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Espen Ash Lad: Folk Tales from Norway. Translated by Robert Gambles. Cumbria, UK: Hayloft, 2014. 160 pp.
This sparkling translation of fourteen Ash Lad Norwegian tales, collected by Peter Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in the middle of the nineteenth century, is the first of its kind and, despite the repetition of the plots, the stories are well worth reading. In addition, the tales are accompanied by interesting period pieces: black-and-white ink drawings by the talented nineteenth-century Norwegian artists Theodor Kittelsen, Erik Werenskiold, and Otto Sindling. They enhance the effect of the stories through depictions of key scenes that reflect the nineteenth-century Norwegian imagination of trolls, peasants, and local landscapes. They are down to earth, as are the tales that have been carefully honed by Robert Gambles.
Ash Lad, or Espen Askeladd, as he is called in Norwegian, is the youngest of three brothers and has a great deal in common with other maltreated tiny heroes of European folk- and...