Verne Moberg at Columbia University has found the perfect solution to help her students learn Norwegian: let them listen to an album with Norwegian Folktales.
12/27/2007 :: During the middle of the 19th century, two young men named Asbjørnsen and Moe decided to cross mountains and rivers in Norway and write down the folktales they came across. It all resulted in the collection “Norwegian Folktales.”
Variation important
Even today, every Norwegian adult has childhood memories of listening to the stories like “Little Frikk and His Fiddle” or “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” and the stories have become a central piece of our Norwegian cultural heritage.
However, listening to stories can also help people learn the language. With that in mind, Verne Moberg, Professor of Swedish and Scandinavian Literature and Culture at New York's Columbia University came up with the idea of creating an album where people read Norwegian folktales. The album was recorded in January of 2007, and is now for sale.
“People learn with all their senses. It is difficult to learn a language if you only go to lectures. People need variation in the learning process,” says Moberg. “Listening to people reading stories is a great way of improving your language skills. You just press the rewind button, and then you can play it over and over again."
For everyone
The album can be used by people at all different language levels.
“All the 12 different stories are read on different dialects. Those who are more experienced can hear the differences,” says Moberg.
“Are you able to distinguish the dialects from each other?”
“No,” Moberg says with a laugh, “though this is because Swedish is my speciality. If the folktales had been in Swedish, then perhaps I could hear the difference”.
Norwegian Folktales is a part of the series "Scandinavia off Broadway". Other albums include Agnete, which is a about the plays and poems by Amalie Skram, and The Boat on Land, with poems by Tarjei Vesaas and Rolf Jacobsen.
To order the albums, click here
Monique Watne/Royal Norwegian Consulate General