H.C. Andersen

While we leave the Little Mermaid to go to our next destination you might be interested in hearing some more about the famous writer H.C. Andersen? As you might have noticed, he is ever present here in Copenhagen, and still today he is without a doubt one of the most famous Danes in the world. He lived between 1805 and 1875 and wrote all kinds of stuff, but as you probably know he specialized in fairytales, for young and for old, for which he is most famous. He is the author of 168 tales in total, of which some of them got famous in the USA before they were even published in Denmark. Apart from the Little Mermaid his most famous stories would be the Ugly Duckling, The Emperors’ new clothes, the Snow Queen, The Princess and the Pea and so forth.
One of H.C Andersens famous quotations from The Ugly Duckling is: “It doesn't matter if you were born in a duck yard, as long as you are hatched from a swan's egg". This might make you think of the underlying references to a society with different classes and hierarchies, and in Andersens stories there are always an underlying meaning or some sort of wisdom to learn from.

Photo HCA by Thora Hallager 1869 by Thora Hallager is licensed under  public domain