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Ink and watercolor portrait of a bald old man with a white beard, in a dark coat and patterned waistcoat, both hands resting on an open book.

Nils Gabriel Djurklou

1829–1904

Nils Gabriel Djurklou (1829–1904) was a Swedish baron, an archaeologist and a student of country life. He collected folk tales in a way that kept the speech of the people telling them, not only the plot, and his main collection says so in its title: Sagor och äfventyr berättade på svenska landsmål, tales and adventures told in Swedish dialect.

He began at home in Närke, where in 1856 he founded the first provincial society in Sweden for vernacular speech and ancient monuments. Värmland and Småland followed. Alongside the tales he published books on how people in those districts lived and spoke. The tale collection appeared in 1883 with illustrations by Carl Larsson.

One detail worth knowing: in Djurklou the tramp boils his soup on a nail, not on a stone.

Tales by Nils Gabriel Djurklou

1 tale

  • Stone Soup

    9 min readages 4 and up