"The Wonderful Adventures of Nils" is a literary buy-one-get-one as it combines two volumes, "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils" and "Further Adventures of Nils". This is a style of writing popularized by early twentieth century children's author Joyce Lancaster Bristley whose "Adventures of Milly Molly Mandy" and "Further Adventures of Milly Molly Mandy" were available to readers both individually and as a larger, yet more rewarding, collection.
The protagonist of the book is a young boy called Nils Holgersson, who is rather hard to like due to his propensity for tormenting the animals on his family's farm. However, the animals soon get their revenge when Nils captures and torments a mythological creature called a Tomte, a cross between a goblin and the Travelocity gnome. The Tomte offers to give Nils a fortune if he frees him but the child refuses and is thereby turned into a Tomte himself instead. He is snatched up o the wings of a goose with whom he travels Sweden learning an important lesson about being nice and changing oneself for the better
The pen behind the adventures is Selma Lagerlof, who in 1902 was commissioned by the National Teachers' Association in Sweden to write a geography book about Sweden that might be both informative and entertaining enough to capture the attention of even the most academically resistant students. Lagerlof spent three years studying the natural species of Sweden and also dove deeply into Norse folklore and mythology, before writing "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils" and its sequel. Lagerlof was the first female writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which she won in 1909, and she was also the first female inductee into the Swedish Academy.
Nils Holgersson is one of the most widely recognized fictional characters in Sweden, and his adventures are still studied today by Swedish school children. Until 2015 he was depicted on the back of the Swedish twenty krona banknote. His adventures have been adapted into animated films in over twenty European countries, and also in Japan, and his adventures are often credited with being the first fantasy novels for children, and the inspiration for subsequent adventures in the Harry Potter series.
