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Early Visions of Folklore in Denmark Lene Vinther Andersen

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Early Visions of Folklore in Denmark Lene Vinther Andersen Early visions of folklore in Denmark Lene Vinther Andersen What should we record? That is the question you are often asked if you ask someone to record old memories that have survived among people. And the answer is then, make a note of every- thing you hear, of old-fashioned life, old-fashioned customs, of what was told among men in days of old; and also the songs that have been sung in adult company, as well as during children’s play. In all of that, ancient history is being handed down. The danger of writing too much down is small compared to the damage if something of significance is irretrievably lost 1. This was how AXEL OLRIK (1864-1883), Director of the Dansk Folkemindesamling [Danish Folklore Archives], instructed potential folklore collectors in 1909. The in- struction to write down everything is surprising taking into account AXEL OLRIK’s oth- er initiatives that aimed to guide and discipline folklore collectors into creating certain kinds of material for the Danish Folklore Archives. In his instructions, OLRIK also rec- ommended a book called Livet i Klokkergården [Life on Klokkergården] by FR. LANGE GRUNDTVIG2, describing life on a single farm. OLRIK drew attention to the fact that such portrayals often include “a lot of good and useful information about custom- ary practice – things that have been hiding in some corner and had never attracted the attention of the scholar before.”3 The last sentence is important because there is a trace of criticism of his own work here in the suggestion that scholars might have been missing something. OLRIK had worked with determination and enthusiasm on the establishment of a national folklore archive in Denmark because he was convinced that Danish records of folklore had to be gathered and ordered in a certain way in order to be genuinely useful in scholarly work. OLRIK himself had created the archives, and he had guided collectors in how to provide materials for them. He and his staff had pointed out which subjects they val- ued and considered relevant for documentation. Among other things they published questionnaires, and they handed out pre-printed inquiry forms in order to obtain stand- ardized data. In the sentence above, however, there seems to be a hint of a worry that there was something important out there that had not attracted scholars’ attention and therefore had not been captured by initiatives like the preprinted forms and ready- made questions drawn up by the Danish Folklore Archives. This article will explore some of the early visions of folklore in Denmark and ex- amine how some of the motives for collecting, exploring and archiving records of folk- lore developed. The focus is on the first couple of years after the establishment of the Danish Folklore Archives in 1904. However, because views about folklore at that time drew for inspiration on the previous century, I also consider this aspect. The emphasis 1 OLRIK, AXEL: Hvad skal vi optegne? In: Fra Dansk Folkemindesamling, II, Copenhagen 1909, p. 10. 2 GRUNDTVIG, FREDERIK LANGE: Livet i Klokkergården. Copenhagen 1908/9. 3 OLRIK, AXEL: Hvad skal vi optegne? In Fra Dansk Folkemindesamling, II, Copenhagen 1909, p. 10. 140 Lene Vinther Andersen will be on OLRIK’s own work in this regard, but it should not be forgotten that, when he died, his successors in many ways continued his work and ideas on folklore until around 1960. There were no textbooks or manuals on how to construct a folklore ar- chive or how to conduct folklore research at the time the Danish Folklore Archives were established, so the early folklorists had to proceed by trial and error. As suggest- ed in the introduction to this article, OLRIK himself gave warnings that something was amiss in his own approach. The article will end by looking more closely at OLRIK’s suggested answer to this problem and will ask why OLRIK felt that the book about the Klokkergården farm had been able to catch something that scholars so far had missed. The focus in this paper will be on archiving practices and the visions behind them, in line with a contemporary international interest in looking at the history of Nordic folklore archives and their scientific background4. In the early days of the Danish Folklore Archives, there was a wide degree of popu- lar interest in the activities and publications of the institution. Today, the archives no longer have the central position they enjoyed in the past. In recent years, however, the materials of the folklorist EVALD TANG KRISTENSEN have attracted attention. PALLE OVE CHRISTIANSEN, who was senior researcher at the Danish Folklore Archives, has written both popular and scholarly books about TANG KRISTENSEN and his work. In particular, his book De forsvundne [People of the heath] from 2011 became a bestsell- er that made TANG KRISTENSEN known in Denmark again, one result of which is that the Danish Folklore Archives have registered a growing demand for his materials5. An introduction to the collections of the Danish Folklore Archives can be found in JENS HENRIK KOUDAL’s Folkeminder og dagliglivets kultur: Indføring i Dansk Folke- mindesamlings arkiv [Folklore and the Culture of Daily Life. An Introduction to the Danish Folklore Archives] from 2004. KOUDAL was responsible for the manuscript collection of the Danish Folklore Archives, and his book also offers a history of the ar- chives with a focus on “the four pioneers”: SVEND GRUNDTVIG, AXEL OLRIK, H.F. FEILBERG and EVALD TANG KRISTENSEN. In writings about the history of Danish folk- lore, the focus has often been on the great men who led the way, shaped the discipline of folklore and initiated great folklore collections. The emphasis on the great pioneers is also reflected in the archives, where the col- lections of SVEND GRUNDTVIG and EVALD TANG KRISTENSEN in particular are still considered to be their foundation, being stored as separate collections. However, the archives also contain substantial material from the many almost anonymous folklore collectors who provided the archives with material from all around the country in the 4 For instance: SKOTT, FREDRIK: Folkets minnen. Traditionsinsamling i idé och praktik 1919- 1964. Göteborg 2008. – ESBORG, LINE/ KVERNDOKK, KYRRE/ LEIV, SEM (eds.): Or gamalt - nye perspektiver på folkeminner, Oslo 2011. – KRISTOFFERSEN, EIRIK: Kampen om folk- eminnesamlingen, Oslo 2017. – EKREM, CAROLA/ GUSTAVSSON, PAMELA/ HAKALA, PET- RA/KORHONEN, MIKAEL: Arkiv, minne, glömska. Arkiven vid Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland 1885-2010, 2014. 5 For an English introduction to the material of EVALD TANG KRISTENSEN, see e. g.: TANGHERLINI, TIMOTHY R. (ed.): Danish folktales, legends, & other stories. Washington 2013. .
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