Thursday, November 3, 2011

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils








1969 edition of Selma Lagerlöf's The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. Photo montage by Hans Malmberg. This is a traditional Swedish children's story about a boy who in his mischief is shrunken to the size of an elf, and how he befriends a tame goose who wants to be a wild goose. They fly all over Sweden, conveniently passing through every province, so that the story doubles as a kind of tourist brochure. "Oh look, we are flying over Skåne, which boasts many amazing vistas as well as a thriving economy and many amenities for people who live there..."

5 comments:

  1. These seem to be stills or additional material from the 1962 film:
    http://youtu.be/KfJoSq9ll2M
    I remember that this was also on TV in my country, and quite scary somehow.

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  2. Ah, I was wondering if it was a film. A lot of the pictures look like film stills. Max von Sydow plays the Dad.

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  3. Ha, I flipped through the German version of this book at a used book store yesterday.

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  4. Well,I´m Swedish and this is one of the first film I saw in my life! The entire family went to the cinema. I thought I was 5 but it seems my memory fails me if it was realsed in 1962.
    It was a HUGE thing back then,,almost every city had grand premieres for Nils Holgersson.
    The book by Nobelprize laurate Selma Lagerlöf was for a long time regular reading in school.

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