''Herr Tønne af Alsø'' ('Sir Tønne of Alsø') is a Danish

ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...

(''

The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad ''The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad: A Descriptive Catalogue'' (TSB) is the designation for a cataloguing system for Scandinavian ballads. It is also the title of the underlying reference book: ''The Types of the Scandinavian Medieva ...

'' A 62; ''

Danmarks gamle Folkeviser ''Danmarks gamle Folkeviser'' is a collection of (in principle) all known texts and recordings of the old Danish popular ballads. It drew both on early modern manuscripts, such as Karen Brahes Folio, and much more recent folk-song collecting activi ...

'' 34). ''

'' records two versions: A (73 stanzas) and B (38); it also appears in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

and

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. Dokumentasjonsprosjektet in Norway notes eight different variants, one dating back to the 1840s.

Summary

In the summary of ''The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad'', :: While out hunting Sir Tønne meets the daughter of a mountain

gnome A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

. She plays runic love spells for him on her golden harp and he is enchanted. But her mother, who is a human being, comes and breaks the spell. She tells Tønne to rescue her niece ... who is kept a prisoner by a king at

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...

... Tønne goes there, defeats the king's men and frees the maid. In the Swedish texts, the king is in

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

rather than Uppsala, and in some of these Tønne rescues the sister, not the niece, of the mountain gnome's daughter.''The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad: A Descriptive Catalogue'', ed. by Bengt R. Jonsson, Svale Solheim and Eva Danielson, Skrifter utgivna av svenskt visarkiv, 5 (Stockholm: Svenskt visarkiv, 1978), p. 42.

References

Scandinavian folklore Ballads Danish folk music Nordic folk music Year of song unknown Songwriter unknown {{song-stub