The Tales contained in this volume form a second series of those"Popular Tales from the Norse," which have been received with muchfavour in this country, and of which a Third Edition will shortly bepublished. A part of them appeared some years ago in Once a Week, fromwhich they are now reprinted by permission of the proprietors, the Norseoriginals, from which they were translated, having been communicated bythe translator's friend, P. Chr. Asbjörnsen, to various Christmas books,published in Christiania. In 1871, Mr. Asbjörnsen collected thosescattered Tales and added some more to them, which he published underthe title "Norske Folke-Eventyr fortalte of P. Chr. Asbjörnsen, NySamling." It is from this new series as revised by the collector thatthe present version has been made. In it the translator has trodden inthe path laid down in the first series of "Tales from the Norse," andtried to turn his Norse original into mother English, which any one thatruns may read.
That this plan has met with favour abroad as well as at home is provedby the fact that large editions of the "Tales from the Norse" have beenprinted by Messrs. Appleton in New York, by which, no doubt, thatappropriating firm have been great gainers, though the translator'sshare in their profits has amounted to nothing. It is more grateful tohim to find that in Norway, the cradle of these beautiful stories, hisefforts have been warmly appreciated by Messrs Asbjörnsen and Moe, who,in their preface to the Third Edition, Christiania, 1866, speak in thefollowing terms of his version: "In France and England collections haveappeared in which our Tales have not only been correctly and faultlesslytranslated, but even rendered with exemplary truth and care,—nay, withthorough mastery; the English translation, by George Webbe Dasent, isthe best and happiest rendering of our Tales that has appeared, and ithas in England been more successful and become far more widely knownthan the originals here at home." Then speaking of the Introduction,Messrs. Asbjörnsen and Moe go on to say, "We have here added the end ofthis Introduction to show how the translator has understood and graspedthe relation in which these Tales stand to Norse nature and the life ofthe people, and how they have sprung out of both."
The title of this volume, "Tales from the Fjeld," arose out of the formin which they were published in Once a Week. The translator began bysetting them in a frame formed by the imaginary adventures of Englishsportsmen on the Fjeld or Fells in Norway. "Karin and Anders," and"Edward and I," are therefore the creatures of his imagination, but theTales are the Tales of Asbjörnsen. After a while he grew weary of thesetting and framework, and when about a third of the volume had beenthus framed, he resolved to let the Tales speak for themselves and standalone as in the first series of "Popular Tales from the Norse."
With regard to the bearing of these Tales on the question of thediffusion of race and tradition, much might be said, but as he hasalready traversed the same ground in the Introduction to the "Tales fromthe Norse," he reserves what he has to say on that point till the ThirdEdition of those Tales shall appear. It will be enough here to mentionthat several of the Tales now published are variations, though veryinteresting ones, from some of those in the first series. Others arerather the harvest of