This paper examines the transformation (‘translation’) of a corpus of oral narrative – generally considered to be a marginal genre – into an influential written text. The corpus under investigation consists of a collection of folk tales and legends, Norske Folkeeventyr ‘retold’ by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in the mid-nineteenth century, inspired and guided by National Romantic philosophy. The linguistic and narrative innovations contained in these folk tales are discussed and the previous findings are reinterpreted in the light of several key polysystemic concepts.