Original title "Ole Lukøje" Media type Print Publisher C.A. Reitzel | Country Denmark Publication type Fairy tale collection Originally published 20 December 1841 Genre Fairy tale | |
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Published in Fairy Tales Told for Children. New Collection. Third Booklet. 1842. Similar Works by Hans Christian Andersen, Other books | ||
"Ole Lukøje" (Danish: Ole Lukøje) is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen based upon a folk tale telling of a mysterious mythic creature of the Sandman who gently takes children to sleep and, depending on how good or bad they were, shows them various dreams.
Under each arm he carries an umbrella; one of them, with pictures on the inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night. But the other umbrella has no pictures, and this he holds over the naughty children so that they sleep heavily, and wake in the morning without having dreamed at all.
Ole Lukøje's name is actually composed of two parts: Ole is a common Danish boy's name, and Lukøje a compound of the Danish words for 'close' and 'eye'. In the tale, he visits a boy called Hjalmar every night for a whole week and tells him stories. We learn later that Ole Lukøje is a dream god, and in his final tale on Sunday he tells of his brother, likewise called Ole Lukøje but also Death, who closes the eyes of those he visits and takes them away with him.