The Definitive Guide to Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tale Attractions in Denmark

The poor Little Mermaid has been splattered in paint, decapitated, amputated and otherwise vandalized by pranksters for years. Yet, Copenhagen authorities come to her rescue each time, restoring her to the harbor perch from which she looks wistfully out to sea. The importance of the Little Mermaid statue to this Scandinavian capital city is entwined with the adulation of native son Hans Christian Andersen who penned The Little Mermaid fairy tale.

Hans Christian Andersen was born in 1805 and grew up on the island of Funen, Denmark in Odense. He began writing at the age of 17. He moved to Copenhagen as a young adult and lived there until his death in 1875, although he spent considerable time in Germany and considered it his second home. Anderson initially sought to make his fame in the theater and turned to writing only after his theatrical efforts were unsuccessful.

Anderson considered his childhood poverty an important influence on his writing. Undoubtedly due in part to his poverty, he was an anxious, awkward and unpopular child. His father, a shoemaker, owned but a few books, among them the Bible, 1001 Arabian Nights, and Holberg's Comedies. Andersen read these books to escape the discomforts of his own life. They contributed immeasurably to his storehouse of fanciful notions. The poor and uneducated quarters of the Odense he knew were rife with superstition, and his mother inculcated these superstitions in Hans, where they further fostered his lively imagination. Hans also met elderly women at the Odense workhouse who shared old folk tales that he later incorporated into his stories.

Hans Christian Anderson's work is famous for personifying inanimate objects, that is, treating them as though they have the same qualities of thinking and feeling as people do. By using personification, he presented his stories in the manner a child would imagine them. Andersen is also known for identifying with and championing the downtrodden, and many see The Ugly Duckling as a story about his own childhood feelings of inadequacy.