”Just för barn skrifver jag”

Hugo Gyllanders brev om att översätta sagor av bröderna Grimm och Asbjørnsen och Moe

Abstract

^{Theme: The Children’s Library Saga and the Swedish Teachers’ Magazine’s Publishing House. Logo: The Swedish Institute for Children's Books}

“But I do write just for children”: Hugo Gyllander’s Letters About His Translations of the Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm and Asbjørnsen & Moe

Through his great productivity and deep involve­ment with the Barnbiblioteket Saga series, published by Svensk läraretidnings förlag, Hugo Gyllander (1868–1955) was a front figure in Swedish children’s literature during the first half of the 20^th century. He translated many of the great international classics, but today he is perhaps best known for his translations of the fairy tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Charles Perrault, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and others. In this context it is interesting to examine Gyllander’s views of his own practice in his correspondence with his two editors, Amanda Hammarlund and Signe Wranér. The article focuses first on letters to Hammarlund regarding his first volume of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. My second example is from his correspondence with Wranér and concerns his translations of Asbjørnsen and Moe’s fairy tales. The aim is to show in what ways his expressed translation ideals are affected by his view of the status of the source material and by the nature of his relationship to the two editors. The analysis reveals that while Gyllander expresses an ambition to stay as close to the original as possible in the case of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, he shows a greater readiness to adapt the fairy tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe.