The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

About the legend

Being

Tomte (a farm spirit)

Cultural meaning

In Swedish folk belief, a tomte is a small spirit who lives on a farm and watches over it, and above all over its animals. Where people treat the farm and the animals well, the tomte brings good luck. He is easily offended by laziness, carelessness and cruelty to animals, and then he makes trouble. Selma Lagerlöf's tomte is tiny, very old and dressed in fine old-fashioned clothes, and he has brought the Holgersson farm luck for many years. That is why a boy who torments the animals, and then tries to cheat him, gets such a lesson.

Fun fact

For many years, a picture of Nils riding the white gander Mårten over the fields of Skåne was printed on the back of Sweden's 20-kronor banknote.

Cultural notes

Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) wrote «Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige» (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils) in two volumes, 1906 and 1907, as a geography reader for Swedish schools; the National Teachers Association had asked her for it in 1902. In 1909 she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The places in the story are real: Västra Vemmenhög in southern Skåne, today part of Skurup, and the lake Vombsjön (Lake Vomb) with the estate of Övedskloster on its eastern shore. The book even gives the dates: Nils is shrunk on Sunday 20 March, and after flying with the geese through all of Sweden to Lapland and back, he comes home to Västra Vemmenhög on 8 November. Akka is named after the mountain massif Akka in Lapland, and in Sámi the name also means grandmother; Kebnekaise is Sweden's highest mountain. In the book Nils wears a white pointed cap, a green waistcoat and yellow leather breeches. Velma Swanston Howard's English translation came out in 1907.

About this retelling

Adapted from a Swedish novel A retelling of the first three chapters of Selma Lagerlöf's novel «Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige» (1906).

This story is how Selma Lagerlöf's novel begins: chapters I–III, the first week of Nils's journey, ending when he chooses to fly on with the geese. The farm, the tomte and the butterfly net, the shrinking, the animals who remember, Mårten's flight, Lake Vomb, Akka from Kebnekaise, Smirre the fox, the squirrel babies, the birds' song, Akka's thanks and Nils's choice all come from the book, and the goose Nils saves from the fox is Akka herself. For children we left out the father's gun, the cat pinning Nils by the throat, the fox about to bite the goose's neck, the geese teasing the fox all day until he collapses, a line about marriage and some of Nils's crueller deeds; the tomte does not box Nils's ear, the room just spins. Lagerlöf does not say who carried Nils down from the beech tree; here it is Mårten. The flock's flight north at the very end, and Nils's thoughts in the version for the oldest readers, were added for Nordic Tales. The English text is new, written from Lagerlöf's Swedish and Howard's translation of 1907; nothing comes from later films or television series.

Sources

• Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige, första bandet (1906), kap. I–III — Selma Lagerlöf
• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1907), translated by Velma Swanston Howard — Selma Lagerlöf

Themes

• kindness
• friendship
• honesty
• courage
• Nils Holgersson
• Selma Lagerlöf
• Mårten
• Akka from Kebnekaise
• Smirre
• tomte
• wild geese
• Skåne
• Vombsjön
• Västra Vemmenhög
• Swedish literature
• talking animals
• flying
• kindness

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