Fairy Tales and Nature

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This morning I woke up with a certain fascination toward fairy tales ~ especially how nature in its widest sense is depicted or behaves in fairy tales.
In our grown-up world, fairy tales are viewed as children’s stories having to do with magical and imaginary beings and lands. As such they are usually not given a lot of importance...

Yet, our imagination is the very thing that can show us the things we can accomplish in life! So maybe fairy tales are a way in which we teach our children to express their imagination. On top of that most fairy tales have a moral. Often there is a strong sense about good and bad ~ about the things that are beneficial to the characters in the tale; and the things that are not. By a perceived association, the beneficial things for the characters in the fairy tale, are also beneficial to us.

In a lot of fairy tales, nature plays an important part. And in a fairy tale nature is not necessarily seen they same way we view it once we have grown up ~ in a fairy tale nature it is the world around us. Therefore it is perfectly natural that the beings you may encounter in a fairy tale communicate with you!

Consequently we find that in a fairy tale, we not only accept the existence of, for instance elves and gnomes ~ we think it quite natural to carry on a conversation with them. And we sense that the things that are true, and good, and beneficial for them, are all of that and more to us...

So there are tales where very beautiful, people-like beings in essence are tree spirits who live and are nurtured by ‘their’ tree and only occasionally step out of their environment to mingle in the world of us humans. Usually to help bring something ‘good’ into the world ~ something that is beneficial to both our physical world, and their magical, nature world.

There are lot’s of tales where gnomes are working away in the earth ~ the best known one of those is probably the tale of Snow White.

And then there are the tales in which animals are intelligent, wise, and yes, speaking beings that can help and protect us. And by the same token, animals who are angry, hateful beings that  can attack us.

So how ‘real’ are they?

We have sayings in our world, for instance that a person who is behaving badly is ‘behaving like a beast’. A fairy tale?
On the other hand, in this point in time there is a growing interest for ways in which we can regain a balance between our industrial world and nature. And with that there is a new appreciation for nature. For the trees ~ and the spirit of the trees. For the animals, their environment, and the importance to allow them their space, their habitat...

It makes me think that perhaps those old fairy tales have something to teach to us ‘grow-ups’ after all...
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