This chapter will focus on the adaptations and imitations of Scandinavian ballads. These supernatural ballads helped make Scandinavia, particularly Denmark, a rich setting for the Gothic. Mapping this development is important, but the analysis addresses the underlying factors that led to the adaptation of Danish ballad material. The central author of the Gothicised ballad tradition was Matthew Lewis, who first incorporated a Danish ballad in The Monk and later selected several for his anthology Tales of Wonder. The chapter analyses how the ballad adaptations were bound up with Lewis’ career and developments in the book market.

The Danish ballads were acknowledged as constituting a repository that was part of British cultural history. Hence, they could be exploited as Gothic texts facilitating a more immediate and profound connection with native literary heritage. While Norse culture represented a definitive past, allowing for the safe appreciation of its supernatural figures, folkloric practices derived from Scandinavia required more careful management. This was due to its association with superstitious irrationalism, which was perceived to be actively embraced and preserved within low culture. The chapter aims to provide insight into the treatment of folklore, offering an understanding of how the Danish material was approached and also satirised in the context of Gothic publishing.

From The Monk to Tales of Wonder

In Britain, the recovery of ballads gained momentum in the course of the eighteenth century. Editions of the Scottish collector Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany (first published in 1723) were popular, as was Thomas Percy's The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (first published in 1765). Johann Gottfried Herder translated several English ballads from Percy's collection for his Volkslieder (1778–79). Herder's anthology also contains some important examples of Danish ballads, which will be discussed below. Herder translated six Norse songs (categorised as ‘Skaldic’) and five Danish ballads. Herder's objective with Volkslieder was to use songs from around Europe to represent the essential character of ethnic and national groups. The Danish ballads that Herder printed were taken from an anthology of 100 folk ballads, published by Danish historian Anders Sørensen Vedel in 1591, and updated in a new edition edited by the folklorist Peder Syv in 1695, doubling the number of ballads. There was a popular reprint of this work in 1739, to which Herder refers.