Swedish Folk Tales – An Evolving Tradition

If I look closely at my own family history, there were several great storytellers a few generations back. My maternal grandfather, Karl, was fond of tall tales and humorous, sometimes downright lewd, stories. His wife, my grandmother Olga, wove together more personal stories, what today would be known as ‘life stories’ or ‘documentary storytelling’. They were born in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries respectively – a time when rural Sweden was poor and in many parts sparsely populated – when folk tales played an important part in people’s everyday lives. This was also a time when there was great interest in collecting and compiling folk tales from many parts of the country, in order to preserve them in writing for future generations.

These efforts to collect stories from across the land were not new. There were previous ‘waves’ going as far back as the 17^th century. Well-known folk tale collectors include Nils Gabriel Djurklou, who focused on the region of Närke (where he hailed from),  as well as other parts of the country, in the mid-19^th century; and his contemporary Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius, who worked with English-born George Stephens, based further south. Each collector arguably had his own bias and didn’t always write down the stories faithfully. Invariably from a different class background, with better education, some of these more literary men (they were mostly men, to my knowledge) seemingly couldn’t quite stop themselves from ‘refining’ the stories they collected. There were changes to the language used, including to folk tales told in dialect, and colloquialisms or swear words were sometimes filtered out. That said, the simple fact that these tales have been collected, written down and kept for posterity has left Sweden with an immensely rich archive of folk tales from the far north to the far south.

The Institute for Language and Folklore (ISOF) archives, available to the public free online, have thousands of folk tales from across Sweden. Their online database is an excellent resource available to those interested in finding out more about the different tales told over the centuries. ‘ISOF was set up over a hundred years ago,’ Fredrik Skott, Head of the Department for Archives and Research in Gothenburg, tells me, ‘and it has four branches – Gothenburg, Uppsala, Lund and Umeå.’ The institute has been documenting all things related to language and folklore since the early 1900s. ‘Our work on folklore is divided into three areas; folk beliefs, folk customs, and folk poetry, which includes poems, folk tales, fairytales etc.,’ Fredrik explains.

Browsing the archives is a fascinating experience – to my amazement, I found folk tales from my mother’s tiny village, Gunnarskog, in western Värmland. The ISOF archives also brought home to me how similar some tales from different parts of the country are. Folk tales spring up organically, and they grow and morph with each telling, depending on the storyteller and their location. It can be very difficult to work out where some folk tales originate. Perhaps similar tales quite simply appear in different places at the same time. ‘There are so-called “wandering stories”, tales that have sprung up at the same time in different parts of the world,’ says Leif Stinnerbom, Head of Västanå Theatre (see box below), ‘and today it is very much accepted that the same story can turn up in different places, but with local versions, rather than the assumption that a tale has a definite unique place of origin.’

When I started researching this feature, one of the key questions I asked myself was, ‘are folk tales still told today?’. I’ve come to the conclusion that the answer is yes, but not as much as before and not in the same way. The tales we tell and how we tell them have shifted focus. There is greater variety and a greater focus on the personal. Life stories, documentary storytelling and urban legends, the latter arguably a modern version that has elements of a folk tale, have become increasingly important. You could say that storytelling has evolved into two distinct branches – the traditional and the modern – but there is room, and a need, for both.

The shift from ‘dying artform’ to ‘alive and kicking’ began in the late 1980s, when a number of new initiatives transformed both the folk tale scene and the art of storytelling in Sweden. If we look at the picture today, folk tales are still told, but now they have company and wide-ranging company to boot, in the shape of documentary storytelling, festivals, competitions and more. I talked to Mats Rehnman from Fabula Storytelling in Stockholm, who is one of the key people behind the storytelling revival in Sweden. ‘In the late 1980s I was working as a children’s book author and illustrator,’ he tells me, ‘but I soon noticed that telling stories, rather than reading from a book, was a big hit with the kids when I visited schools, and that’s how it started.’ Mats became a full-time storyteller and, inspired by his visit to Beyond the Border storytelling festival in Wales, he set up Fabula Storytelling in the early 2000s together with three others, having worked solo up until then. Mats also helped ensure that the Swedish Storytelling Network got going, and a version of this organisation is still going strong, with many local and regional member organisations.

The 1980-90s can be seen as a big wave of folk tale and storytelling revival throughout Sweden, one that has continued into the 2000s. Festivals sprang up, associations were started and at a local level there were storytelling cafés and gatherings. This movement gathered real momentum, and even though the humble folk tale was part of this wave, there was also more emphasis on innovation, on widening the scope and allowing for new perspectives. Or indeed, older perspectives too, but less mainstream. This was a time when Sami stories started to come more to the fore – Giron Sami Theatre was established in 1992. Another theatre with a strong emphasis on local stories is Västanå Theatre in Värmland, in the far west. Established as early as 1972, it’s been instrumental in creating a local theatre tradition in the west of Sweden (see box below).

The last few decades have seen a further shift. Competitions (so-called ‘storytelling slams’) have become popular, and the internet plays a greater role, with the rise of urban legend websites. But in terms of professional storytellers, there is a generational gap at present. ‘There are very few storytellers under the age of 30, or even, I’d go as far as to say, under 50,’ says professional storyteller Anders Holmberg, who started his storytelling career working with young addicts. He soon noticed how powerful and transformative storytelling could be in his work. ‘My focus has always been on how to use storytelling in real life situations, how useful and empowering it can be,’ he tells me.

How storytelling is used is currently seeing a big shift, not just in Sweden, but in many countries. The humble folk tale seems to be more on the backburner, while life stories or documentary storytelling is taking centre stage. This can be seen as an exciting new development, opening up opportunities for professional storytellers: suddenly everyone from marketing executives to corporate businesses is discovering the power of a good story and wants to learn how to spin a good yarn. For better or for worse. There is a risk that the power of storytelling gets watered down when taken over by corporate interests. That said, perhaps the old folk tales remain safe, set as they often are in a certain time and place, with very local connections. Despite all the changes in society, two things remain true: stories endure – they may change, morph, evolve or lay hidden for a time, but they will reemerge; and people need stories. They need to hear them and they need to tell them. The humble folk tale can still make people laugh out loud, gasp in horror, shed a tear and often recognise themselves in the story. That, to me, remains their enduring appeal.