19/12/2012 - A previously unknown short story - until two months ago - by the Danish fairy-tale writer will be adapted for a "less than 10-minute animated short" by director Peter Flinth

Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875 - photo), whose fairy tales have been translated into 125 languages, has seen all literary analysis, but he still surprises: two months ago, Danish family researcher and historian Esben Brage found a short story in a filing box at the National Archives of Funen, which is apparently the first tale that he wrote.

Ignored by those who first came across it because it seemed unrelated to genealogy, The Tallow Candle was earlier this month authorised by experts as an original HC Andersen document, which was dedicated to one Madame Bunkeflod, a vicar's widow and one of the young Andersen's benefactors, when he went to the Latinate schools in Slagelse and Elsinore.

The week after it was endorsed, Danish director Peter Flinth - who made the Swedish The Knights Templar series and most recently Nobel's Last Will [+see also:
trailer
film profile], from Liza Marklund's thriller - announced he would adapt the story for a "less than 10-minute animated short", which he wanted to shoot from the beginning of 2013 "while there is still a light in the candle".

"The Tallow Candle is essentially the same story as The Ugly Duckling, though slightly condensed, and that's what I have fallen for," Flinth told local media. The candle, whose parents are a sheep and a melting pot, is disheartened because it cannot find a purpose in life. When it meets a tinderbox which lights its candle, it finds its place in life and spreads joy and happiness ever after.

The Odense City Museum (in Funen) is involved in the film, with JJ Film Productions. "The big thing is not the fairy tale in itself, but that it has become world news," said museum chief Torben Grønnegaard Jeppesen. Andersen scholars agree that The Tallow Candle is not of the same quality as his later tales, and that is has many similarities with his other writings of the time.