Harpans kraft

"Sir Peter and the Ugly Sprite," (illustr. W. J. Wiegand).
—from Julia Goddard, "Christin's Trouble" (1870), prose tale version of the ballad type.
Swedish version performed by the traditional ballad singer Svea Jansson in 1958. Recorded by the musicologist Matts Arnberg.

Harpens kraft (Danish) or Harpans kraft, meaning "The Power of the Harp", is the title of a supernatural ballad type, attested in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic variants.

In The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad it is catalogued type A 50, "Man saves his bride from merman by playing his harp".

The ballad type tells of a hero whose betrothed has premonitions of a fall from a bridge into the river, which despite the hero's assurances and precautions comes true. But by the power of his harp-playing, he regains his bride from the river creature, which is referred to as a "merman" in the TSB catalog:[1] while "merman" (havmand) occurs in a variant, it is called a troll in the older Danish text, and a "neck (nix)" in the Swedish text.

The ballad of this type occur under the following titles. Danish: "Harpens kraft" (DgF 40); Swedish: "Harpans kraft" (SMB 22); Norwegian: Villemann og Magnhild (NMB 26); Gaute og Magnild and Guðmund og Signelita (Landstad 51 and 52), etc.; and Icelandic: Gautakvæði "Gauti's ballad" (IFkv 3).[a]

Noted for its resemblance to the Greek myth of Orpheus, a harp-player with mystical powers, it may be related to medieval versions of that story such as the Middle English Sir Orfeo.[2][3][4]

Similarity has also been noted with the supernatural power of the harp in the Scottish ballad Glasgerion (Child ballad 67 variants B, C, "He'd harpit a fish out o saut water", etc.).[5][6]

  1. ^ a b Jonsson, Solheim & Danielson 1978, Types of the Scand. Med. Ballad, p.39
  2. ^ Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, 'Gunnarr and the Snake Pit in Medieval Art and Legend', Speculum, 87 (2012), 1015-49 (p. 1044); doi:10.1017/S0038713412003144; [1].
  3. ^ The harp's effects on "Dyr og Fugle (beasts and birds)", etc. Bugge 1891, Arkiv för nordisk filologi 7, pp.101, 106, 113-15
  4. ^ Støa 2008, p. 17, citing Kittredge 187, Liestøl and Moe 91, Spring 45
  5. ^ Child, James Francis (1885). "67.". The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Vol. Part III (Vol. 2, part 1). p. 137.
  6. ^ Bugge 1891, Arkiv för nordisk filologi 7, p.114


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