Fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen

A prize, or rather two prizes, a great one and a small one, had been awarded for the greatest swiftness in running,– not in a single race, but for the whole year.

A couple of large ships were sent up toward the North Pole, to discover the boundaries of land and sea and how far it would be possible for the human race to penetrate in that direction.

There lived once a great queen, in whose garden were found at all seasons the most splendid flowers, and from every land in the world.

There was once a darning-needle who thought herself so fine that she fancied she must be fit for embroidery. “Hold me tight,” she would say to the fingers, when they took her up, “don’t let me fall; if you do I shall never be found again, I am so very fine.”

There lived once upon a time a wicked prince whose heart and mind were set upon conquering all the countries of the world, and on frightening the people; he devastated their countries with fire and sword, and his soldiers trod down the crops in the fields and destroyed the peasants’ huts by fire, so that the flames licked the green leaves off the branches, and the fruit hung dried up on the singed black trees.

There was once a big wax candle who had the highest opinion of his merits.

It is unbelievable all that children know nowadays; one can scarcely say what they don’t know. They no longer believe the old story that the stork brought them to father and mother out of the well or the millpond when they were little, and yet it is really true.

On the highroad in the forest there stood a lonely farmhouse; the road passed right through its courtyard.

We are up in Jutland, near the wild marsh. We can hear the North Sea, hear it tossing about, for it is quite close by. Before us there rises a great sand dune; we have been looking at it for a long while, and we’ve been, and still are, driving toward it, very slowly, through the deep sand. On the top of this sand dune is an old, rambling building, the Börglum Monastery, the largest wing of which is the church. We arrive there in the late evening, but the air is clear and the night is bright, so we can enjoy an expansive view over meadow and moor as far as the Aalborg Fiord, over field and heath, out over the dark-blue sea.

The storks relate to their little ones a great many stories, and they are all about moors and reed banks, and suited to their age and capacity. The youngest of them are quite satisfied with “kribble, krabble,” or such nonsense, and think it very grand; but the elder ones want something with a deeper meaning, or at least something about their own family.