“At home they say that you are so terribly alone,” said the little boy.
“Oh,” he said, “old memories, and everything they bring with them come to visit me, and now you came too!—I am doing just fine.”
And then he took a picture book down from the shelf. There were long parades of people, the strangest coaches that you don’t see nowadays, soldiers like the jack of clubs, and citizens carrying waving banners. The tailors’ banner had scissors on it, held up by two lions, and the shoemakers’ was an eagle with two heads, not a boot, since the shoemakers always have to have everything so they can say, “it’s a pair.” Yes, that was quite a picture book!
Then the old man went into the other room to get jam, apples, and nuts. Oh, what a treat it was to be in the old house!
“I can’t stand it,” said the tin soldier, who was standing on the chest of drawers. “It’s so lonely and sad here. When you’ve lived in a family, you can’t get used to this! I can’t stand it! The days are so long, and the nights are even longer. It’s not at all like it was at your house where your father and mother talked so pleasantly, and you and all the other children made such lovely noise. Oh, how lonely the old man is! Do you think anyone kisses him? Do you think anyone gives him a friendly look? Does he get a Christmas tree? He’ll get nothing except a funeral! —No, I can’t stand it!”
“Don’t take it so hard,” said the little boy. “I think it’s really nice here, and all the old memories with everything they bring come to visit, you know.”
“Well, I don’t see them and I don’t know them,” said the tin soldier. “I can’t stand it!”
“You must!” said the little boy.
And the old man came back with such a happy face and with the most lovely jam, apples, and nuts, so the little boy didn’t think any more about the tin soldier.
The little boy went home happy and satisfied, and weeks and days went by with nods to and from the old house, and then the little boy went there again.
And the carved trumpets blared “Tra-ter-ah-tra!! There’s the little boy. Tra-ter-ah-tra!” And the sword and armor in the knight’s pictures rattled, and the silk dresses rustled, the pigskin talked and the old chairs had arthritis in their backs: “ouch!” It was just like the first time, because over there one day and hour were just like the next.
“I can’t stand it!” said the tin soldier. “I have cried tears of tin. Everything is too sad here! Let me rather go to war and lose my arms or legs! That would be something different anyway. I can’t stand it! Now I know what it’s like to be visited by old memories, with everything they bring with them. I’ve been visited by mine, and believe me, there’s no pleasure in it in the long run. I was about to jump down off the chest. I saw all of you over there in the house so clearly as if I really was there. It was that Sunday morning, you remember. All you children were standing by the table singing your hymns like you do every morning. You were standing there with folded hands, and your father and mother were just as solemn. Then the door opened, and your little sister Maria, who isn’t even two years old yet, and always dances when she hears music or songs, no matter what kind they are, was let in—she shouldn’t have been—and started dancing. But she couldn’t get into the rhythm because the notes were so long. So first she stood on one leg and bent her head way forward, and then she stood on her other leg and bent her head way forward, but she couldn’t get it. You were all very serious, although that must have been hard, but I laughed to myself and because of that I fell off the table and got a bump, which I still have, since it wasn’t nice of me to laugh. But now it all comes back to me again, and everything similar I have experienced, and that must be the old memories with everything they bring. Tell me, do you still sing on Sundays? Tell me something about little Maria. And how is my comrade, the other tin soldier? He’s happy, I’m sure of that. I can’t stand it!”
“You’ve been given away,” said the little boy. “You have to stay here. Can’t you see that?”
The old man came in with a drawer in which there was much to see, both pencil, coin, and perfume boxes and old cards that were so big and gilded that you don’t see anything like them today. Then other drawers were opened, and the piano was opened too. It had a landscape painted inside the lid, and it sounded so hoarse when the old man played it and hummed a tune. “She could sing that one,” he said and nodded at the portrait he’d bought second-hand, and the old man’s eyes shone so brightly.
“I want to go to war! I want to go to war!” shouted the tin soldier as loudly as he could and threw himself right down on the floor.
What happened to him? The old man searched for him, and the little boy searched for him, but the tin soldier was gone, and gone he remained. “I’m sure I’ll find him,” said the old man, but he never did find him. The floor was cracked and had holes in it. The tin soldier had fallen through a crack and lay there as if in an open grave.
And that day passed by, and the little boy went home. The week passed and several more weeks went by. The windows were frosted over. The little boy had to breathe on them to get a little peep-hole where he could look over to the old house, and there the snow had drifted into all the scrolls and inscriptions. It covered up the steps as if there was no one at home, and there wasn’t anyone at home. The old man was dead!
A carriage stopped there in the evening, and they carried him out to it in his coffin. He was going to be buried out in the country, and the carriage drove away, but no one followed along. All of his friends were dead, you see. The little boy blew kisses to the coffin as it was driven away.
A few days later there was an auction at the old house, and the little boy watched from his window as things were carried away: the old knights and the old women, the herb pots with the long ears, the old chairs and the old cabinets. Some went to one place, some to another. The portrait of the woman that was found at the second-hand shop was returned there again, and there it would always hang, since no one knew her any longer. No one cared about the old picture.
In the spring the house itself was torn down, because people said it was a monstrosity. You could look right into the room with the pigskin wallpaper, which was tattered and torn. All the greenery around the balcony hung randomly on the fallen beams. And then it was cleaned up.
“That helped,” said the neighbor houses.
A beautiful house was built there with wide windows and smooth white walls. But in front, right where the old house had stood, they planted a little garden and wild grapevines grew up the neighbor’s walls. In front of the garden a big iron fence with an iron gate was built. It looked magnificent. People stood outside and peeked in. And scores of sparrows hung on the vines and chirped all at once as best they could, but they weren’t chattering about the old house because they couldn’t remember that. So many years had passed, and the little boy had grown up to be a good and capable man whom his parents were proud of. He had gotten married and with his young wife, had moved into the house where the garden was. He was there with her one day when she planted a wild flower that she thought was so lovely. She planted it with her little hand and patted the earth into place with her fingers. Oh! What was that? Something pricked her. Something sharp was sticking out of the soft soil.
“Let me see him,” said the young man.
It was—just think! It was the tin soldier, the one who had disappeared in the old man’s house, and who had been rumbled and tumbled about between beams and gravel and then finally had been lying for many years in the ground.
The young wife cleaned off the soldier, first with a green leaf and then with her fine handkerchief that had such a lovely fragrance! And for the tin soldier, it was as if he woke up from a trance.
“Let me see him,” said the young man, and he laughed and shook his head. “Well, it couldn’t be him, but he reminds me of a story about a tin soldier I once had when I was a little boy.” And then he told his wife about the old house, the old man, and the tin soldier he had sent over to him because he
was so terribly alone. He told the story exactly as it had happened so that his young wife got tears in her eyes hearing about the old house and the old man.
“It’s possible that it’s the same tin soldier,” she said. “I’m going to save it and remember everything you’ve told me, but you have to show me the old man’s grave.”
“I don’t know where it is,” he said. “No one knows! All his friends were dead. No one looked after it, and I was just a little boy.”
“How terribly alone he must have been,” she said.
“Terribly alone,” said the tin soldier, “but it’s lovely not being forgotten!”
“Lovely,” shouted something near by, but no one but the tin soldier saw that it was a piece of the pigskin wallpaper. All the gold was gone, and it looked like wet earth, but it had an opinion and gave it:“Gilding quickly dies But pigskin survives!”
However the tin soldier didn’t believe it.
THE RAGS
OUTSIDE THE FACTORY THERE were bundles of rags piled up in big stacks, gathered up from far and wide. Each rag had its story—each had a tale to tell, but we can’t listen to all of them. Some of the rags were domestic, and others came from foreign countries. There was a Danish rag lying right beside a Norwegian rag. The one was Danish through and through, and the other was utterly Norwegian, and that was the entertaining thing about them, as every sensible Norwegian or Dane would agree.
They recognized each other by their speech, although the Norwegian said that their languages were as different from each other as French from Hebrew. “We go to the mountains to fetch our language raw and original, and the Dane makes his sugar-coated mushy gibberish.”1
The rags continued to talk, and a rag is a rag in every country. They only count for something when they’re in a rag pile.
“I am Norwegian!” said the Norwegian rag. “And when I say that I’m Norwegian, that’s all I need to say! I’m as firm in my fibers as the primordial mountains of old Norway, a country that has a constitution just like free America! It tickles my threads to think of what I am and to let my thoughts clink like ore in words of granite!”
“But we have literature!” said the Danish rag. “Do you understand what that is?”
“Understand!” repeated the Norwegian. “You flat land liver!—I should lift you into the mountains and let the Northern lights enlighten you, rag that you are! When the ice thaws in the Norwegian sun, then old Danish tubs sail up to us with butter and cheese, actually edible wares, but Danish literature follows along as ballast! We don’t need it! Where fresh water bubbles, you can dispense with stale beer, and in Norway there is a well that hasn’t been drilled, that the newspapers haven’t spread around and made known all over Europe, and that hasn’t been disseminated through camaraderie and through author’s travelogues to foreign lands. I speak my mind freely, and you Danes must get used to these free sounds. You will do that because you have a Scandinavian attachment to our proud mountainous land, the world’s primeval mountains!”
“A Danish rag would never talk like that,” said the Danish rag. “It’s not our nature. I know myself, and I’m like all our rags. We are so good natured and modest. We think too little of ourselves, and that doesn’t gain you anything, it’s true. But I like it. I think it’s completely charming. But, by the way, I can assure you that I very well know my own true worth. I just don’t talk about it. No one can accuse me of that failing. I’m soft and flexible, tolerate everything. I don’t envy anyone, and speak well of everyone. Except that there isn’t much good to be said for most others, but let them worry about it. I just make fun of it all because I’m very gifted myself.”
“Don’t speak to me in that soft gooey language of your flat country—it makes me sick!” said the Norwegian rag, and was able to get free from his bundle with help of the wind and move to a different pile.
Both rags were made into paper, and as chance would have it, the Norwegian rag became stationery on which a Norwegian wrote a faithful love letter to a Danish girl, and the Danish rag became a manuscript for a Danish ode in praise of Norway’s vigor and splendor.
So something good can come from rags, when they get away from their rag pile and are changed to truth and beauty. Then they shine with mutual understanding, and there’s a blessing in that.
That’s the story. It’s quite amusing and won’t offend anyone at all, except—the rags.
NOTE
1 Possibly a wordplay in the original since the Danish aas (mountain ridge) is similar to the name of Ivar Aasen (1813-1896), the Norwegian who created nynorsk (New Norwegian), one of the two official languages of Norway. The other official language is bokmål (book language), which is derived from Dano-Norwegian, the written language of Denmark/Norway for hundreds of years.
LEGENDS
HOLGER THE DANE
THERE’S AN OLD CASTLE in Denmark called Kronborg. It lies right out by Øresund where every day big ships by the hundreds sail by—English, Russian, and Prussian. They greet the old castle with their cannons: “boom!” and the castle answers with cannons: “boom!” because that’s how cannons say “good day” and “many thanks.” No ships sail in winter when ice covers everything clear over to Sweden, but it’s really like a country road. Danish and Swedish flags wave, and Danes and Swedes say “good day” and “many thanks” to each other, but not with cannons. No, rather with friendly handshakes, and they get bread and pastries from each other because foreign food tastes best.
But the showpiece of it all is still old Kronborg castle. And under Kronborg in the deep dark cellar where no one goes sits Holger the Dane, dressed in iron and steel and resting his head on his strong arms. His long beard spreads out over the marble table, where it’s grown fast. He’s sleeping and dreaming, but in his dreams he sees everything that happens in Denmark. Every Christmas Eve an angel of God visits him and tells him that what he’s dreamed is true, and that he can sleep on because Denmark is not yet in any real danger. But if that were to happen, well, then old Holger the Dane would rise up so the table would crack when he pulled his beard towards him. Then he would come out swinging so you could hear it all over the world.
This story about Holger the Dane was being told to a little grandson by an old grandfather. The little boy knew that whatever his grandfather said was true. While the old man told his story, he was whittling a big wooden figure that was to represent Holger the Dane as a figurehead on a ship. The old man was a wood carver who carved figureheads for ships according to the ship’s name, and now he had carved Holger the Dane. He stood so straight and proudly with his long beard, and in one hand he held a big broad sword, and his other hand was leaning on the Danish coat-of-arms.
The old grandfather talked so much about remarkable Danish men and women that the little grandson at last thought that he knew just as much as Holger the Dane did, who could only dream about it, after all. And when the little boy went to bed he thought so much about it that he pressed his chin tightly into his comforter and felt that he had a long beard that had grown fast to it.
But the old grandfather continued his work and carved the last part, the Danish coat-of-arms, and then he was finished. He looked at his work and thought about everything that he had read and heard, and about what he had told the little boy that evening, and he nodded, wiped his glasses, put them on again, and said, “Well, Holger the Dane probably won’t come in my time, but that boy in the bed there may get to see him and be there when it really counts.” Then the old grandfather nodded, and the more he looked at his Holger the Dane, the clearer it became to him that he had made a really fine image. He thought it seemed to have color, and that the armor shone like iron and steel. The hearts in the Danish coat-of-arms became redder and redder, and the lions leaped with golden crowns on.
“That is really the most beautiful coat-of-arms in the world,” said the old man. “The lions are strength, and the hearts are gentleness and love.” He looked at the topmost lion and thought about King Canute,1 who added mighty Eng
land to Denmark’s realm. He looked at the second one and thought about Valdemar I,2 who unified Denmark and subdued the Slavic Wends. He looked at the third lion and thought about Margrethe I3 who united Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, but as he looked at the red hearts they shone even brighter than before and became flames that moved, and his thoughts followed each of them.
The first flame led him into a narrow, dark prison. A prisoner was sitting there, a beautiful woman. It was Christian IV’s daughter, Leonora Christina Ulfeldt.4 The flame sat as a rose on her breast and flowered together with her heart. She was the noblest and best of all Danish women.
“Yes, that’s one heart in Denmark’s coat-of-arms,” said the old grandfather.
And his thoughts followed the flame that led him out onto the ocean where the cannons boomed, and ships were lying shrouded in smoke. The flames attached themselves like a royal ribbon on Huitfeldt’s5 chest as he saved the fleet by blowing up himself and his ship.
And the third flame led him to the miserable huts of Greenland where the pastor Hans Egede6 worked with love in word and deed. The flame was a star on his chest, a heart in the Danish coat-of-arms.
The old grandfather’s thoughts flew ahead of the flickering flame because his mind knew where the flame was going. In a peasant woman’s simple main room Frederick VI7 was writing his name with chalk on a beam. The flame moved on his chest and moved in his heart. His heart became a heart in Denmark’s coat-of-arms in the home of the poor farmer. And the old grandfather dried his eyes because he had known and lived for King Frederick with his silver white hair and the honest blue eyes. He folded his hands and stared silently into space. Then the old grandfather’s daughter-in-law came to tell him that it was late. It was time to rest, and supper was ready.
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