The Icelandic term ævintýri (pl. ævintýri) carries various meanings. Derived from the Old French aventure, it initially referred to an unexpected event or love affair. Historically, the term was used to describe late medieval and post-medieval prose narratives with legendary and chivalric content, as well as medieval exempla. While in contemporary Icelandic the word ævintýri can mean adventure in general, it primarily denotes the category of folktales commonly known as fairy tales or wonder tales. This modern usage was first established in the nineteenth century by Jón Árnason (1819–1899), a librarian and collector of folktales and legends (Árnason 1954–1961, II, 297). In this article, the term ævintýri will be used exclusively to refer to wonder tales.

Around 1700, ævintýri were gathered by Árni Magnússon (1663–1730), a renowned Icelandic manuscript collector. Among other oral narratives, Magnússon recorded about five wonder tales, all Icelandic variants of well-known international tale types such as ATU 709 Snow White. Despite his seemingly low regard for such tales – he stated that Snow White was pure nonsense – he meticulously documented information about their origins and contributors (Einarsson 1955, cxxvi–cxliv). About a century later, author Eiríkur Laxdal (1743–1816) wrote Ólands saga [Saga of No Such Land] and Saga Ólafs Þórhallasonar [The Saga of Ólafur Þórhallason], both of which drew inspiration from folk narratives (Eggertsdóttir 2006; Sveinsson 2003, 122–31). Ólands saga, considered a proto-novel, combines episodes of the later Icelandic wonder tale tradition with elements and narrative strands reminiscent of Icelandic legendary sagas and romances. Laxdal’s works, influenced by the foreign popular literature he probably encountered in Denmark between 1769 and 1775, make extensive use of the frame tale concept, akin to the works of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and the Arabian Nights (Sveinsson 2003, 122–23; Helgason 2023). Ólands saga has also been described as a missing link between Icelandic medieval and late medieval literature and the wonder tale tradition, making it a valuable tool for exploring the continuity of folktale motifs (Werth 2023b, 65–66; Werth 2023a, 85–87).

Many Icelandic wonder tales were collected in the nineteenth century by Jón Árnason. Árnason’s collection, Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri, was initially published in two volumes between 1862 and 1864; an expanded six-volume edition appeared between 1954 and 1961, revised by Árni Böðvarsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson (Árnason 1954–1961). The actual ævintýri are printed in the second volume of the original edition and in volumes two, four, and five of the revised edition. They constitute a distinct group within the broader corpus of Icelandic folktales and legends, and are further divided into several subgroups, the largest of which is stjúpusögur (tales about evil stepmothers). Árnason considered these tales to have medieval origins and to have arrived with the first settlers on the island (Árnason 1954–1961, II, 297).

The earliest mentions of stepmother tales appear in two Kings’ sagas (konungasögur) from the late twelfth century: Sverris saga [The Saga of King Sverrir] and Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar [The Saga of King Ólafur Tryggvason]. Another early account of the stepmother motif is found in Böðvars þáttr [The Tale of Böðvar], a short tale within the late medieval legendary saga (fornaldarsaga) Hrólfs saga kraka [The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki]. In Böðvars þáttr, an evil queen casts a spell on her stepson, who turns into a bear by day but returns to his human state by nightfall (Byock 1998, 36-37). Similar enchantments occur in later Icelandic wonder tales, where royal children are transformed into animals and ogres or sent on dangerous quests by their evil stepmothers. Typically, the stepmother is a troll in disguise who seduces the newly widowed king with her beauty. Upon marrying the king and becoming queen, she sends her husband away to fight in wars or collect taxes. This enables the stepmother to cast spells on her stepchildren (Guðmundsdóttir 2001, clxvii–clxxii; Guðmundsdóttir 2021; Werth 2019, 52-54). Other subgroups of the ævintýri in Árnason’s collection similarly address the mistreatment of children by family members, with the neglected or persecuted child ultimately emerging as the hero or heroine after overcoming various challenges. Additionally, some jocular tales (kímleg ævintýri) are also included within the group of ævintýri.

As early as 1845 Árnason and his collaborator Magnús Grímsson (1825–1860), who died during the collecting process, embarked on a mission to preserve Iceland’s oral narrative tradition. Inspired by the folktale collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812–1815) by the Brothers Grimm – which they read in Danish translation – and encouraged by similar efforts in Denmark and Norway, Árnason and Grímsson aimed to compile a comparable collection of Icelandic folktales and legends. They successfully gathered a number of folktales, poems, superstitions, and rhymes, publishing them in a booklet titled Íslenzk æfintýri in 1852. However, this collection lacked actual ævintýri and received little acclaim from Icelandic scholars (Gunnell 2010, 21–28). Despite the lukewarm reception, Árnason and Grímsson continued their efforts; they were encouraged by the German scholar Konrad Maurer (1823–1902), a law professor at the University of Munich who supported Iceland’s political independence from Danish rule.

Maurer travelled to Iceland in the summer of 1858 where he met Árnason and Grímsson. He promised to assist them with their folktale collection if they persisted in their work. Maurer was a former student of Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and with his own keen interest in folklore and medieval Icelandic saga literature, he collected Icelandic folktales during his travels, benefiting from the hospitality and assistance of the Icelandic people as a result of his political stance. He returned to Germany having recorded numerous folktales, and in 1860 published his collection Isländische Volkssagen der Gegenwart with the same publisher in Leipzig that would later issue Árnason’s folktale collection (Þorsteinsdóttir 2022).

Árnason dedicated the first volume of his collection to Jacob Grimm; Wilhelm Grimm had already died in 1859, and Jacob was ailing. Nonetheless, Jacob Grimm wrote a letter to Árnason, thanking him for the dedication and the first volume of the collection. He expressed his admiration for the Icelandic legends and hoped to receive the second volume containing the ævintýri (Sigmundsson 1950–1951, II, 290). However, this wish would not be granted, as Jacob died in September 1863 while the ævintýri were still in print.

The impact of Árnason’s collection grew significantly through translations into various languages, most notably the English translations by George E. J. Powell and Eiríkur Magnússon (1866) and Jacqueline Simpson (1972), which introduced Icelandic folk- and wonder tales to a European audience. In 1898, the German scholar Adeline Rittershaus (1876–1924), the first woman to receive a PhD from the University of Zurich, travelled to Iceland, where she studied the remaining unpublished folktale manuscripts in Árnason’s collection. She published her habilitation thesis, Die neuisländischen Volksmärchen (The Contemporary Icelandic Wonder Tales), in 1902. While Rittershaus did not produce exact German translations of individual tales, she summarised 127 ævintýri and jocular tales, around forty of which were published for the first time. She further compared incidents and motifs with those of other European wonder tales as well as Old Norse and medieval Icelandic literature, notably prior to the publication of the international tale-type index (Aarne-Thompson-Uther index; for latest revision, see Uther 2004) and the motif index (Thompson 1932–1936). This achievement was especially praised by folklorist Antti Aarne (1867–1925). He admired Rittershaus for consulting around fifty works for her study, which he regarded as a comprehensive treatise on the Icelandic wonder tale (Aarne 1914, 30–31).

In 1929, Einar Ól. Sveinsson published the Icelandic tale-type index Verzeichnis isländischer Märchenvarianten (Catalogue of Icelandic Wonder Tale Variants) (Sveinsson 1929). Following Antti Aarne’s classification system (Aarne 1910), the index classified approximately 550 ævintýri from both published and unpublished folktale manuscripts under 225 existing tale type numbers. Sveinsson also produced the first comprehensive study of Icelandic folktales, legends, and wonder tales in Icelandic, Um íslenzkar þjóðsögur (1940), later translated into English as The Folk-Stories of Iceland (Sveinsson 2003).

Although most of the ævintýri are variants of international tale types, they have been adapted over time to the Icelandic social and cultural environment. These tales have also been shaped by the personal experiences and worldviews of individual storytellers. This tendency has been explored in the work of Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir, a folklorist and specialist at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavik. Þorsteinsdóttir’s research, based on recordings from the magnetic tape archive at the Árni Magnússon Institute, draws from numerous field trips conducted by folklorist Hallfreður Örn Eiríksson (1932–2005) and his colleagues in the 1960s and 1970s. These recordings are accessible on the website ismus.is. Þorsteinsdóttir examined the recordings of eight Icelandic storytellers – six women and two men – and their repertoire of ævintýri (Þorsteinsdóttir 2011; Þorsteinsdóttir 2015). She contextualises the stories within each storyteller’s worldview, shaped by their life experiences and influenced by their natural and social environments. Þorsteinsdóttir’s research demonstrates that the ævintýri can serve as a societal mirror, reflecting the perspectives and experiences of those who tell them. Notably, some of these storytellers believed wonder tales to be true stories that had either taken place in olden times or in faraway countries. For example, contributor Guðríður Finnbogadóttir (1883–1982) believed that the narratives of the Arabian Nights were credible accounts (Þorsteinsdóttir 2011, 128). The influence of the Arabian Nights on the Icelandic wonder tale tradition has been further explored by Þorsteinsdóttir (2023; see also Marzolph 2020, 105–10).

A foundational resource for research on Icelandic folk narratives is the Sagnagrunnur, a geographically mapped database of Icelandic folk legends (sagnagrunnur.arnastofnun.is). This database was initiated in 1999 by Terry Gunnell, then a lecturer in folkloristics at the University of Iceland. An extensive restructuring of the database took place in 2014 with the assistance of Trausti Dagsson, who carried out the redesign and mapping work for the project. The database includes a distribution map of published Icelandic legends, linking them to the homes of the original storytellers and collectors, as well as to locations mentioned in the legends that still exist. Most of these legends originate from collections compiled between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The database also contains a separate section on ævintýri, the Ævintýragrunnur, developed and edited by Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, a professor of Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland, with the assistance of some of her students.

Although the ævintýri have adapted to their social and cultural environment, they often have features that seem exotic – such as woodlands, bowers, castles, and royalty, none of which existed in Iceland (Schier 1983, 239–40). One explanation for these foreign influences in Icelandic wonder tales might be the fact that oral tradition, saga-writing, and the recital of written prose texts and rímur [metrical romances] were common in Icelandic culture until the beginning of the twentieth century. While saga literature was handwritten and copied long after the medium of print reached Iceland in 1550, these texts were read aloud within farmers’ homes and communities, often during evening wakes [kvöldvökur] in the wintertime (from October to April). Evening wakes also provided a platform for oral narratives and popular tales to be told. The ævintýri, therefore, show some degree of continuity and even share episodes and motifs found in Icelandic saga literature from the Middle Ages and onwards (Schier 1983, 252; Werth 2019, 60–61).

Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir has demonstrated that some Icelandic wonder tales contain motifs that already appear in the Old Icelandic legendary saga Völsunga saga [Saga of the Völsungs], which forms part of the Nordic branch of the Nibelungen cycle (Guðmundsdóttir 2021b; Byock 1990). The Brothers Grimm identified in Völsunga saga the story of the Valkyrie Brynhildr, who was pricked with a sleeping thorn by the god Óðinn and later awoken by the dragon slayer Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, as an early example of the tale of Sleeping Beauty or Dornröschen (Grimm 1812–15, II, vi). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars widely accepted that Germanic and Old Norse mythologies, sagas, and epics included oral narratives found in later wonder tales. However, the complex and evolving scholarly perspectives on the interplay between wonder tales and Old Norse literature have led to debates over whether heroic epics were derived from wonder tales or if wonder tale elements and motifs were later additions serving as mere embellishments (see for example Olrik 1892; von der Leyen 1899; Rittershaus 1902, xii–l; Panzer 1910–12; Sveinsson 1929, ix–xcii; de Vries 1954).

In contemporary research, the interplay and interconnections between wonder tales and Old Norse literature have sparked renewed interest. Particularly notable are studies on the wonder tale of Cinderella, which can be traced in various medieval Icelandic sagas, such as Ragnars saga loðbrókar [The Saga of Ragnarr Shaggy Breeches], Vilmundar saga viðutan [The Saga of Vilmundr the Outsider], and Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar [The Saga of Hálfdan Eysteinsson] (Hui 2018; Hui 2021; Werth 2022). The sagas do not portray the Cinderella story in as straightforward a manner as in the later wonder tale tradition. Instead, the story is intricately woven into the complex and many-stranded narrative of the saga, suggesting a deliberate and skilful integration by the saga writer (Werth 2022, 89). This further implies that these wonder tale elements are not mere additions or embellishments by a later compiler, as believed by earlier scholars (Werth 2023a, 67–68).

Many kings’ sagas, for example, apply similar patterns to later wonder tales, especially regarding the childhood of future kings (Kuhn 2000, 81–82; Jakobsson 2004). Usually, magic is absent from the wonder tales incorporated into Icelandic sagas, as the tales are adapted each time to abide by the saga’s style and to serve its purpose. However, they do manifest metaphorically in those sagas where noble-born children are temporarily deprived of their status and cast into an enchantment-like state by being abducted or exposed in the wilderness and raised by poor peasants. These children endure a period of hardship – commonly involving a change of name, an ugly appearance, and hard labour – before achieving their heroic destinies and being recognised and reintegrated into their rightful family or lineage (Werth 2021). Collectively, these studies cited here illuminate the profound impact of oral storytelling on Icelandic saga literature, demonstrating how wonder tale elements are intricately woven into the fabric of medieval Icelandic literature.

Works Cited

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Citation: Werth, Romina. "Icelandic Wonder Tale (Ævintýri)". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 July 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19683, accessed 02 May 2025.]