Olea Crøger (July 17, 1801 – November 21, 1855) was a Norwegian music teacher who was a pioneer in the collection of folk music and

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

. She is considered to have been one of the first to systematically collect folk songs and melodies in

Telemark Telemark () is a Counties of Norway, county and a current electoral district in Norway. Telemark borders the counties of Vestfold, Buskerud, Vestland, Rogaland and Agder. In 2020, Telemark merged with the county of Vestfold to form the county o ...

. Olea Styhr Crøger was born in

Heddal Heddal is a former municipality in Telemark county, Norway. The municipality existed from 1838 until its dissolution in 1964. The area is now part of Notodden Municipality. The administrative centre was the village of Heddal where the Heddal ...

, Norway. She was the daughter of Johannes Crøger (1753–1830) and Helle Margrethe Neumann (1764–1849). She was the daughter of a parish priest and a mother who taught her song and music. As an adult, she taught singing at

Kviteseid Kviteseid is a municipality in Telemark county, Norway. It is located in the traditional districts of Vest-Telemark and Upper Telemark. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Kviteseidbyen. Other villages in Kviteseid ...

Seminar, one of the first public teacher's college in Norway. On her own, she began to collect old folk songs and melodies. By one account, she responded to the call for citizens to collect disappearing vestiges of Norwegian folk balladry. These first appeared in ''Samling AF Sange, Folkeviser Og Stev I Norske Almuedialekter'', the folklore collection of

Jørgen Moe Jørgen Engebretsen Moe (22 April 1813–27 March 1882) was a Norwegian folklorist, bishop, poet, and author. He is best known for the '' Norske Folkeeventyr'', a collection of Norwegian folk tales which he edited in collaboration with Pe ...

first published 1840. This material was published in an enlarged edition in 1869 which was accompanied by melodies edited by

Ludvig Mathias Lindeman Ludvig Mathias Lindeman (28 November 1812 – 11 March 1887) was a Norwegian composer and organist. He is most noted for compiling Norwegian folk music in his work ''Ældre og nyere norske Fjeldmelodier''. Background Ludvig Mathias Lindeman was ...

. However, Moe's 1840 anthology was not a bona fide ballad collection with the exception of two or three pieces, and by the time Moe met Crøger in 1842, she had already compiled a substantial collection of genuine ballads. The Norwegian ballad texts and tunes she collected in the 1840s onward were eventually published through

Magnus Brostrup Landstad Magnus Brostrup Landstad (7 October 1802 – 8 October 1880) was a Norwegian parish priest and provost, hymn writer, and poet who published the first collection of authentic Norwegian traditional ballads in 1853. Biography Landstad was born i ...

's ''Norske folkeviser'' (1853), which re-edited the raw ballad texts in composite form and normalized spelling. Her collected ballads also comprised a good part of

Lindeman Lindeman is a German, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish surname. Geographical distribution As of 2014, 58.8% of all known bearers of the surname ''Lindeman'' were residents of the United States (frequency 1:55,620), 16.5% of the Netherlands (1:9,286), ...

's later melody collections. The contribution by Olea Crøger as pioneer collector of folk ballad and melody had been underappreciated until the 20th century. Modern folk ballad archivist Øystein Gaukstad has analyzed this in his survey of the history of ballad collecting. The first 57 melodies in L. M. Lindeman's transcription of 1851 were essentially the melodies she collected, as were 33 of the 114 melodies appended to Landstad's ''Norske folkeviser'' (1853). When Crøger engaged in the ballad collecting, she intended her own name to appear as co-contributor to the work, but Landstad merely acknowledged her in the preface. Landstad did, however, offer Crøger fair compensation for her contributions; following Crøger's death, the money went towards establishing a library in

Seljord Seljord is a municipality in Telemark county, Norway. It is located in the traditional districts of Upper Telemark and Vest-Telemark. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Seljord. Other villages in the municipalit ...

. Lindeman also stinted crediting Crøger with all but three ballads in his fifty ballad supplement of 1862, but the 1851 manuscript belies this, and Lindeman's debt to her for many more pieces is revealed. An early commentator A. P. Berggreen suspected that though Lindeman was responsible for the "editing", Crøger had done much of the "collecting".

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Other sources

* * Knutslid, Gudrun Brauti (1982) ''Olea Crøger: Seljordminne om den fyrste folkevisesamlaren'' (Athenæum forlag) {{DEFAULTSORT:Croger, Olea 1801 births 1855 deaths People from Telemark Norwegian music educators Music publishers (people) 19th-century Norwegian businesswomen 19th-century Norwegian businesspeople Norwegian folk-song collectors 19th-century Norwegian educators Norwegian women music educators Norwegian folklorists Norwegian women folklorists 19th-century women educators Norwegian musicologists Norwegian women musicologists 19th-century musicologists