The Wonderful Adventures of Nils - Selma Lagerlöf's Guide to Sweden
Who didn't dream about flying in their childhood? Selma Lagerlöf tells a fascinating journey a kid could ever imagine in her novel "The wonderful adventures of Nils," which made her the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1909. Leading a reader from the very south of Sweden to the high north in Swedish Lapland, she shows a big picture of a child growing up who takes responsibility and learns to care, intertwined with social problems of the beginning of the XX century and adorned with fairytales and mythology. And this book was meant to be a school geography textbook! So let's dive in and discover what makes this story so unique.
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| Meeting Selma Lagerlöf in Landskrona, where the story was born. |
Selma Lagerlöf was born in 1858, and it was not the best time in Swedish history. Since 1850 and by the beginning of The First World War, poverty and hunger made almost one million Swedes emigrate to the USA, about a fifth of the Swedish population. Those who couldn't leave stayed and needed to change things for a better future. Because of debts, Selma's father was forced to sell their estate - Mårbacka, in 1884, which significantly impacted her. At that time, she was studying in Stockholm to become a teacher. After finishing her studies, she went to Landskrona - the city in the south of Sweden on the Öresund coast, where she worked as a teacher and began her career as a writer.
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The Wonderful Adventures of Nils in Russian by the publishing house "Nigma", 2021 |
At the beginning of the XX century, school textbooks in Sweden were boring. Selma Lagerlöf captured children's attention by telling them exciting stories related to school subjects, mixed with fairytales and myths she had loved since her childhood in Mårbacka. In 1891 she published her first novel Gösta Berling's Saga, where also the reality of Sweden's life and fiction were skillfully bound.
In 1902, she was asked by the National Teachers' Association to create an exciting and attractive geography book, which was part of school reform. (It was a "dream reform," as we can say today because another author who was asked to write the history book was another future Nobel Prize winner - Verner von Heidenstam, but more on that next time.)
To get to know her motherland better, Selma Lagerlöf made a trip across the country: from the coast of Bohuslän to the Lapland tundra. Working on the storyline, she was inspired by the books such as H.C. Andersen's "In Sweden" (1849), Richard Gustafsson's story about the boy traveling on a swan across Sweden, and Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Book" about the animals talking like people.
And this is the circumstances in which Nils Holgersson as a character was born.
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| The Wonderful Adventures of Nils in Russian by the publishing house "Nigma", 2021 |
We meet this 14 y.o. boy (today, we would consider him as a teenager) at his home in Västra Vemminhög, Skåne län. He herds geese, hurts animals, behaves like a cruel and irresponsible little boy, and doesn't want to study. His parents try to make him study, but Tomten (a fairy creature - the same who gives presents on Christmas in Swedish tradition) finds a better way: he turns Nils into a tiny shorty - Tom Thumb as animals would call him, Swedish: Tummetott. Now, Nils needs to find out how to break the curse, which leads to a wonderful journey to adulthood.
Suddenly, wild geese were flying above Nil's garden, and one of his domestic geese wanted to join them, so Nils jumped on his back and left his home...
Nils and his goose understood that they needed each other, and Mårten (the goose) promised to bring Nils home after the journey if he would help him on their way too. Unexpected deal for a boy who didn't use to help others. But... He didn't have other options.
Like in a traditional fairytale, we meet other animals representing different archetypes: sly fox Smirre, wise goose Akka, raven Bataki, eagle Gorgo, and others. Also, there are magic characters like living monuments in Karlskrona, trolls in the wind and the mountains, mermaids, and even ghosts! And, of course, there are also people: peasants in the south, students in Uppsala, workers in the factories, Sami in Lapland, and even the author herself! As the parallel storyline, Selma Lagerlöf tells a story about two orphans whose family died from tuberculosis and whose father had left them... All these characters are masterfully depicted and fit into amazing Scandinavian nature with its huge lakes, high mountains, forests, and islands.
Nils finds himself in many situations, resolving which he became an adult with the ability to care and help. Along with him, we learn incredible legends and myths from every corner of Sweden! About sunken cities and pirates' treasures, gold in the mountains trolls, who created the landscapes of western Sweden. We also learn about the animals, the seasonal migration of birds, spring dances, and many others!
This fairytale story is more realistic than any other novel about ordinary life. Selma Lagerlöf's characters (both animals and people) fight for their lives, get sick and die. Elk dies from the hunter's bullet, Smirre the Fox kills the raven, and the old lady dies alone when all her family has gone to America. The characters in the book live a hard life confronting moral choices. There are kind and cruel characters, wise or sneaky. And if the animals can't change, the people can become better. Nils begins to help others and even can stand the final Tomten's test: he refuses to become big again at the cost of his best friend's (Mårten) life.
So finally, becoming a responsible adult helped Nils get rid of a curse.
Selma Lagerlöf teaches her readers, but in her own way, saying that our actions mean a lot and can change everything.
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| The Wonderful Adventures of Nils in Russian by the publishing house "Nigma", 2021 |
The first part of the book was published in 1906, and the second - one year later. It immediately became a bestseller and remained the world's most famous Swedish children's book until the publishing of "Pippi Longstocking" by another genius author - Astrid Lindgren.
This book brought Selma Lagerlöf the Nobel Prize in literature in 1909 "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination, and spiritual perception that characterize her writings."
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| The Wonderful Adventures of Nils in Swedish by Lind & co AB, 2017 |
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| The route. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils in Swedish by Lind & co AB, 2017 |
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| Illustration by Anton Pieck. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils in Swedish by Lind & co AB, 2017 |
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| The photo of Selma Lagerlöf at the time she was working on the novel. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils in Swedish by Lind & co AB, 2017 |
My personal story is closely linked to the adventures of Nils Holgersson. In autumn-winter 2021-2022, I became interested in Swedish culture and literature. At that time, I read Verner von Heidenstam's "The Charles Men", Astrid Lindgren's "War Diaries, 1939–1945" and Selma Lagerlöf's first novel "Gösta Berling's Saga." That winter, we planned a trip to Sweden next summer and drew routes on the maps, dreaming about a funny family journey.
I also was lucky to find the full version of "The wonderful adventures of Nils" in Russian translation with beautiful illustrations, which I began to read to my child in the middle of February 2022.
And that was the time when the war began on the 24th of February... We woke up at 5 a.m. and were shocked. My husband and I decided to leave the country and our 8 y.o. child didn't quite understand that he needed to leave all the things he had at home... We took only some clothes with us, our cat, some snacks, and... the book about Nils's adventures to have something comforting and remind us about the home we left.
We spent more than a month in southern Europe and Montenegro and were totally frustrated, without any plans and hope that the war would end soon. And then, we decided to go to Sweden - the country we know something about and were interested to discover more. As we arrived in Ystad, the statue of Nils met us on the road to Malmö, where we planned to stay. And we have never seen so many wild birds before!
I continued reading the book to my son, and there was real magic: the calendar in the book was exactly the same as in 2022! Every day we read about the exact date and day of the week in the book! We watched Valborg on the 30th of April and read about it in the book, where Nils listened to the stories near the bonfire in Rättvik, Dalarna län. But Nils had returned home in November of the same year, and we hadn't...
It is now more than a year since we arrived in Sweden. We didn't come back to Odesa, to our home. And we try to cope with that pain. But the beauty of nature and the amazing stories from talented Swedish authors help us recover and enjoy life!
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