Sjömansbiblioteket

Once there was a pastor who always gave terrifying sermons. He promised that sinners would burn in hell and, in his eyes, everyone had committed sufficient wrongs to deserve this punishment. Despite his impressive speeches, the pastor’s wife did not believe that everyone could be as bad as all that. When she died, the pastor was very sad. But one night, the dead woman’s ghost appeared and took him on an adventure that led him to question everything he had previously believed.

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.