Axel Olrik

Axel Olrik (3 July 1864 – 17 February 1917) was a Danish folklorist and scholar of mediaeval historiography, and a pioneer in the methodical study of oral narrative.

Olrik was born in Frederiksberg, the son of the artist Henrik Olrik. Artist Dagmar Olrik, judge Eyvind Olrik, historian Hans Olrik and cultural historian Jørgen Olrik were siblings of his.

Olrik began his studies at the University of Copenhagen in 1881. In 1886 he won the university gold medal for an essay on the age of the Eddic poems; he received his Master of Arts in Nordic Philology in 1887 and his Ph.D. in 1892. The following year, he became a private docent at the university. On 1 April 1896 he was awarded a temporary position in Scandinavian folklore, which on 9 April 1913 was converted into an extraordinary professorship. Apart from a period at Kristiania (now Oslo) in 1892 studying with Moltke Moe, he spent his entire career at the University of Copenhagen.

While a student, Olrik soon came under the influence of Svend Grundtvig, and until the latter's death in 1883, was treated almost like a son. His first major scholarly work was therefore a continuation of Grundtvig's work on the Danish ballads; with Danske Ridderviser (1898–1919) he continued the publication of Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, which was in turn continued after his own death by his pupil Hakon Grüner-Nielsen. Olrik was able to draw more than Grundtvig on collected oral material; in 1888–89 he himself did some fieldwork collecting folksongs.

Grundtvig had amalgamated what he considered useful features from various versions of a folksong or ballad to produce a long, complex whole; Olrik, in contrast, sought to trace the history of the oral texts back to simple originals. He published several sample studies in Danske Studier, the journal he co-founded with Marius Kristensen in 1904, and in 1899–1909, with Ida Falbe-Hansen, he published a collection of reconstructed texts, Danske Folkeviser i Udvalg; in 1899–1904, an edition with melodic arrangements by Thomas Laub was published. These were very popular and were translated into German and English.

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