Until the generation now lately passed away, almost the only mode in which the Norwegian peasant killed time in the leisure moments between his daily labour and his religious observances, was in listening to stories. It was the business of old men and women who had reached the extreme limit of their working powers, to retain and repeat these ancient legends in prose and verse, and to recite or sing them when called upon to do so. Such minstrels were held in great respect, and were found in every parish. Moe has observed that there was a certain distinction in the themes selected by the two sexes; from the old women there was required a grim or melancholy class of story, while the old men were called upon for more humorous tales and staves. Asbjörnsen and Moe were only just in time to preserve the stories from extinction; in many districts they had already ceased to exist, in others they remained solely in the memories of a few very aged persons. One or two valleys in Thelemarken, the Assynt of Norway, that district at the back of Kongsberg where the scanty population still shrinks from the transforming touch of modern life, supplied the richest treasure in folk-lore; wherever the explorers could hear of belt-fights within the memory of man, there they were sure of being on the edge of the more ancient civilization, and safe to find the rare product they were seeking. On the other hand, in modernised and Europeanised provinces like Hardanger, where much intercourse by sea with strangers had destroyed the antique isolation, the stories were less abundant,
