Danmarks gamle Folkeviser is a collection of (in principle) all known texts and recordings of the old Danish popular ballads.

It was started in 1853 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...

. The work was continued in the 20th century by new generations of folklorists, and in 1976 comprised 12 volumes, containing 539 ballad types, often with many variants of each type.

Grundtvig's division of the ballad types into categories has mostly been adopted in later ballad collections, e.g. by F. J. Child

Francis James Child

Francis James Child was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of folk songs known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry...

, and by modern researchers in the field. However, many of the ballads he classed as 'historic' now have been reclassified.