Book Svend-Erik Engh
Svend-Erik Engh is a storyteller with heart and soul, telling each story with body and voice. He tells Viking stories, Norse myths and Scandinavian folktales and legends.
Svend-Erik was born and raised in Denmark with a Norwegian mother, so these stories are in his blood and bones. He has a passion for all good stories and collected many stories as he was travelling around the world over the years. He tells tales from Namibia where he worked in the 90s, China where he travelled to in the 80s, France where he lived shortly in the 70s as well as many other stories from global traditions. Now that Scotland is his home, he has become deeply inspired by the Scottish history and traditions, in particular its relationship to the Vikings. His show ‘Walk the Oars’ with Neil Sutcliffe was a story of how Vikings came to Shetland and he is still finding new aspects of that story.
He delivers storytelling workshops in schools, community centres, and for private events which often include Viking games as well as Viking stories and myths of the Norse Gods. He also does walking tours of Edinburgh that tell tales of the city’s history and he naturally adds stories of the relationship between Edinburgh and Scandinavia to these walks.
He likes his storytelling to be as fun as possible. He is a very physical storyteller thanks to his theatrical training at Odin Theatre in his youth and his work with Dario Fo and other Dario Fo-inspired directors. His audiences always seem to enjoy this.
His first book in English is called ‘Danish Folk Tales’ published by the History Press in 2023. It is a collection of his favourite traditional stories from Denmark.
When he’s not having fun telling or writing stories he’s coaching storytellers and leading seminars and masterclasses to help people become better storytellers. For many years he has been working with business leaders helping them to advance their storytelling skills to inspire change in their organisations.
He has done similar work with university students at Copenhagen University where he has led courses on how to use stories when talking about academic research.
Throughout the 90s and early 2000s he worked side by side with business coach Steve Denning and in 2009 he published a book called ‘Tell a Story – create interaction’
In the early 90s he was also a Folkhøjskole teacher which is a Nordic people’s school which was founded by Grundvig in 1844 and inspired by Norse myths. A Folkhojskole is a school where the students create the curriculum and is unique to the Nordic countries.
Finally, he is a creator and performer of full length shows that have performed all over Scotland, England and at European festivals.. Since he arrived in Scotland in 2017 he has created 2 shows with storyteller Alice Fernbank. Their signature show is ‘GIANTS’ as they are both big people telling stories about other big people. In 2020 the duo created ‘Orphan James and The Prince of Denmark’, about James the VI of Scotland and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. With musician Neil Sutcliffe he created and performed ‘Walk the Oars’ at the Edinburgh Fringe, a Viking story of a young man travelling in a ship to Shetland, and in 2021 and 2022 Neil and Svend-Erik created ‘Wolves Within’ stories of Wolves. Both these shows have toured in England and Scotland.
