Folk Narrative and the History of Culture
Folk Narrative and the History of Culture

Summary/Abstract: The article illustrates that the texts and perceptions of The Old FolkBallads of Denmark reflect traces of different eras. Ballads about the medieval King Valdemar II and his queens Dagmar and Bengerd (Infanta Berengária of Portugal) exemplify this. The formations of the narrated figures are medieval but the formations of the narrated plots are from the Renaissance and concern the arrangement of marriage. Their references concern both the traditional narration of the Middle Ages and the social realities of the Renaissance. The public attention to the ballads increased in the Romantic era. Folk narrative researchers launched the master-narrative about the formation and transmission of the ballads from the medieval time of their figures to the Renaissance telling-time of their plots. However, this master-narrative about the ballads as a phenomenon covers for the recognition of their narratives. Today, the ballads are receiving new attention through a canon for the primary school and in other ways. The master-narrative is reused and renewed in order to respond to the cultural conflict caused by the process of globalisation. The aim is to shape a new unity of the population that now includes both the “old” and “new” Danes. This contradicts with differentiated experiences of one of the two main groups within the population, introducing new alternatives for recognising and identifying with the narrated figures and plots in account.

• Details
• Contents