The aim of this study is to increase understanding of folk music within an historical, European framework, and to show the genre as a dynamic and changing art form. The book addresses a plethora of questions through its detailed examination of a wide range of music from vastly different national and cultural identities. It attempts to elucidate the connections between, and the varying development of, the music of peoples throughout Europe, firstly by examining the ways in which scholars of different ideological and artistic ambitions have collected, studied and performed folk music, then by investigating the relationship between folk and popular music. Jan Ling is Professor of Musicology at Goteborg University, Sweden.

Kerstin Ekman's novel Blackwater took the world by storm in 1993 and has now been translated into over twenty-five languages. But her reputation as one of Sweden's best-known and most successful authors rests just as securely upon the series of four novels she wrote between 1974 and 1983, which are based on the author's childhood home town of Katrineholm some forty miles southwest of Stockholm. The first of these, Witches' Rings, which portrays the final years of the nineteenth century in a small urban community on the cusp of industrialisation, was published by Norvik Press in 1997. The Spring, which focuses on the lives of three women, Tora, Frida and Ingrid, moves the story on from the early twentieth century to the interwar years. According to Ekman herself, two major socio-psychological studies carried out in Katrineholm indicate 'that this was a community with which its inhabitants were content... I have devoted eleven years of my life to maintaining the exact opposite.' This is accomplished in a narrative of great subtlety and compelling power; once again Kerstin Ekman recreates the past with an authenticity that resonates urgently in the present.

The Loewenskoeld Ring (1925) is the first volume of the trilogy considered to have been Selma Lagerloef's last work of prose fiction. Set in the Swedish province of Varmland in the eighteenth century, the narrative traces the consequences of the theft of General Loewenskoeld's ring from his coffin, and develops into a disturbing tale of revenge from beyond the grave. It is also a tale about decisive women. The narrative twists and the foregrounding of alternative interpretations confront the reader with a pervasive sense of ambiguity. Along with the narrative technique, the spell of the ring extends into the two subsequent volumes, Charlotte Loewenskoeld (1925) and Anna Svard (1928).

Witches' Rings portrays the history of a rural society in a new light, tracing its development through the lives of working class women and children rather than authorities and decision-makers. The central character is a woman so anonymous that her name is not even mentioned on her gravestone. This novel, written in 1974 and now published for the first time in English, is the first volume of a tetralogy which follows a Swedish community through a hundred years of recent history to the present day.

Ann-Marie is a middle-aged woman returning from Portugal to the Swedish town in which she grew up in order to sell the old house she has inherited from her father. Memories of the past are everywhere, ensnaring her. She ends up staying in the house, alone with her memories of her father, an idiosyncratic character whom only she truly understood. She is also nervously awaiting the arrival of her daughter, and now realises that she has never really tried to understand her. With this eloquent and gripping story Kerstin Ekman concludes her epic sequence of novels, Women and the City (whose earlier volumes Witches' Rings, The Spring and The Angel House are also available from Norvik Press). City of Light is an intensely moving novel about love, in a rich and unusual variety of forms, and also a sensitive and thoughtful depiction of the way in which human beings approach life and one another.

What happens to an individual who is rejected by society? What happens to a society that eventually realises the living are more important than the dead, and that it is suffering a crisis of values and priorities? What does war do to us and to our outlook on the world? Selma Lagerloef struggled with these issues throughout World War I and experienced a mental block in writing about them. Then she found an opening and produced a thought-provoking tale of love, death and survival that grapples with moral dilemmas as relevant today as they were a century ago. Selma Lagerloef (1858-1940) stablished herself as a major author of novels and short stories, and her work has been translated into close to 50 languages. Most of the translations into English were made soon after the publication of the original Swedish texts and have long been out of date. This Norvik Press series, 'Lagerloef in English', provides English-language readers with high-quality new translations of a selection of the Nobel Laureate's most important texts.

The curse on the Loewenskoeld family comes to fruition in unexpected ways in this final volume of the Loewenskoeld cycle. Anna Svard is also very much a novel of women's struggle toward finding fulfillment. The Loewenskoeld Ring resonates with 'beggars cannot be choosers' in relation to what a poor woman can expect in life, while Charlotte Loewenskoeld moves toward women having some choices. In Anna Svard the eponymous protagonist takes full and impressive control of her own life and destiny. The question of motherhood and the fates of the children with whom the characters engage is another theme. The reader goes on to follow Charlotte, Karl-Artur, Thea and their families, familiar from the previous volume, through this compact novel as it moves relentlessly toward a chilling denoument. Selma Lagerloef (1858-1940) quickly established herself as a major author of novels and short stories, and her work has been translated into close to 50 languages. Most of the translations into English were made soon after the publication of the original Swedish texts and have long been out of date. 'Lagerloef in English' provides English-language readers with high-quality new translations of a selection of the Nobel Laureate's most important texts.

A curse rests on the Loewenskoeld family, as narrated in The Loewenskoeld Ring. Charlotte Loewenskoeld is the tale of the following generations, a story of psychological insight and social commentary, and of the complexities of a mother-son relationship. Charlotte is in love with Karl-Arthur - both have some Loewenskoeld blood. Their young love is ill fated; each goes on to marry another. How we make our life 'choices' and what evil forces can be at play around us is beautifully and ironically depicted by Selma Lagerloef, who was in her sixties when she wrote this tour de force with the lightest imaginable touch.

When Hillevi, a young, inexperienced midwife, moves from the university town of Uppsala to the wilderness of Svartvattnet (Blackwater) to be with her unofficial fiance, she is ill prepared for what awaits her. In this frigid, austere, and isolated territory, she encounters the overwhelming and unpredictable forces of nature and demoralizing poverty and ignorance while also gaining access to the unfamiliar world of nomadic Sami reindeer herders. A single traumatic event, never fully confronted, has devastating and far-reaching repercussions, but Hillevi also finds unexpected warmth and love. Incorporating elements of the "jojk" oral tradition of Sami culture, "God's Mercy" is a thoroughly engrossing story about the capriciousness of memory, the resilience of the human psyche, and the endless wonder of the wild.