More than 500 German fairytales from the Oberpflaz region have been discovered after being locked in an archive for over 150 years and completely forgotten.

Erika Eichenseer, a cultural curator in Oberpfalz, found them and compiled them into a book which is now being translated into English.

She told the Today programme's Justin Webb that she was looking for original texts and someone eventually suggested she look in the archive in which she discovered the "treasure".

"They are new and not new" in that many are variations of other fairytales, she said.

There is a common misconception that fairy tales are for small children, she said, whereas they are really meant for young people approaching adolescence, where "nothing fits anymore… they are getting lost… getting on a dark path".

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