Mio, min Mio

From Tolkien Gateway
Mio, min Mio
Mio, min Mio.jpg
AuthorAstrid Lindgren
Released1954

Mio, min Mio ("Mio, my Mio"; published in English as Mio, my Son) is a Swedish language children's book by Astrid Lindgren. The book has been described as a work in the genre High fantasy.[1]

As both Mio, min Mio and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings were published in 1954 and can be said to carry some apparent similarities, a Swedish humorous newspaper article concocted a fictitious conspiracy theory that Tolkien and Lindgren must have secretly met some time in the 1930s and agreed upon writing "fairy-tales of their own but with a common theme" ("var sin saga med gemensamt tema"). The joke aside, the similarities are quite abound:[2]

  • cloaks granting invisibility
  • energy bread (Tolkien: lembas; Lindgren: Mio eats a magic bread which takes away hunger)
  • apparently dead trees
  • intelligent horses (Tolkien: Shadowfax; Lindgren: Miramis)
  • black scouts (Tolkien: the Ringwraiths of Sauron; Lindgren: the black scouts of Kato)
  • an evil tyrant who is defeated by two "halflings" – an involuntary hero and his loyal squire
  • after the death of the tyrant, a tree who was believed to be dead is flowering again

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References

  1. John-Henri Holmber, "Lindgren, Astrid (Anna Emilia)", in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1997/1999), p.582.
  2. Petter Karlsson , "Sagornas likhet är ingen slump" ("The Similarity of the Fairy-tales is no Coincidence") , in Expressen, January 30, 2007. Retrieved July 28, 2010.