The Digitized Medieval Swedish Ballad: An Online Archive of Traditional Folksong

Envisioned as a two-year project to produce web-based versions of all 263 medieval Swedish ballads (plus variants) and their translation into English in order to encourage their study and comparative analysis in the pan-European context. Literal and metrical/singable English translations will accompany the original Swedish texts, supporting comparative analysis of themes, motifs, variations, and verse forms among the Scandinavian, English, Spanish, German, and other traditions. An innovative feature of the project will be the new technical analysis of the poetry and the musical patterns, and will include actual melodies for 41 of the ballad types.