Book Review

Swedish Fairy Tales
By Baron G. Djurklou
H.L. Braekstad, Translator
Hippocrene Books (1998)
ISBN: 0-7818-0717-4
Reviewed by Elizabeth Claytor

Swedish Fairy Tales was originally published in 1901. The eighteen tales in this collection are loosely organized by theme or character. The opening group develop the idea of the greedy, selfish person, male or female, who encounters a needy, beggarly spiritual being in disguise. When the greedy one is asked for help, help is refused out of selfishness. Too late, the evil doers discover the error of their ways. The theme is that one must be a good, kind, generous person all of the time, not just when it is to one’s advantage. This group of stories, strikingly similar to "Beauty and the Beast," offer up no surprises to the reader.

Another group of stories, feature a character known as "the lad." He is young, ordinary looking, but through his cleverness, he manages to outwit the selfish, greedy sinners in his midst. He is the catalyst in several of the stories, but he is at the top of his game in "The Artful Lad." This tale begins as the story of two farmers with equal holdings, but, for no apparent reason, one farmer is prospering and the other is barely making ends meet. The lad, a stranger, appears to the struggling farmer and offers to help him on the farm. Despite the fact that the poor farmer can ill afford to pay the lad, he takes him on, and the storyline or plot takes off. The lad uses his quick wits to correct the inequities between the two farmers, and all works out right in the end: good is rewarded and evil is punished. The twists and turns will keep you reading until the very end.

Brace yourselves! You will meet the characters of Old Nick, the prince of darkness, and Katie Grey, a witch in several stories. Old Nick is similar to the character of "Old Scratch" and the "Black Man of the Forest" who appear in early American fiction. Old Nick simply materializes and preys on human frailties as he works his devilment on those he encounters. Occasionally, Old Nick is outdone by a creature more evil than himself; Katie Grey is such a character. In the tale that bears her name, Old Nick knows of a man and wife who have been happily married for years--never an argument, never a disagreement, never a fight. He is not happy when mortals are happy, and he wishes that the man and woman would find something to fight about. It just so happens that Old Nick sometimes needs help, so he engages Katie Grey to help create dissension between the man and his wife in exchange for a new petticoat with "red and green and blue stripes" and a jacket, too. The very next morning, Katie plants the seeds of distrust and suspicion in the minds of both the husband and the wife. Before long, the wedge that Katie has driven between them leads the husband to murder his wife, and then he commits suicide, devastated by what he has just done. Old Nick watches Katie Grey’s evil machinations and, true to his word, keeps his side of the bargain because has created dissension in the home. Katie gets her new petticoat and jacket, but Old Nick won’t go near her; he puts the garments on a long, long stick. He shouts to her, "You call me the Wicked One and the Evil One and such things…but I am not as evil as you are…." Outwitting Satan is mighty shocking, and it does not always occur in literature.

Swedish Fairy Tales provides a different perspective on humans and fairy beings. The characters, situations, language transport the reader to a world unlike that with which we are most familiar in our reading. It is a trip worth taking.

—posted April, 2003