Here is a rich compendium of hundreds of legends, stories, beliefs, and magic collected from oral sources in preindustrial Scandinavia. In this rural society, the people lived close to nature and believed themselves an integral part of it. This volume focuses on beliefs that illustrate the central aspects of a traditional worldview, rather than on prose narratives considered for their literary value.

... it presents some of the most important folklore studies to appear in [Nordic] countries in the past thirty years." ―The Scandinavian-American Bulletin... will... be of interest to folklorists in general. The selected essays... deal with issues that any folklorist who wishes to be up-to-date must consider.... A valuable addition to folklore studies... " ―ChoiceNordic folklore studies have made major theoretical contributions to international folklore scholarship. The articles in this collection not only reflect areas in which Nordic folklore studies have been particularly strong, but also demonstrate recent changes in theoretical paradigms and empirical application.

All the World's Reward presents ninety-eight tales from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Swedish-speaking Finland, and Iceland. Each area is represented by the complete recorded repertoire of a single storyteller. Such a focus helps place the stories in the context of the communities in which they were performed and also reveals how individual folk artists used the medium of oral literature to make statements about their lives and their world. Some preferred jocular stories and others wonder tales; some performed mostly for adults, others for children; some used storytelling to criticize society, and others spun wish fulfillment tales to find relief from a harsh reality.