Personal note from the author

Fairy tales are always in flux, and that’s been the case ever since the first humans sat down around the fire and started telling them. There’s no author, no known source, and the stories exist in many versions across national borders. We may think we know the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" inside and out, but do we really? Does the audacious girl survive or does she end up inside the wolf’s belly? Does a huntsman come to the rescue, or do she and her grandmother handle things themselves? There are countless versions of the same stories, and all of them are right. The fairy tales that the Brothers Grimm collected in Germany in the beginning of the 1800s are among the most famous and beloved in the world, but the brothers themselves were the first to alter the stories as time went by.

Fairy tales are always in flux, and every storyteller is entitled to tell a fairy tale in their own way. There are no fixed rules. Sure, they can start with “Once upon a time…” and they can end with “…and they lived happily ever after.” They can make use of repetition and the magic number three. Or not. All the rules about what constitutes a proper fairy tale were made up after we stopped telling them. Our collection consists of ten of the Brothers Grimm’s best stories. They’re raw, gruesome, evil, beautiful, strange, fanciful, and much, much more. Some may claim that they’re also just for kids. After all, they’re fairy tales, and there’s no question that some of the Grimms’ tales have become too child-friendly. Disneyfication and picture books of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Hansel and Gretel". What happened to the dangerous and scary stuff? That was one of things we wanted to go back to. Back to the world as it once was, and to the original stories that certainly aren’t just for kids, but for anyone who wants to hear good story. And who doesn’t?

Fairy tales are always in flux, but we’ve attempted to stay faithful the source, while adding and subtracting where the stories allow for it and seem to encourage it. Why, for example, do God, Death and the Devil offer to be godfather to a poor peasant son in Godfather Death? And how do Hansel and Gretel find their way home after killing the witch, anyway? These are the Brothers Grimm’s stories, but they’re told in our words and using our imaginations, and it has been a gift and a true pleasure to journey into this mystical, perilous, wonderful world where wolves can speak and bones can sing.

Benni Bødker and Kenneth Bøgh Andersen