This story comes to us from the dunes of Jylland in Denmark, but it begins in Spain, where a young couple were blissfully happy. The only thing missing to make their happiness complete was a child, but their king sent them as emissaries to the imperial court in Russia and they were forced to leave their country. On boarding the boat, little did they know that their story would go no further than the dunes of Jylland and that another would begin here…
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was a Danish author, poet and artist. Celebrated for children’s literature, his most cherished fairy tales include “The Emperor's New Clothes”, “The Little Mermaid”, “The Nightingale”, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Ugly Duckling” and “The Little Match Girl”. His books have been translated into every living language, and today there is no child or adult that has not met Andersen's whimsical characters. His fairy tales have been adapted to stage and screen countless times, most notably by Disney with the animated films “The Little Mermaid” in 1989 and “Frozen”, which is loosely based on “The Snow Queen”, in 2013.
Thanks to Andersen's contribution to children's literature, his birth date, April 2, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.
