Ossetia is a small land in the central north Caucasus, the inhabitants of which speak an Indo-European language, unlike their Caucasian neighbours, to whom they are only culturally related. The speakers of the two main dialects of northern Ossetic, Digoron and Iron, are divided from the speakers of the southern dialect by the Caucasus range itself. The written language developed only after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus and the first texts published in Ossetic appeared at the end of the eighteenth century. After brief experiments with both the Roman and the Georgian alphabet, Ossetic continues to be written in the Cyrillic script.

Ossetes are justly proud of their oral tradition and cultural heritage. Since the later part of the nineteenth century a fine written literature has developed in all the main areas of drama, prose and poetry, but it is the large corpus of orally transmitted traditional material which has given many Ossetic writers their inspiration. Kh. N. Ardasenov (1959: 51-3) stresses the importance of traditional prose and poetry, in all its variety, as a source of subject matter, rich language and form for Ossetic writers; written literature in Ossetia developed within the context of a still thriving oral tradition. In 1934 the Digoron poet Maliti compared himself to the legendary Nart musician, Atsæmæz: ‘I wish, Mama, I could become for you, like Atsæmæz, a wonderful fændyr-player … I would play wondrous songs’ (Maliti 1986: 50).

The fairy tale (Ossetic aryau) is well represented in Ossetic and an attempt was made to list and classify Ossetic animal and fairy tales, according to the system of Aarne and Andreev, in 1958 by A. Kh. Biazyrov. The tales classified as Volshebnye Skazki ‘wonder tales’, types 300-749, are subdivided into the familiar categories of Supernatural Enemies, Tasks, Helpers and Objects and there are good Ossetic examples of many very well-known tales, including ‘The Dragon Slayer’, ‘The Two Brothers’, ‘Rapunzel’, ‘Magic Flight’, ‘The Swan Maiden’, ‘The Princess in the Skin of a Frog’, ‘The Serpent Prince’, ‘Little Brother and Little Sister’, ‘Puss-in-Boots’, ‘The Golden Bird’ and many others.