"In the 19th century, the religious tale about the the woman who does not want to have children and who loses her shadow was widespread in the Nordic countries. Some 150 records of it have been preserved, almost half of them from Sweden. Bengt af Klintberg shows in his study that this tale was first known in the Baltic Sea provinces of central Sweden and southern Finland. The later tradition was influenced by a printed tale, the Danish "Synd og Naade" ("Sin and Grace"). Over the period in which the tale was alive in the oral tradition, it underwent considerable changes. In several 19th-century records of it we find examples of a genuine oral folktale style, while shorter variants from the 20th century integrate elements from legends and folk belief. The picture conveyed of the female protagonist, the vicar's wife who rids herself of her unborn children by means of grinding, has also changed. In the earliest versions, her role is that of the sinner who receives God's grace. But female narrators, for whom constant confinements and death in childbirth were familiar realities, did not accept the negative stereotype, and introduced extenuating elements into the story. No fewer than eight literary authors have been inspired by the tale, including the Austrian Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who wrote the libretto for Richard Strauss's opera Die Frau ohne Schatten." --Title page verso.