ABSTRACT
Whenever Kristensen met with Jens Peter Pedersen, it rained. Kristensen’s first contact with Jens Peter came on October 5, 1893 on a collecting trip that also doubled as a lecture tour. It had taken Kristensen through Jerup, Bratten, Frederikshavn and on to Taars. Kristensen complained of the frequent downpours he had to endure on this trip: “The next day I was supposed to go to a dairy cooperative meeting and since no wagon came for me, I had to walk in the pouring rain ...” and “ ... now it had started raining and it rained every day so it was no fun for me to walk the long stretches of road and my feet were wet the whole time.” 1
On a short side trip from Taars, Kristensen found his way to Ilbjaerg where he met Jens Peter: “Now I found my way over to Teacher G.P. Andersen in L0rslev and was of course up to [see] the spinner in Ilbjaerg, Jens Peter Pedersen. He seemed to be a bottomless well from which to draw.”2 Over the next five years, Kristensen visited Jens Peter four times. Each time he was impressed with Jens Peter’s large and diverse legend repertoire and his extreme willingness, almost urgency, to tell his stories.
