Forteller

Forteller is a term used in Danish and Norwegian to denote a storyteller or a narrator. In everyday usage it refers to a person who tells stories or relates events, whether in spoken folk tradition, written fiction, film, or journalism. The word comes from the verb fortelle, to tell, with the agent suffix -er, and is cognate with related forms in other Germanic languages. In English-language contexts, forteller is occasionally used as a loanword to mean a narrator or storyteller, but it is most often translated as narrator or storyteller.

In literature and media, a forteller denotes the voice that relates the narrative. The forteller can be a transparent presence, such as a first-person narrator who speaks directly in the text, or a more distant voice, such as a third-person narrator. The forteller may be reliable or unreliable, omniscient or limited, and can influence how readers perceive events.

In folklore and oral tradition, fortellers have historically been traveling storytellers who preserve myths, legends, and local history by recounting them in performance. In contemporary contexts, the concept persists in professional storytelling and in media production, where a forteller may be a voiceover artist or a narrative creator behind documentaries and scripted media.

See also: Narrator, Storytelling, Folklore, Oral tradition.