ATU Tale Type Index

The Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) classification system is the international standard for cataloguing folk tale types. Originally developed by Antti Aarne (1910) and revised by Stith Thompson (1928, 1961) and Hans-Jörg Uther (2004), it assigns a numeric code to each recurring tale plot found across world traditions. This page presents 2,247 tale types sourced from the Trilogy dataset.

Tale types are organized into broad chapters: Animal Tales, Tales of Magic, Religious Tales, Anecdotes and Jokes, Formula Tales, and others. Use the chapter tabs at the top to filter by category. Each tab shows the number of tale types it contains. Click "All" to return to the full listing.

The search box filters tale types by ATU number, title, or tradition (for example Lappish). Results update as you type. The Random button picks a tale type at random for serendipitous browsing. You can also link directly to a search using the URL parameter ?q=your+query.

Each tale type card shows the ATU number and name, its chapter and division in the catalogue, the motifs and other tale types its catalogue entry names, and the traditions whose tale catalogues and collections record it. A long list shows its first names; "+ more" opens the rest. Where the catalogue cites Finnic or Finland-Swedish sources, the card quotes those citations, one tradition to a line; click an underlined short title for the full reference. For the catalogue's own plot summary, remarks and full literature list, each card links to its volume of Uther's catalogue, free online in the Kalevala Society's open-access edition.

Some tale types are linked to Estonian treasure legends (varandusemuistendid) in the RunoVerse corpus. Links are organized by confidence: gold badges indicate canonical references found in folkloristic literature (explicit ATU/AT codes in legend type names). Lighter gold badges with a "≈" prefix indicate strong thematic parallels where core narrative motifs are clearly shared. Dashed-border badges with a "?" prefix indicate experimental matches based on shared motifs -- plausible but not established in the literature. Hover over non-canonical badges for a rationale. Click any badge to view the legend type in the Treasure Legends explorer.

Where available, each tale type lists its associated Thompson Motif Index (TMI) motifs as green badges. Click any motif ID to look it up in the Motifs (TMI) explorer. The "Combines with" row (orange badges) shows other ATU types that frequently co-occur in the same narrative tradition; click one to search for it.

Tale types with documented Finnish or Estonian tradition show FI (blue) and ET (green) badges in the card header. Use the Finnic filter button to show only tale types attested in Finnish or Estonian tradition.

When the traditions recorded for a tale type include one of the peoples drawn on the map, the card shows a small map of the Baltic Sea area. Blue marks a people whose published tale catalogue or collection the ATU catalogue cites for this tale type. Finns, Estonians, Karelians, Latvians, Lithuanians and the Sámi are drawn as rough areas; Finland-Swedes, Livonians, Veps, Votes and Ludians as dots in their home areas. Grey means only that the catalogue does not cite that people: the tale may still have been told there. Swedes, Russians and other neighbours are not marked. Finno-Ugric peoples further east are named under it.

From the archives. In the SKVR and ERAB type indexes, the editors wrote a tale-type number into the description of some song types; these are listed first. The indexes use the older Aarne-Thompson numbers, and the card shows the tale with the same number in Uther's catalogue of 2004. "Cited for comparison" means the index names the tale only as a comparison; "marked uncertain", that the number has a question mark. Where Uther's catalogue merged an old number into another tale type, the song type is shown on that type's card with the old number.

Possibly related. This list was made by a language model, Claude Opus 5.5. It read the description and three sample songs of each of about 1,900 types of narrative songs, children's rhymes and chain songs, with tale-type numbers hidden. It named a tale type only where the songs tell its plot, match a passage of it such as a character's words, or follow its chain formula, not for a shared word or theme; only links it rated likely are shown. It can miss links and suggest wrong ones, so the list is a lead to check in the songs.

Some tale types have up to three example tales in English from the Trilogy folktale corpus, most of them taken from 19th-century books. Click a title to read the tale; the line under it names the published source.

The Most-Shared Narrative Motifs panel (collapsed by default, below the search controls) ranks the TMI motifs that appear across the greatest number of ATU tale types -- the fundamental narrative building blocks shared across folk traditions worldwide. Click any motif to look it up in the Motifs (TMI) explorer.