The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

The background for publication was a commission from the National Teachers Association in 1902 to write a geography reader for the public schools. "She devoted three years to Nature study and to familiarizing herself with animal and bird life. She has sought out hitherto unpublished folklore and legends of the different provinces. These she has ingeniously woven into her story." (From translator Velma Swanston Howard's introduction.)

The book is about a young lad, Nils Holgersson, whose "chief delight was to eat and sleep, and after that he liked best to make mischief". He takes great delight in hurting the animals in his family farm. Nils captures a tomte in a net while his family are at church and have left him home to memorize chapters from the Bible. The tomte proposes to Nils that if Nils frees him, the tomte will give him a huge gold coin. Nils rejects the offer and the tomte turns Nils into a tomte, which leaves him shrunken and able to talk with animals, who are thrilled to see the boy reduced to their size and are angry and hungry for revenge. While this is happening, wild geese are flying over the farm on one of their migrations, and Martin, the farm's white goose attempts to join the wild ones. In an attempt to salvage something before his family returns, Nils holds on to Martin's neck as he successfully takes off and joins the wild birds.

The wild geese, who are not pleased at all to be joined by a boy and a domestic goose, eventually take them on an adventurous trip across all the historical provinces of Sweden observing in passing their natural characteristics and economic resources. At the same time the characters and situations he encounters make him a man: the domestic goose needs to prove his ability to fly like the experienced wild geese, and Nils needs to prove to the geese that he would be a useful companion, despite their initial misgivings. During the trip, Nils learns that if he proves he has changed for the better, the tomte might be disposed to change him back to his normal size.

The book also includes various subplots, concerning people and animals whose lives are touched in one way or another by Nils and the wild geese. For example, one chapter centers on a provincial man who feels lonely and alienated in the capital Stockholm, is befriended by a nice old gentleman who tells him (and the reader) about the city's history - and only later finds that it was none other than the King of Sweden, walking incognito in the park.

The book was criticized for the fact that the goose and boy don't make any stop in the province Halland. In chapter 53 they fly over Halland on the way back to Scania, but they aren't impressed by the sight and they don't stop. However, such a chapter has been added to some translations of the book. In depictions Nils is usually wearing a red cap, although this is erroneous as he is described in the original Swedish edition as wearing a white cap.[1]

This section follows the English-language translation by Velma Swanston Howard, originally published in 1907 and 1911 as The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and Further Adventures of Nils. The Howard text is that of many later publications that contain the original illustrations, new illustrations, or none at all.

• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Illustrated by Harold Heartt Foley. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1907.
• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, translated by Velma Swanston Howard. Illustrated by Mary Hamilton Frye. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1913.
• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Illustrated by H. Baumhauer. J.M. Dent and Sons, 1950.

In the 1960s the Israeli children's weekly "Etz'beoni" (אצבעוני) ran a long lasting Hebrew comic strip version, loosely based on the Swedish original, where the protagonist's name was changed to "Gil" (גיל) and the location was transferred to the Israeli countryside.[50]

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is so well known in Swedish culture that a picture of Nils Holgersson, on the back of a goose flying over the plains of Scania, was printed on the reverse side of the Swedish 20 krona banknote until new bills came in use in 2015.[51]

Nils is also depicted in the logo of the digital map company Tele Atlas.

The sights Nils sees as he and his goose roam the provinces of Sweden are depicted in a series of Christmas plates produced by Rörstrand Pottery. The series began in 1970 and continued until 1999. The plates illustrate the topography, architecture, industry, and wildlife of Sweden.

Lev Grossman's fantasy novel The Magicians includes numerous allusions to earlier works such as The Narnia Series and the Harry Potter books. The influence of Nils Holgersson is evident in a key episode where a class of students nearing graduation from a School of Magic are set a major test: to be transformed into wild geese and undertake an epic flight, all the way from Upper New York State to Antarctica.

• Le Tour de la France par deux enfants
• Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
• List of ornamental plates

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Nils Holgersson's Journey Across Sweden.

• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils at Standard Ebooks
• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML) (Book 1&2)
• Background to the commission to write The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, from The National Atlas of Sweden
• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated) (Book 1&2)
• The Wonderful Adventures of Nils public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (in Swedish) available freely at Project Runeberg