- A fairy tale about disappointment and inadequacy and why it is important to become beautiful/rich/successful in order to stick it to all your detractors.
Once upon a time, in a small Danish town called Odense, lived a small boy call Hans. Hans was an only child in a poor family, however his family insisted that he obtain an education and develop his creative side.
When he was 14ish, Hans left school and moved to the bright city lights of Copenhagen with stars in his eyes - he was going to become an actor (*flourish of hands*).
But that didn't work out.
So then, decided that he was going to be a dancer (*insert high kicks*).
But neither did that.
He temporarily found success with his souring soprano voice within a boys choir in an opera company.
But then his voice broke, and he was back to square one.
Eventually, he started to write essays and short stories which were read by Jonas Collins, who then took Hans under his wing and organised for his formal education. But it turns out even when Hans caught a break that he couldn't actually catch a break - he rated his school days as some of the worst days of his life because he wasn't allowed to write and was routinely abused.
Eventually, however, Hans graduated and was able to write prolifically. He received some acclaim for his short stories and essays, ironically, however, his children's books and fairy tales were completely panned in Denmark. He was copping so much flack for his infantile and simplistic children's stories that he fled to Germany. And apparently the Germans were a much less hostile audience than the Danes, because he then became *the* Hans Christensen Andersen that we know and love.
And then Denmark came crawling back and reclaimed him: it named all its streets after him, plonked a statute of the Little Mermaid in the middle of its industrial harbour and opened a ride in Tivoli dedicated to retelling the same stories that they had practically chased him out of the country for writing.
I had never read the original versions of H.C.'s fairy tales until we were stranded in a Russia airport for 10 hours, as we counted down to being sent to the gulag (more on that later). One of the people in our group treated us to a (completely hilarious and personalised) reading of The Ugly Duckling, which is a barely fictionalised autobiography of Andersen. Unlike all the brightly illustrated and large-fonted versions that had been read to me in my childhood, the original and literal Danish translation reads as something of a cross between a suicide note and a burn book.
The story of HC Andersen's expulsion from Denmark is something that the city of Odense would like, and is doing its darndest to ensure, people forget. Everything in this city is dedicated to the man.
They've kept his childhood home...
Shops...
Random statues...
Even the street lights.
But aside from plastering every plausible (and even some unplausible) location with an obscure HC Andersen reference (HC Andersen's favourite kebab place, anyone?), Odense was a pretty cute little place. We were there on a Sunday morning, so it was more or less a ghost town (Sunday trading literally only became legal around October last year), but it was nice just to wander around the streets and the parks.
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| The oldest street in Odense. |
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| Odense Town Hall |
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| We did a little bit of dream-house shopping along the creek/river in Odense... |
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| I will own this house one day. |
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| A statue in front of the Odense Opera house - painting to look like it has balconies and other fancy architectural features that they were too stingy to actually build. |
To bring this post full circle, it turns out that HC Andersen was buried just a few blocks from my house in the Assistens Kirkegard. The cemetery is a sprawling patch of land in Norrebro and is actually quite a lovely area for a walk. Also, apparently people have picnics there.
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| In Odense |
