Germanic mythology. The elves were originally thought of as a race of divine beings endowed with magical powers, which they use both for the benefit and the injury of mankind...

, goblin
Goblin
A goblin is a legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, a grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom.They are attributed with various abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin. In some cases, goblins have been classified as constantly annoying little...

s, and wight
Wight
Wight is a Middle English word, from Old English wiht, and used to describe a creature or living sentient being. It is akin to Old High German wiht, meaning a creature or thing.In its original usage the word wight described a living human being...

s as well as figures borrowed from Nordic mythology
Norse mythology
Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...

. The nisse
Nisse
Nisse can refer to:* Nisse, Netherlands, a town in the municipality of Borsele* Another name for the tomte, a mythical creature in Scandinavian mythology* A pet form of the Scandinavian given name Niels, Nils-See also:...

 is a particularly well-known legendary figure in Danish folklore, apparently dating back to pre-Christian times when it was believed there were household gods. Other Scandinavian countries also have similar figures and there are similarities to the English brownie
Brownie
Brownie may refer to:* Chocolate brownie, a baked good* Brownie , a legendary creature* Brownie * Brownie , a level in several guiding/scouting organizations* Brownies, a term used to describe fans of Chris Brown...

s ans hob
Hob
Hob or HOB may refer to:* Hob , a household spirit in Northern England* A generic term for various Dwarf-like and Elf-like magical creatures in Germanic folklore* A devil* The top cooking surface on a stove* A male ferret...

s. Just Mathias Thiele
Just Mathias Thiele
Just Mathias Thiele was a Danish writer and art historian. A central personage during the Danish Golden Age in the first half of the 18th century, he contributed to Danish cultural life in a number of capacities...

 collected legends about the nisse in his Danske Folkesagn (Danish Folktales) (1819–1823), which encouraged artists such as Johan Thomas Lundbye to depict the julenisse (Christmas nisse) later in the 19th century. Dressed in grey with a pointed red cap, he was no taller than a 10-year-old boy. Traditionally each farm had its own nisse living on the loft or in a stable. The creatures would be helpful if treated properly, for instance by giving them a bowl of porridge with a clump of butter at night, but, failing such treatment, they could also be troublesome.

Literature

  • Bay, Jens Christian, tr. Danish Fairy Tales: A Collection of Popular Stories and Fairy Tales from the Danish of Svend Grundtvig, E. T. Kristensen, Ingvor Bondesen, and L. Budde. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1899.
  • Grundtvig, Sven, coll. Danish Fairy Tales. Tr. Jesse Grant Cramer. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1912.
  • Koudal, Jens Henrik. 1997. The impact of the "Stadsmusikant" on Folk music in Doris Stockmann & Jens Henrik Koudal (eds). 1997. Historical studies on folk and traditional music: ICTM Study Group on Historical Sources of Folk Music, conference report, Copenhagen, 24-28 April 1995. Museum Tusculanum Press.
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