With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Delius and his wife dithered over abandoning their home in the village of Grez, near Paris, before finally accepting Beecham's invitation to stay at either of his houses; Delius eschewed the London establishment for Watford. After an initial period of anxiety, he could confide in his publisher, Emil Hertzka (January 9, 1915) "...all goes well & I am working very much here as we are living in the country. In the next few months a good number of my works are to be performed here. I hope this terrible war will not last too long." In late February he was with Beecham at Manchester to hear Sea Drift, and on the 24th, the premiere of his Violin Sonata No. 1. The Piano Concerto and excerpts from A Village Romeo and Juliet figured on the program of the Hallé concerts in mid-March. Meanwhile, Delius settled down to work on his Requiem and An Arabesk, and made sketches for Eventyr. After a summer and fall sojourn in Norway, the Deliuses returned to Grez, though nothing more is heard of Eventyr until December 31, 1917, in a letter to his friend, conductor and composer Norman O'Neill, "For the last 16 days we have had arctic cold & cannot keep our house warm...—I have just finished a new work 'Eventyr' after Asbørnsens [sic] fairy tales for Orchestra & have rather tired my eyes...." In fact, Delius was already in the grip of a syphilitic infection, contracted before the turn of the century, which by 1923 would leave him paralyzed and blind. There is no hint in Eventyr of the vicissitudes surrounding its composition, though—as in those other works of Scandinavian inspiration, A Song of the High Hills and An Arabesk (both 1911)—Delius' utterance has taken an astringently muscular turn. Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's collection of Norwegian folk tales and legends, published between 1842 and 1871, is the undisputed source for Eventyr (Once upon a time), but, as Felix Aprahamian noted, "It has been said that...Eventyr is not based on any particular story, but an attempt to convey in music something of the atmosphere of [the] tales. The music itself seems to disprove this, for, so vivid are its colours and contrasts, it hints at a programme as detailed as that of Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel." Eventyr is dedicated to Henry Wood, who conducted its premiere at Queen's Hall on January 11, 1919.

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