Tommelise. Tummetott och Tändstickspojken: Androgyna äventyrligheter

Thumbelina is one of Hans Christian Andersen´s most well-known tales, found worldwide in a wealth of translations and many illustrative versions, featuring not only in printed forms but also as children´s theatre, animated films and – in the bicentenary year of 2005 – also as a ballet with scenography and costume by Her Majesty Margrethe II, Queen of Denmark. In Odense, Andersen´s native city, there is a statue of Thumbelina in one of the squares. Ever since the days of Georg Brandes , critics have regarde this tale as an innocent ”little girl” story. This essay, however, attemtps to analyse Thumbelina as en early and complicated prototype of the Andersen ”eventyr”-genre. The starting point is its antagonistic attitude to the masculine Tom Thumb-tradition (Perrault, Grimm, Oehlenschläger) and its root in the antropomorphic symbols of the animal fable (La Fontaine). As a hidden expression of Andersen´s own androgynous nature and his well-known fear of sexuality, Thumbelina gains an autbiographical dimension. leading to the author´s romantic vision of the white marriage.The sexual ambiguity of the tale is mirrored in Thumbelina´s reception in Sweden, where Selma Lagerlöf´s Nils Holgersson is her cousin, sometimes referred to as Tom Thumb. She is transferred to the little logo-boy on the labels of the ”Solstickan” match boxes , produced by Swedish Match, and originally a Thumbelina-illustration by Einar Nerman.Thumbelina – generally regarded as a boy! – on the Swedish match boxes has been sold in almost six billions copies since 1936 – and is thus one of the most frequently reproduced art pictures in the world.