‘Tallow Candle’: Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairytale Comes to Light

Here’s your first clue for our Geo Quiz:

It sizzled and fizzled as the flames fired the cauldron…it was the Tallow Candle’s cradle – and out of the warm cradle came a flawless candle; solid, shining white and slim it was formed in a way that made everyone who saw it believe that it was a promise of a bright and radiant future – promises that everyone who looked on believed it would really want to keep and fulfill.

This is the first sentence of a short fairy tale that’s been discovered hidden away in box for over 150 years in a Danish city archive.

Of course this city, the 3rd largest in Denmark, happens to be the place where Hans Christian Anderson grew up.

Sure enough, it was the Danish fairy tale writer who penned this little story about a candle when he was teenager.

Experts says it offers a glimpse at the early creativity that was to emerge in Anderson’s more famous stories like “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Little Mermaid” or “The Snow Queen” to name a few.

So can you name this city where one of Hans Christian Anderson’s earliest fairy tales was found?

Ejnar Stig Askgaard, one of Denmark’s leading Hans Christian Andersen experts, called the discovery “sensational!” It was found in a box in a state archive in Odense, Denmark.

The fairytale written by Hans Christian Anderson when he was a teenager shows Anderson was thinking about fairytales early on in his life, years before he wrote his much loved and world famous stories.

The new, old fairytale is called “The Tallow Candle.”

Askgaard says it’s a simple but complex story.

• Geo Quiz Podcast on iTunes
• Geo Quiz Podcast via RSS
• The World on Facebook
• Follow @geoquiz