I'm still getting used to my poetry being out there for people to read

Yeah. It's the fact that people to whom I have not personally handed poems and stories are reading them that made (and occasionally still makes) my brain short out. Wait, this person knows my name . . . ?

The Scandinavian epics on which I grew up used a lot of repetition, so it seemed appropriate to use the same technique for a poem inspired by Andersen.

Given the fostering of the Marsh-King's daughter with a family of Vikings, it definitely works. You grew up on Scandanavian epic? I envy.