author
Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
b. 1873
A Norwegian-born storyteller and educator, she helped introduce generations of American children to Scandinavian folk tales. Her books are remembered for their warmth, clarity, and love of story as something meant to be spoken and shared.
1 Audiobook
East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon : with other Norwegian folk tales
by Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, Jørgen Engebretsen Moe
About the author
Born in Trondheim, Norway, on April 8, 1873, Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen became known in the United States as a writer, storyteller, and teacher. A scholarly article about her work describes her as one of America’s most respected storytellers during the Progressive Era, noting that she trained teachers and librarians and shaped ideas about storytelling as both an art and an educational tool.
She is especially associated with retellings of Norwegian tales, including East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, and with books such as The Birch and the Star, The Sky Bed, and In Norway. Library and public-domain catalog records show that her work was published across the early and mid-20th century and centered on bringing folklore and children’s literature to young readers in an inviting, memorable way.
Thorne-Thomsen died in 1956. Even from the limited records easily available online, her lasting reputation is clear: she was not only an author of beloved folk-tale collections, but also an influential voice in the way stories were told aloud to children and used in classrooms and libraries.