subject: Wonder Tales from Baltic Wizards - tales and folklore from Baltic Shores and from within the Arctic Circle [print this page] Wonder Tales from Baltic Wizards - tales and folklore from Baltic Shores and from within the Arctic Circle
The selections in this book originate mainly from German and English sources. There is a mass of East Baltic folk-lore from which to choose which gives but a feeble idea of the extent of Baltic folk-lore. But, in this volume you will find more than 50 tales of Enchantments, Wizards, Witches, Magic Spells, Nixy Queens, Giants, Fairy White Reindeer, and glittering Treasures from the Baltic Lands of Lapland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Their setting is the Long Winter Nights with its brilliant play of Northern Lights over the snow-covered tundra; or the brief Arctic summer--its sun burning night and day--with its birds, flowers, insect-clouds, singing waters, and almost tropic heat; or the golden sunshine
of the southern amber coast. But it is the Northern Lights themselves, flashing and flaming through the dark heavens, that cast their mystic weirdness over many of these tales moulded by the peculiar imagination of the Asiatic and European East Baltic folks.
The farther our stories draw south from Lapland, the lower sink the Northern Lights and their influence on folk-tales, till at last they merge with the warmer lights of Lithuania - the amber-land. Wizards and wizardry abound in Lappish, Finnish, and Estonian tales. Witches
appear more often in Latvian and Lithuanian stories. And in all these countries except Lapland, many European folk-tale themes, which we have come to know in the Grimm collection, are found in their new and sometimes original forms, for this was the extensive library that the Grimm Brothers drew so readily on. Tales like the Six Swans, the Dragon of the North, Hazel-Nut Child, Big Klaus and Little Klaus, Hermod and Hadvor, the Nightingale and more.
So be prepared to discover a plethora of seemingly new stories from unfamiliar lands that date back at least to Medieval times, if not to the dawn of European civilisation.
33% of the publisher's profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charity.
For more information, a table of contents or to review a section of the interior, go to http://www.abelapublishing.com/baltictales.html
To view the "Norse and Viking Tales" collection follow this link http://www.abelapublishing.com/VikingandIcelandicTales.html
