The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

Originally published in Swedish in 1906, this children's novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Selma Lagerlöf follows the adventures of a mischievous boy who is magically shrunk to the size of an elf and carried across Sweden on the back of a goose. The story is the first of two volumes; the second, The Further Adventures of Nils, continues the journey northward to Lapland.

In the rural parish of West Vemmenhög, in the southern Swedish province of Skåne, 14-year-old Nils Holgersson is lazy, cruel to animals, and unkind to those around him. One Sunday morning, his parents leave for church and instruct him to read the day's sermon at home. Left alone, Nils dozes off and wakes to find a tiny elf perched on his mother's oak chest. He captures the creature but reneges on a bargain to release it, and the elf strikes him unconscious. When Nils wakes, he has been shrunk to the size of a thumb. His transformation grants him the ability to understand animal speech, and the barnyard creatures he has tormented for years mock and threaten him.

Nils sees a flock of wild geese fly overhead, calling to the farm's tame geese to join their spring migration north. A young white gander named Morten attempts to follow. Nils leaps onto Morten's neck to stop him, but the gander rises too quickly, and Nils finds himself high in the air, clinging to Morten's back as they soar over the fields of Skåne.

That evening the flock lands on Vomb Lake, led by Akka of Kebnekaise, a wise old wild goose named after Sweden's highest mountain. Akka expects Nils to return home, but that night a fox named Smirre seizes one of her geese. Nils, whose transformation has sharpened his senses, chases Smirre through the dark forest, pulls the goose free, and escapes up a tree. Over the following days, Nils proves himself through further acts of courage, and when Akka tells him the elf has agreed to restore him if he returns home, Nils weeps, not from relief but from grief at the thought of leaving. He begs to continue the journey, and Akka consents.

At Glimminge Castle, a medieval stone fortress in southeastern Skåne, Nils plays an enchanted pipe to lead an army of invading gray rats away from the castle's colony of black rats. At Kullaberg, a coastal mountain, the animals of Skåne gather for a grand annual assembly. Smirre breaks the peace by killing a goose, and the assembled foxes banish him from the province. The day ends with the cranes' dance, a mesmerizing spectacle that fills every creature with longing for something beyond ordinary life.

Traveling north through the province of Blekinge on Sweden's southern coast, Nils overhears two owls discussing his enchantment. One reveals that the elf's condition for restoring Nils is that he must protect Morten and bring the gander home safely. The owl flies away before revealing the full terms of the bargain, leaving Nils with only partial knowledge of his cure.

Smirre, now exiled and vengeful, tracks the geese into Blekinge, enlisting predators to attack them. Each time, Nils thwarts the assault. When Smirre confronts Akka and demands she surrender the boy, Akka declares that every goose in the flock would give its life for Nils. Overhearing this, Nils feels genuine caring for others for the first time.

On the island of Öland, Nils discovers that Morten has been secretly nursing a wounded young gray goose named Dunfin. Nils resets her dislocated wing, and she joins the flock. A violent storm drives the geese to Little Karl's Island, off Gotland's coast, where sheep are terrorized by foxes. Nils rides an old ram to fight the foxes off, and the next day Morten lures them into Hell's Hole, a deep crevice in the rock, trapping them. On Easter eve, Nils visits the legendary sunken city of Vineta, which rises from the sea for one hour every 100 years. Merchants beg him to buy their wares for a single coin, which would break the city's enchantment, but Nils has no money, and the city sinks before he can help.

From the coast of Småland, a forested province in southern Sweden, a flock of crows led by the ruthless Wind-Rush kidnaps Nils at Smirre's behest. The crows demand he open a crock of silver coins, but Nils refuses, guided by Fumle-Drumle, a clumsy crow who has secretly befriended him. When Wind-Rush attacks, Nils kills the crow-chief and scatters the coins, causing the greedy crows to abandon him. Fumle-Drumle carries Nils to an abandoned cabin, but Smirre tracks them there. Nils sets fire to a tuft of oakum to drive the fox away, and the cabin catches fire. Escaping through the door, he encounters two children from his home district in Skåne: Osa the goose-girl and her brother, little Mats. They recoil at his tiny form, and Nils flees in shame.

That night, sheltering in a cowshed, Nils learns from a cow that her elderly mistress has not returned. He finds the old woman dead in her cabin, alone after all her children and grandchildren emigrated. Nils closes her eyes, folds her hands, lights candles, and reads psalms over her body. Sitting among photographs of the absent family, he thinks of his own parents and realizes they must miss him as this woman missed her children.

The flock continues north. At Lake Tåkern in the province of Östergötland, a vast bird lake threatened by drainage, Nils frees a wild duck named Jarro who is being used as a decoy to lure other ducks into gunshot range. When a farm toddler named Per Ola drifts onto the lake in a leaky boat, Nils guides the child to safety. The grateful mother persuades her husband to abandon the drainage plan, sparing thousands of birds.

As the geese fly north along the Göta Canal, Nils gazes down at the grand plain below with its churches, manors, and factories. Near the old road over Kolmården, one of his wooden shoes slips off and falls to the road, where Osa and little Mats find it. They read the name carved on its surface: "Nils Holgersson from W. Vemmenhög."