Lene Kaaberbøl
covers a wide range: from books about horses to picture books about birth and
family life, and fantasies with eternal problems and the struggle between good
and evil.
Lene Kaaberbøl
made her début at the age of 15 in 1975 with The First and The Second book
about Tina and the horses. Two more volumes about the horse-mad Tina followed
soon after. This was a series that became instantly popular for many girls keen
on horses. These books have since been reprinted in numerous editions. Today
the books are entitled Tina og Sunny (Tina and Sunny), Tina og
Handsome Joy (Tina and Handsome Joy), Tinas hestepensionat (Tina’s
Horse Home), Tinas rideskole (Tina’s Riding School), and are still among
favourite readers for girls. More than 100,000 copies of these books have been
sold in Scandinavia. Their popularity is undoubtedly due to Lene Kaaberbøl’s
accurate description of what attracts girls to horses, and the schism between
this feeling and the many demands of everyday life such as homework, family,
school, friends and enemies. All of these aspects, including the first feelings
of love, occur within the world of horse riding.
Morgenlandet (The Land of Morning), a book for adults, was published in
1988. It gives an early presentation of some of the central themes in Lene
Kaaberbøl’s writing. A man with no language turns up in the Land of Morning,
where he slowly wins a position among the Morning people, even though he is
different from the others. Lene Kaaberbøl takes up the universal problems of
seeking identity, personal courage and ethics, which she later continues to
work with in her fantasies for children. She has said earlier in an interview
about the fantasy genre that one can describe some things and push them to
extremes, and that one can occupy oneself with some problems in the same way as
one does in fairy-tales.
Women have
generally an important role in Lene Kaaberbøl’s books. There is often talk of a
universe in which women have the power, and men have a more subservient role in
the social structure. In the series about Katriona, that starts with Sølvhesten
(The Silver Horse, 1992), it
is the women who own property and thereby the power in the land of Breda – a
kind of Middle Age futuristic society. Katriona – called Kat – is a
hot-tempered type who is sent away firstly to learn a trade on a dyeing farm.
Later she manages to become trained as a silver rider and thereby part of a
body of women and men that ensures the maintenance of law and order throughout
the country. The silver horses are wild predatory-like horses the coming silver
riders have to make a pact with in the course of their training. Katriona’s
temper often gets the better of her, and at the same time as she more or less
self-inflictedly gets herself caught between two conflicting parties she
experiences her first feelings of love. The books are very exciting in their
depiction of the arrogance of power both in the capital, Breda, where the
riders get trained and where the ruling class lives, and out in the country
that is dominated by conflicting clans. The struggles for power end bloodily in
Hermelinen (The Ermine, 1994), where
it can be difficult to determine between the forces of good and evil, as both
sides are described variedly. This is also the case in Isfuglen (The Kingfisher, 2000),
which is the last book in the
series. Kat makes a delightful acquaintance, and the Katronia series is
exciting reading that is well-written and thought-provoking.
The same is true
of the series about Skammerens datter (The Shamer’s Daughter, 2000) and
Skammertegnet (Emblem of the Shamer, 2001) that takes place in a kind of
feudal Middle Age
universe with dragons, alchemists, wise women, castles, and prison towers. Dina
is the daughter of a wise woman, who has the special power of making people
ashamed of their weaknesses and confessing the mistakes they have made when she
looks them in the eye. She is a ”Shamer”. Dina has also inherited this ability
much against her wishes, as she does not want to have the same kind of life
full of fear and enmity that her mother has had. Very dramatic events increase
as the struggle for power comes to a head and the Shamers’ powers are used in
dubious matters. Dina tries to help her mother. This leads to confrontations
with demonic princes, dragons, and imprisonment in dark dungeons. In Emblem
of the Shamer Dina is put into a
kind of golden imprisonment, where her powers are abused. The story has an
extra dimension by being told from two different points of view, Dina’s and her
brother Davin’s, who sets out headlong in order to save her. These books are
full of atmosphere, drama and suspense. The story, which also has many
universal feelings, catches the reader’s interest from page one. There is also
love and jealousy among the siblings of Shamer families. These children also
have to seek their identity, learn to accept themselves and discover what is
right and wrong. The
Shamer’s Daughter was justifiably singled out for the children’s book prize
by the Ministry of Culture’s Awards Committee in 2000.
Furthermore, Lene
Kaaberbøl has published picture books for young children. Den nat Kristian blev
til (The Night Kristian was Conceived), a
collaboration between Eva and Lene Kaaberbøl very charmingly illustrated by
Susanne Dyhre-Poulsen, was published
in 1993. This was followed in 1994 by Det
år Kristian fik en lillesøster (The Year Kristian got a Baby Sister). Both
books tell about love and conception. Small inquisitive children get a good
answer of how Kristian comes into being, and they are also told about
everyone’s happy expectations month for month. These books exude family togetherness,
and make a real mum-dad-children story.
(2001)
