Nordic Tales

This 2019 hardcover gathers sixteen traditional tales associated with Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark. Chronicle Books identifies the texts as stories translated and transcribed by nineteenth-century folklorists, while the edition’s distinctive contemporary contribution is Ulla Thynell’s full-page illustration work.

In this collection, the book marks the distance between a real place and the stories layered onto a region. It sits after the practical guide because folklore follows different rules: it travels, changes register and resists a neat national itinerary.