Dutch · Intermediate
Read Niels Holgersson's wonderbare reis in Dutchwith every sentence explained
English title: The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
Selma Lagerlöf · 1906
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
Niels Holgersson's wonderbare reis by Selma Lagerlöf was first published in 1906. In Passage you read the full text in the Dutch translation by Margaretha Meijboom, marked intermediate and filed under children and fantasy. It runs to about 168,400 words.
A boy no bigger than a thumb. A farmyard goose that wants to fly. A journey across all of Sweden.
Niels Holgersson is a lazy, bad-tempered fourteen-year-old who loves teasing animals. One Sunday morning on his parents' farm in Skåne, he catches a little elf — and is punished by being shrunk to the size of a thumb. Now he can understand the animals, and they have plenty to say to him.
When the wild geese fly north over the farm, the big white gander Maarten tries to follow them, and tiny Niels clings to his neck. Guided by wise old Akka, the leader of the flock, they soar over forests, lakes, cities and mountains towards distant Lapland, chased all the way by Smirre the fox. On the journey, Niels slowly learns courage and kindness.
Written as a geography reader for Swedish schoolchildren, Selma Lagerlöf's enchanting tale became a world classic and inspired a much-loved anime series. The Nobel laureate's book is presented here in its complete Dutch translation.
- Author
- Selma Lagerlöf
- First published
- 1906
- Language
- Dutch
- Translated by
- Margaretha Meijboom
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Children, Fantasy
- Length
- About 168,400 words
How it opens
Er was eens een jongen, die zoo ongeveer veertien jaar oud was, lang en mager en met vlashaar. Hij was eigenlijk een deugniet: hij had ’t meeste pleizier in slapen en eten, en verder hield hij van kattekwaad.
Nu was het een Zondagmorgen, en de ouders van den jongen waren bezig zich klaar te maken om naar de kerk te gaan. De jongen zelf zat in zijn hemdsmouwen op den rand van de tafel, en dacht er aan hoe heerlijk ’t was, dat Vader en Moeder allebei weggingen, zoodat hij een paar uur lang zijn eigen baas zou zijn.
Reading Niels Holgersson's wonderbare reis in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Dutch. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Dutch feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
