Germany’s Fairy Tale Road is a Grimm adventure

"Germany celebrates the contributions of the Brothers Grimm with the Fairy Tale Road, which makes a serpentine route for nearly 400 miles through the back roads and countryside of Hesse and Lower Saxony. It was here that the brothers were born and collected their stories.

... For lovers of quaint villages and towns nestled amid pastoral landscapes, this is an ideal tour for parents and grandparents seeking to relive their childhood and for children to explore the sights where the stories took place."

Read the full article by Bob Taylor about this tour dedicated to the Brothers Grimm, whose collection of fairy tales marks its bicentennial this December, at the Washington Times.

Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany

"A whole new world of magic animals, brave young princes and evil witches has come to light with the discovery of 500 new fairytales, which were locked away in an archive in Regensburg, Germany for over 150 years. The tales are part of a collection of myths, legends and fairytales, gathered by the local historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth (1810–1886) in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz at about the same time as the Grimm brothers were collecting the fairytales that have since charmed adults and children around the world."

The full article may be read at the Guardian. One of the fairy tales, "The Turnip Princess," may be read here.

The Snow Queen

This story by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen contains elements very reminiscent of the old sagas and legends. The title character, particularly as portrayed in the 1957 Soviet animated film, shares many characteristics with the Frost Etins. Also, the heroine's name, Gerda, is a variation of Gerd. Gerda ventures to the land of the Snow Queen to free her love Kay from the queen's icy palace. In the original story, Kay has his mind enchanted by splinters from a troll's mirror. In the animated film, his heart is turned icy by splinters from the snow queen's ice mirror, and Gerda hopes to rekindle his love and warm his heart. This is something of a turnabout on the story of Frey striving and succeeding in winning the heart of Gerd, the daughter of a Frost Giant.

Here is a clip from the first cinematic adpatation of the Andersen fairy tale, Snezhnaya koroleva, produced in the USSR in 1957. Per Wikipedia,  it was "later dubbed by Universal Studios with the voices of Sandra Dee as Gerda, Tommy Kirk as Kay and introduced by Art Linkletter. In the 1990s, the film was redubbed again, this time featuring the voices of Kathleen Turner, Mickey Rooney, Kirsten Dunst and Laura San Giacomo." This clip is in the original Russian.

'Once Upon a Time' and 'Grimm' bring fairy-tale characters to prime time

"There are enough stories and characters in the German folk tales compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early 19th Century to fill at least 10 seasons of a TV series." And remember, many of these German folk tales had their earliest origins in the pre-Christian Germanic myths. Full article on the new television series may be found at the Times-Picayune.