Fantasy and Mythology

By : Lars Bøgeholt Pedersen

Cecilie Eken, born 1970, is a fantastic storyteller. So far she has published two picture books and four novels. In her first novel, Troldmandens søn (The Sorcerer's Son, 1993) – a pure fairytale about Aris, a boy who discovers he is the son of a sorcerer – she sets the tone for a linguistically sure-footed but nonetheless challenging career which carries on the tradition of the great fairytale writers.
   In her second novel, Kongebarnet (Child of the King, 1995), Cecilie Eken further extends the limits of the classic tale, only this time at a more up-beat tempo and with greater complexity. And in Sikkas fortælling (Sikka's Story), for which she in 1997 was awarded the Ministry of Culture Children's Book Prize, she goes on to add mythological elements, locating the action in Ancient Greece. In this book, her fantastical prose calls to mind Homer's Iliad.
   The heroine, Sikka, is a slave of the master race, the Chimeras, who have achieved immortality, but at the cost of losing the ability to have children. Her life is at risk every day as she is lowered over a cliff to gather the blue moss the Chimeras use as a narcotic. But when her sister falls to her death, Sikka decides to take up the struggle against her masters. Her strongest weapon is a tale told to her by her grandmother about Princess Sikka, who saves her people from a monster. And the story comes true...
   Without giving away too much of the plot, Sikka's Story is a Greek tragedy with a happy ending. Cecilie Eken's theme is modern humanity's inability to accept our own limitations, and she brings to the telling a fantastic imagination that seems to have a direct line to childhood.

This article was first published in 10 Danish Storytellers – prose for children.

Translated by Kevin McCafferty