H.C. Andersen: Fyrtøjet (The Tinderbox)

Hans Christian Andersen's Fyrtøjet ("The Tinderbox"), published in 1835 in the very first booklet of his Eventyr, fortalte for Børn ("Fairy Tales, Told for Children"), opens with one of the most recognisable sentences in Danish literature. Almost every Dane can recite its marching rhythm from memory. The text is firmly in the public domain — Andersen died in 1875, and the tale first appeared in 1835 — so we can read it freely. This page walks through the opening lines sentence by sentence, showing how Andersen's deceptively simple folktale prose works: the presentational der, the narrative past tense, the modal verbs skulle and kunne, and the archaic 1835 orthography that differs from how Danish is written today.

This is a C2 page. The goal is not to teach you the grammar from scratch but to show you how a master prose stylist deploys it — and to train your eye to read older Danish, where capitalised nouns and aa-spellings can otherwise throw you.

The excerpt

Here is the opening passage in modern Danish orthography (the spelling you will see in any current edition):

Der kom en soldat marcherende hen ad landevejen: én, to! én, to! Han havde sit tornyster på ryggen og en sabel ved siden, for han havde været i krigen, og nu skulle han hjem. Så mødte han en gammel heks på landevejen; hun var så ækel, hendes underlæbe hang hende lige ned på brystet.

And here is the same passage in Andersen's original 1835 spelling, so you can see what a first edition actually looked like:

Der kom en Soldat marcherende henad Landeveien: een, to! een, to! Han havde sit Tornister paa Ryggen og en Sabel ved Siden, for han havde været i Krigen, og nu skulde han hjem. Saa mødte han en gammel Hex paa Landeveien; hun var saa ækel, hendes Underlæbe hang hende lige ned paa Brystet.

A faithful English rendering:

1835 orthography vs. modern Danish

Before the grammar, train your eye on the spelling. Danish orthography was reformed in stages across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the single most visible change came in 1948, which abolished capitalised common nouns and replaced aa with the letter å. Andersen wrote before all of this.

Sentence 1 — the presentational der

The sentence opens with der, not with the soldier. This is the presentational der: a dummy element that fills the first slot of the sentence so that a brand-new, indefinite participant — en soldat — can be introduced after the verb rather than announced as a topic already known to us. English has the parallel "there came a soldier," but Andersen's der is far more idiomatic and frequent than the slightly archaic English "there came."

Why does Danish do this? Danish is a V2 language: the finite verb must sit in second position, and exactly one constituent precedes it. If you wanted to start with the new, indefinite en soldat, you would be foregrounding it as known information — wrong for the first sentence of a story, where everything is new. Der solves the problem: it takes the first slot, the verb kom takes second, and the soldier arrives in the natural "new-information" zone after the verb. This is the canonical way a Danish narrative introduces a character out of nowhere.

Note the directional adverbs hen ad ("along, away down"). Hen signals motion away from a reference point; ad governs the path. Together hen ad landevejen paints the soldier receding into the distance — a single, untranslatable little construction that English flattens to "along."

The narrative past and the past perfect

Fairy tales are told in the past tense, and Andersen uses two layers of it. The main storyline runs in the simple past (præteritum): kom, mødte, hang, var. Background information that happened before the storyline runs in the past perfect (førdatid): havde været ("had been"), havde ("had").

The logic is exactly the English one: havde været sets up a state of affairs already complete when the story begins. This two-tier system — simple past for the events you are watching, past perfect for the events that led up to them — is the backbone of all Danish narration. See Tense in Narration for the full system.

The modal verbs skulle and kunne

Notice there is no main verb after skulle — no gå, no rejse. Danish modal verbs routinely stand alone with a directional adverb (hjem, ud, ind, op), and the verb of motion is simply understood. Skulle han hjem literally is "he was-to homeward," and the listener supplies "go." English cannot do this: we must say "he was to go home."

Skulle here is not future-tense "shall." It carries the meaning "was destined / supposed / obliged to" — the soldier's discharge sends him home; it is what is laid out for him. This is the core of skulle: external necessity, plan, or fate. A few lines later in the tale, the witch tells the soldier what he can and must do, and the modals carry the whole instruction:

Here kan expresses possibility/permission and skal expresses obligation — the bargain. The whole plot turns on these two modal verbs: what the soldier may take, and what he must bring back.

Word order: Så mødte han...

The sentence begins with the adverb så ("then"), and the subject han drops to third position, after the verb mødte. This is inversion, the automatic consequence of V2: because så occupies the first slot, the subject cannot also precede the verb. English keeps "then he met" (adverb–subject–verb); Danish demands "then met he" (adverb–verb–subject). Whenever a Danish main clause opens with anything other than the subject — an adverb, an object, a subordinate clause — the subject is pushed behind the verb. Andersen's prose is full of this topicalised, inverted rhythm; see Topicalization.

The hun var så ækel that follows ("she was so disgusting") then snaps back to ordinary subject–verb order, because the subject hun itself occupies the first slot — a clean illustration of how V2 makes word order swing depending on what comes first.

Why this matters for reading Danish literature

Andersen invented a new register: he wrote eventyr in the spoken, plain voice of a storyteller rather than the stilted literary prose of his time. That is why the grammar here is so transparent — short main clauses, presentational der, plain past tense, bare modal verbs. Once you can parse this opening, you can read the rest of Andersen's tales, and from there most nineteenth-century Danish prose. The folktale tradition Andersen drew on uses the same machinery; see A Danish Folktale.

Common Mistakes

These are errors English-speaking readers and writers of Danish make when they imitate this kind of prose.

Recap

• Der kom en soldat... — the presentational der fills the V2 first slot so a brand-new character can be introduced after the verb. This is the way Danish narration opens.
• The story runs in the simple past; events prior to it sit in the past perfect (havde været).
• Modal verbs carry the plot: skulle (destiny/obligation), kunne/kan (possibility), skal (obligation in the bargain) — often with a bare directional adverb and no main verb.
• A fronted adverb (så) triggers inversion: verb before subject.
• In 1835 orthography, read every aa as å, lowercase the capitalised nouns, and recognise ei → ej, ee → é, x → ks. The words are the modern words in old dress.