Children's Literature in the Nordic World by Nina Christensen and Charlotte Appel (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Children's Literature in the Nordic World by Nina Christensen and Charlotte Appel Stephen M. Zimmerly (bio) Children's Literature in the Nordic World, by Nina Christensen and Charlotte Appel. Aarhus UP and U of Wisconsin P, 2021. (Series: The Nordic World) As part of a collective of experts from the five Nordic countries, gathered together to provide a comprehensive look into Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland, Nina Christensen and Charlotte Appel set an ambitious agenda for their contribution to Aarhus U P's Nordic World series. The two are tasked with providing insight into how the reading experience of Nordic children's literature has evolved over the last nearly three hundred years, and how it has influenced and been influenced by all things Scandinavian (in the American sense of the word, including Finland). The result is a worthwhile and fascinating contribution through which to study this subset of children's literature, even while it is an inherently impossible task to accomplish in a scant 105 pages of content. The Introduction outlines how the volume intends to study five relatively distinct time periods in five separate chapters: 1750–1820, 1820–1900, 1900–1950, 1950–2000, and post-2000. Christensen and Appel further structure each chapter accordingly: they begin consideration of most of these eras by offering a few case studies meant to illustrate childhood opportunity and reading practices. From there, they dive into historical, political, technological, social, and cultural influences, analyzing to what extent those influences affected children and what those children subsequently may have read during the given time frame. The work is interdisciplinary in nature and, as a result, is somewhat ironically devoid of substantial literary criticism. Chapter 2 creates the foundational example for the chapters that follow, as it begins by comparing two case studies of children and their reading opportunities. The first is the financially well-to-do Friederike Brun (1765–1835), and the second is the poor Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). Many of the examples of their childhoods come from their own autobiographies, including anecdotes of access to "a poor boy's reading culture" versus "a room of her own … [to] read and contemplate the compilation of poems" (14, 16). The poor Andersen turns to oral storytelling and inventive performance in the reality of "meager resources and limited access to books" (15). The affluent Brun becomes an author after learning to read "at the age of [End Page 188] four" and educating herself (15). The influence of the state Lutheran church is also established to be far-reaching during this time period, as children systematically worked through a series of primers and catechisms produced by the church and mandated as required reading in school. Paramount to all of this is the geo-political climate involving the two major "conglomerate" political powers in the Nordic region. Demark controlled itself, Norway, and parts of Iceland and Greenland (among other colonies throughout the globe). Sweden controlled itself, Finland, and territories "along the south-east coast of the Baltic Sea" (21). As this structure began changing in significant ways in the early nineteenth-century, entire systems of governance, agriculture, and school reform took shape. Christensen and Appel explore these changes in subsequent chapters. Chapter 3 opens with anecdotes and histories from two more authors: poor Anton Nielsen (1827–1897) and affluent Ida Holten Thiele (1830–1862). As in Chapter 2, the contrasting examples are used to illustrate the obstacles facing the less financially fortunate in their quest for books, stories, or other literary input, while simultaneously showcasing how those from wealthier families were given access to the classics, individual teaching and tutors, and cutting-edge publishing trends for a newly discovered childhood market. The turn to the historical narrative very clearly follows what came in the previous chapter, as the need to give context to Anderson spans both time periods. Denmark's hegemony in the Nordic countries eroded after failures during the Napoleonic wars (ca. 1814) and gave rise to a subsequent need to reinvent the "unique character of the Danish mother tongue, the history of the father-land, and the Danish people"—all of which found reflection in the "politics, education, and texts and...