folklore

Originally, women were all in heaven, while men were on earth; until the women descended via rope....

A Humorous Medieval Instructional Tale—Annotated Translation, with Translator’s Introduction by Noriko Tsunoda Reider

Lore is an award-winning, critically-acclaimed podcast about true life scary stories. Lore exposes the darker side of history, exploring the creatures, people, and places of our wildest nightmares, and has been adapted for television by Amazon, as well as published as a three-book set called The World of Lore by Penguin Random...

In modern media portrayals, the Devil is often portrayed as this suave mastermind who is always several steps ahead of any mortal. But in German folklore, his portrayal was rather different - quite frequently he was the butt of jokes. The following tale serves as a good example (and one which would not be out of place in an old...

This much is real: In the late Renaissance and Early Modern era, Venetians mined in the German mountain ranges - primarily so that they could find rare minerals for their famous glass production. Since the details of these were considered state secrets, their mining operations were likewise fairly secretive....

Listen to a number of cat tales from folklore - including one of the most bonkers stories from German folklore that I know, which is saying something!

During my study of German folklore, I was surprised to learn that one of the most common folk tale narratives featured treasure hunters - not just "people getting rewarded treasure for a virtuous deed", but people who heard that a treasure was at a certain location, and wanted to get it. They usually failed, but hope springs...

Tales of the old days when giants walked the Earth.

Modern media portrayals of the Wild Hunt have a fairly consistent portrayal - a huntsman on his steed, surrounded by his hounds. But when you actually start looking into European folk tales of "Wild Hunt"-type phenomena, you quickly notice that the portrayal is rather more diverse than you'd think. Here is one of my favorite...

Many legends and folk tales can be linked to specific real world locations. Here are my modest efforts at mapping the location of German folk tales, and I have included a few similar maps I am aware of in a links list....