‘The Tinder Box’ is a fantasy short story for children by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen.
The main character in the story, a soldier, is sent by a witch to visit an underground treasure trove. The witch tells him that he can bring back as much money as he can carry, and keep it for himself, but he must give her an old tinder box which he will also find down there. The story continues to narrate the soldier’s life ahead.
The story which appeared in Andersen’s first collection of fairy tales was published in 1835 and was translated into English in 1846. The book was the subject of the first Danish animated film, released in 1946.
There are also several similarities between ‘The Tinder Box’ and the stories ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ from ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, a work with which Andersen had been familiar since childhood.
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