My apologies all - this argument has no place here
"For example, the Swedish folk rock band Garmarna record a lot of trad ballads in their style."
One of the problems for me is that the ballad structure is a narrative one - probably the purest narrative form among all folk song - miss a line, even a few words, and you're quite likely to have lost the lot - literally
From what I know of Scandinavian ballads, it is the same with them.
Folk-rock, electric folk, even over-fussy accompaniment... distracts the attention from the story and, more often than not, drowns the narrative and transforms the song into something else - not necessarily worse or better - just different
Give a newbie that to listen to and you are not attracting them to balladry
I find myself in an odd situation here in the rural West of Ireland
There are no folk clubs but there are dozens of 'singing circles', mainly singing the more popular non-narrative songs   
I had more-or-less abandoned my ballad repertoire when I decided to give it another go and made a point of working out a careful introduction to all my unfamiliar songs - it seems to have worked
I now find myself being approached at the end of sessions and questioned about my songs
Jim Carroll