Evald Tang Kristensen (nr Kolding 1843 – Mølholm 1929) is considered one of the great folklore collectors of Europe. His collection of 24,000 pages of field notes taken from 3348 respondents in Denmark are now in the archive of the Dansk Folkemindesamling in Copenhagen. He collected these materials in his spare time as a teacher, a profession to which he had worked himself up from humble beginnings: from 1866 on he started to undertake field trips around his posting, Gellerup, asking locals for ballads and tales. Later journeys from subsequent postings covered larger parts of Jutland. In addition, materials from further afield were forwarded to him by other Danish collectors, leading to a collection of c.3000 ballads, 1000 melodies, some 2500 fairy tales and 15,000 tales, proverbs, rhymes and riddles as well as descriptions of customs and traditions. He published the ballads, with the support of Svend Grundtvig, as Jyske Folkeminder (“Jutlandish Folklore”, 5 vols, 1871-81). In 1883 he founded the Danish Folklore Society (Folkemindesamfundet) and served as editor of its journal Skattegraveren (“The treasure-hunter”) until 1889. Throughout the 1890s he published a substantial number of collections of tales and ballads. He was praised for his methodic and reliable work and aided the composer Percy Grainger on a folksong-collecting tour in 1922. The archives, to which he would donate his collection, he co-founded in 1904.