The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad

The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad (TSB) classifies (in principle) all "types" of traditional ballader known in one of more of the Scandinavian languages (i.e., in Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, Icelandic

Icelandic language

Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...

, Faeroese, or even on the extinct language Norn

Norn language

Norn is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in Shetland and Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland, and in Caithness. After the islands were pledged to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, it was gradually replaced by Scots and on the mainland by Scottish...

).

In its turn, the list of types is divided into six groups (with some subgroups), as infra. The division essentially follows the one by A. I. Arwidsson, and 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...

's original division in DgF

DGF

DGF may refer to*Danmarks gamle Folkeviser*DGF Flensborg, football club*dGH, Degrees of general hardness*DHL Global Forwarding, part of Deutsche Post*Dissolved gas flotation...

; however, many of the ballads Grundtvig classified in group C are reclassified. The number of ballad types in each group in the second printed edition of TSB from 1978 is given within parenthesis. Since then, more types have been added to group F.

**Ballad types in TSB:**
A:	Ballads of the supernatural;	(75 types)
B:	Legendary ballads;	(37 types)
C:	Historical ballads;	(41 types)
D:	Ballads of chivalry;	(441 types)
E:	Heroic ballads;	(167 types)
F:	Jocular ballads.	(77 types)

Each ballad type is given a short description, including a summary of the differences of the variants of the ballad and how they differ, and comprises a list of appearances in various Nordic ballad collections. An example is given in , where the description of the type A 38, Den talende strængeleg/De två systrarna - The Two Sisters
The Twa Sisters
"The Twa Sisters" is a murder ballad that recounts the tale of a girl drowned by her sister. It is first known to have appeared on a broadside in 1656 as "The Miller and the King's Daughter." At least 21 English variants exist under several names, including "Minnorie" or "Binnorie", "The Cruel...

is quoted.

TSB is collated(?) by three Nordic ballad researchers: Bengt R. Jonsson, Svale Solheim, and Eva Danielson, and published in book form by the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture

Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture

The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture is a humanities research institute based in Oslo, Norway.It was established in 1922 by Fredrik Stang. An independent institute, its task is to sponsor research mainly in the fields of comparative linguistics, folklore, religion, ethnology,...

(Oslo, Norway) and Svenskt Visarkiv (Sweden), on
Universitetsforlaget

Universitetsforlaget

Universitetsforlaget AS is a Norwegian academic publishing company, which publishes non-fiction literature and journals. Universitetsforlaget is the main academic press in Norway....

(Oslo-Bergen-Tromsø 1978, ISBN 82-00-09479-0). The book also contains a register of ballad titles, and some other tools for finding ballad types.

Almost all of the ballad types given in the Danish (DgF), Faroese (CCF), Icelandic (IFkv), or Swedish (SMB) ballad type listings also have a specific TSB type listing. (The exceptions are a few texts, who now are known to be of rather recent origin, or otherwise are found to be deficient.) Norsk visearkiv, which is responsible for the corresponding Norwegian ballad project, has decided to employ the TSB classification directly. Many Scandinavian ballad types are also easily recognised in ballad collections from other languages. E.g., the aforementioned type TSB A 38 corresponds to Child 10

The Twa Sisters

"The Twa Sisters" is a murder ballad that recounts the tale of a girl drowned by her sister. It is first known to have appeared on a broadside in 1656 as "The Miller and the King's Daughter." At least 21 English variants exist under several names, including "Minnorie" or "Binnorie", "The Cruel...

External links

http://www.visarkiv.se/en/publ_en.htm Listing of the publications in English from Svenskt Visarkiv
Swedish medieval ballads

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

See also

External links