by Jim Vandergriff
Knox College
Galesburg, IL

All the World’s Reward is a useful and interesting book. Part of an informal series on Scandinavian folklore, the book includes tales from the "five major tradition areas of Scandinavia, namely Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Swedish-speaking Finland, and Iceland" (xi) collected during the last one hundred years by various eminent Scandinavian folklorists. As the editors say in the Preface, their original idea was to organize the work by Aarne-Thompson story type, but they then decided to organize it by repertoire. They did, though, include AT references, so the work is quite useful for comparison of these stories with other collections.

Each section begins with an introduction which discusses the collector, the teller and the cultural tradition within which the teller lived. Thus, the book is quite useful to folklore teachers and scholars.

Among the many things I found interesting about the book is the familiarity of the tales. The work by Scandinavian folklorists, and German and Scandinavian collectors, over the last couple of centuries have made the story themes almost common knowledge. So, though the themes are familiar, the delight is in the variation. This same quality makes the book accessible to non-scholars. Though the interpretive apparatus needed by scholars is included, the stories themselves dominate. The book can easily be read without reference to the scholarship.

All in all, this is a very nicely done work. While it seems a little pricey at $25.00 for a paperback, I recommend it to anyone interested European folktales, comparative folktales, or folktales for entertainment.