Not many scholarly traditions are so close to computational approaches as the tradition of folklore respectively folktale studies. Since the days of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson folktales have been studied based on large collections of stories, comparison of genres and motifs, and historical and cultural stemmatologies. Even though no one was talking about data or data modelling in those heydays of folktale research, the formalization of tales was still the heart of folktale studies right from the start when around 1900 academic societies and researchers systematise the field of research. One could even point to Johann Georg von Hahn’s early attempts in the nineteenth century to support this claim. ‘Formulae’ or story radicals, as Hahn’s wording was translated, are basically already in 1864 breaking down complex stories into motifs, count and classify the motifs, correlate the sites of finding with stories and compare the motifs over large geographical and cultural distances. It is of no exaggeration to point out that since more than one hundred years, the research agenda of folktale studies has been noticeable similar to today’s computational approaches (Voigt 1976).