Once there was a boy. He was–let us say–something like fourteen years old; long and loose-jointed and towheaded. He wasn’t good for much, that boy. His chief delight was to eat and sleep; and after that–he liked best to make mischief.
The opening introduces Nils, though not by name. But then, as they say, what’s in a name? Identity is what not what you’re called, but who you are. And just one paragraph into the story, the reader knows who Nils is. Or, at least, what kind of boy he is. Children’s literature tradition indicates that bad boys who take off on a grand adventure usually return home a little wiser and much better. Will Nils?
If that city, which he had seen, had not sunk into the sea again, then it would perhaps become as dilapidated as this one in a little while. Perhaps it could not have withstood time and decay, but would have stood there with roofless churches and bare houses and desolate, empty streets–just like this one. Then it was better that it should re- main in all its glory down in the deep.
The adventures which Nils experiences is a fictional construct for the purpose of teaching children Swedish geography. A lesson told as a story is much more likely to stick in developing minds than a dry textbook. Not all the geographical spots are literal, however. At one point while riding on the back of his goose carrier, he is shown the Scandinavian version of Atlantis, the mythical sunken city of Vineta as a means of deepening an appreciation of the real city of Visby.
Just after she had disappeared, came a fourth. She flew so slowly, and so badly, that Smirre Fox thought he could catch her without much effort, but he was afraid of failure now, and concluded to let her fly past–unmolested. She took the same direction the others had taken; and just as she was come right above Smirre, she sank down so far that he was tempted to jump for her. He jumped so high that he touched her with his tail. But she flung herself quickly to one side and saved her life.
Although the animals talk, Nils is the only human who can understand them. For the most part, animals behave like animals in the book and, in fact, the author introduces genuine animal behavior into the narrative. Smirre Fox is the character that would be called the antagonist of the story of the story and the means by which the geese outwit and defeat him describes a tactical strategy that is actually exhibited by a variety of animals as a means of protecting or saving one of their own from a threatening predator.
Now I must tell you of a strange coincidence: The very year that Nils Holgersson travelled with the wild geese there was a woman who thought of writing a book about Sweden, which would be suitable for children to read in the schools.
Near the end of the book, things turn a little weird as the line between real estate and the unreal becomes blurred with the introduction of a “fictional” character who bears quite a bit in common with the author of the text. How fortunate that just as she decides to write a travelogue of Sweden for kids she the woman thinking of writing the book meets a young boy who has seen it all.
