More About the Project
 In particular, it will make the recently completed Sveriges medeltida ballader (Sweden’s Medieval Ballads [SMB]) available on-line for a broader English-speaking audience and will be in a format that will greatly facilitate scholarly reception and analysis. The SMB, published by the Svenskt visarkiv (Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research, 1983-2001), consists of seven volumes of text, and contains all of the 263 Swedish ballad types accompanied by new commentary.
In our project, both the literal and metrical/singable English translations will accompany the original Swedish texts, which will especially support comparative analysis of themes, motifs, variations, and verse forms among the Scandinavian, English, Spanish, German, and other traditions. Musical performances of forty-one of the ballads have already been recorded for the Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research. Such authentic performance material will be uploaded and linked to the relevant ballads to provide concrete examples for study and teaching. A particularly important and innovative feature of the project will be the new technical analysis of the poetry and the musical patterns that will be integrated into the database.
Further, as part of the large digital library that constitutes one aspect of Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (an online project co-sponsored by the University of Toronto, the Renaissance Society of America, the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference and ACMRS), the online SMB will also be linked to Iter’s comprehensive, constantly updated bibliography, which grows by some 60,000 items overall each year. It currently contains 1,070,000 items. Every item relevant to the Swedish (or Scandinavian) ballad tradition will automatically become part of the project’s bibliography. All these features of the project will give it an impact well beyond the Scandinavian community and scholars interested primarily in Scandinavia. The ballads will be accessible free-of-charge through the Iter website directly or via the ACMRS website indirectly.
Read more: Introduction to the Project |
