Reidar Thoralf Christiansen

Biography

Reidar Thoralf Christiansen was born on 27 January 1886 and died on 22 July 1971. He was a Norwegian folklorist, served as archivist of the Norwegian Folklore Collection, and later became a professor of folkloristics at the University of Oslo. He studied theology from 1904 to 1909 and taught Finnish and Sami to priests heading to Finnmark, though he never became a priest himself. His interest in folklore developed under Moltke Moe.

In 1912, a scholarship took him to Finland for six months to study with Kaarle Krohn. From 1914 to 1916, he studied in Copenhagen under Axel Olrik and also visited Lund University to work with Carl Wilhelm von Sydow. In 1919, the Nansen Fund supported his fieldwork in Ireland, leading to his 1931 book The Vikings and the Viking Wars in Irish and Gaelic Tradition. He learned Irish in Ballyferriter, County Kerry, at Carl Marstrander’s suggestion.

In 1920, Osborn Bergin wrote a poem urging him to return to Ireland. He became an archivist at the newly formed Norwegian National Archives in 1921. That same year, he married Karin Lundbad, whom he met in Lund; they had five children and lived in Blommenholm near Oslo. Christiansen specialized in comparing Scandinavian and Irish folklore, especially fairy tales.

His 1958 work The Migratory Legends introduced a type catalogue for classifying migratory legends—tales spread across cultures—by motif, using Norwegian examples. He became a full professor at the University of Oslo in 1952 and received an honorary doctorate from University College Dublin in 1954. After retiring in 1956, he spent a semester at Indiana University Bloomington at Stith Thompson’s invitation, and in 1957–1959 he returned to Dublin to collaborate with Seán Ó Súilleabháin.

In 1958, he chaired UNESCO’s Commission International des Arts et Traditions Populaires. He later published Studies in Irish and Scandinavian Folktales (1959), European Folklore in America (1962), and Folktales of Norway (1964). His classification system in Migratory Legends included eight main categories: The Black Book of Magic (3000–3025), Witches and Witchcraft (3030–3080), Legends of the Human Soul, of Ghosts and Revenants (4000–4050), Spirits of Rivers, Lakes and the Sea (4050–4090), Trolls and Giants (5000–5050), The Fairies (5050–6070), Domestic Spirits (7000–7020), and Local Legends of Places, Events and Persons (7050–8025).