The Courageous Legacy of Hans Christian Andersen (and whales, puffins and sheep, oh my!)

Of Whales, Puffins, and Sheep, Oh My!

My husband and I celebrated a milestone anniversary this August with a trip to Denmark and the Faroe Islands, land of sheep and puffins. One afternoon on Streymore Island, we joined a caravan of cars pulled over to the side of the road, where passengers stood by the water watching three bottlenose whales cavort in the shallow cove. The whales had been hanging out there for several weeks, apparently, enjoying the salmon and herring. And really, some of those magnificent tail flaps, followed by noses rising straight into the air seemed intended to delight their land-bound admirers. 

On the remote island of Mykines, we saw puffins. Thousands and thousands of puffins. According to our guide, Katrin, the puffins arrive on Mykines in the spring. They return to their very own nest where they reunite with their mate. Two puffins conceive and hatch one puffling, which they raise all summer till the puffling is ready to join them in flight. They then spend eight months flying around the North Atlantic without touching ground before returning to their nests the next spring. 

Romantic that I am, I love hearing stories of fidelity and commitment in the natural world: other creatures besides humans engaging in the hard work of sustaining a relationship, raising offspring, and circling back to each other, year after year. 

Sitting on top of a windswept hill on Mykines, trying to ignore my discomfort with heights and focus instead on the experience of watching puffins flying in an aerial ballet all around me provided an hour of exquisite, windy (like try not to get blown off the cliff kind of windy), breathtaking beauty that I will never forget. 

And then, of course, there were sheep. Many, many sheep. The Faroese have strict rules about tourists sticking to the hiking paths because the grass, all of it, belongs to the sheep. Sheep rule the islands, crossing the roads at their leisure. On our early, foggy morning drive to the airport our last day, we stopped five times for sheep to leisurely cross the road. They did not care if we missed our plane. Soon, I stopped caring if we missed our plane. How many times in my life would my hurry to the next item on my agenda be reprioritized so that sheep could amble across my path? I only wish this would happen more often.

The Courageous Legacy of Hans Christian Andersen

We returned to Copenhagen, proud home of Hans Christian Andersen (known affectionately in Denmark as H.C.) and spent a lovely day in Tivoli Gardens, eating traditional smorgasbord sandwiches, and in the early evening, sitting on the grass before the Peacock Pantomime Theater and watching a ballet of H.C.’s story of “The Steadfast Toy Soldier” who loves his one-legged ballerina and finds his way back to her after many travails. 

While I was previously unfamiliar with that particular story, the stories of “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and “The Princess and the Pea,” had thrilled me as a child, and I was eager to visit the city of Odense, two hours outside of Copenhagen, to see the Hans Christian Andersen Home. The museum includes the tiny house in which he was born and lived for his first two years, along with six other families. A short walk away, one can also visit the home in which he lived from age two to fourteen, before he departed for Copenhagen, determined to make something of himself. 

Twelve international artists worked collaboratively to create a holistic artistic experience celebrating the work of Odense’s most famous resident. The exhibits highlight his challenges and inspirations and bring his artistic creations to life. I particularly loved the homage to my favorite fairy tale: a ceiling-high stack of mattresses opposite a crimson cushion displaying “the pea,” with an accompanying audio discussing the long established scientific veracity of determining royal blood by placing a pea under a towering stack of mattresses to determine if the so-called princess can get any sleep. (If she can, she’s not a real princess.)

One exhibition entitled “My Children” included this list outside the room: 

1000 poems

158 fairy tales

40 dramatic works

7 novels

5 travel memoirs

3 autobiographies

16 picture books

Innumerable paper cuttings and drawings

H.C. longed for love, physical affection, and romantic intimacy, which it seems he never found. He is not believed to have had any biological children. Yet he had the experience of giving birth to these multiple creations and watching what became of them over the years, seeing how they connected with audiences of children and adults, and how these children of his changed him over the course of his life, as children do change their parents. 

As a child born into poverty, having to fight for his education and any opportunity to prove his talent, young H.C. was told “You will never amount to anything.” No matter how many successes he’s shown as having throughout his life, the audio clip of these words reverberates throughout the museum’s many exhibits, demonstrating how constantly he fought, his whole life, against that negative message, one he could never unhear. 

On the other hand, he records a story in one of his autobiographies, mischievously titled “The Fairy Tale of My Life,” in which he reports that when he was a child a wise woman from the hospital read his fortune in a pack of cards and coffee dregs and told his mother, “`Your son will become a great man… and in his honor all Odense will one day be illuminated.’” A fairy tale that came true. 

Most writers I know wrestle with some version of these alternating voices whispering in our ears that we know we’re better off ignoring. 

The first voice says: “You know this writing is utter garbage, don’t you? How can you think you will ever amount to anything? You’re not actually going to show this story to anyone, are you? Please don’t embarrass yourself: just give up, put it away in a drawer somewhere, and never write another word.” 

And the second says, “I see a Pulitzer in your future. They’ll want to make a movie out of this story and of course, they’ll want you to write the screenplay, which will get you an academy award nomination at the very least. This story is brilliant. The world will take note!”

We have to ignore both these voices if we want to accomplish anything––otherwise, we’ll be utterly paralyzed. Yet, I love how H.C. allowed an element of playfulness to touch on his dreams of grandeur, writing “The Fairy Tale of My Life.” It’s that playful element, perhaps, that gave him the internal permission to pursue those dreams which led him to create so much magnificent work in so many different genres throughout his abundantly fruitful creative life. 

As I settle down from a season of travel and return to my novel writing, I hope these reminders to play and have fun linger long within me.