On your feet! H. C. Andersen's maiden trip into literary space

Resumé

Already during his lifetime, H. C. Andersen was an international literary celebrity and a wellknown
author through the vast proliferation of his work. Through his travels, Andersen was
able to cross and transgress spatial, temporal and social borders and expand his international
social network far beyond his home country. While travelling Andersen became profoundly
aware of the fact that he represented two fundamentally different modalities of travel, as he
on the one hand embodied the quintessential nineteenth century bourgeois traveler, while he
on the other hand, as part of his personal background, inescapably was connected to its
opposite: the underlying social image of the tramp. This article takes a closer look at Hans
Christian Andersen’s first book-length literary work, Fodreise fra Holmens Canal til Østpynten af
Amager i Aarene 1828 og 1829 (1829), offering special attention to the meaning of the theme
of travel – notably travel on foot – understanding Fodreise as a liminal work in the evolution
of Andersen’s oeuvre.