National icons in education: Hans Christian Andersen and the cultural policy of the canon of Danish literature

The Danish fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen is cultural heritage in Denmark, and his authorship is a part of The Canon of Danish Literature that contains 14 obligatory authorships in the Danish educational system. In this article, we examine how the cultural policy of the ideologically rooted and highly political canon affects current teaching materials on Andersen’s fairy tales. Our examples show how fixed readings of the fairy tales are reproduced in Danish classrooms. We suggest that dialogic teaching approaches to the fairy tales have potential to counter such readings and offer teachers and students the opportunity to engage with canonical literature in new ways. However, based on examples from existing dialogic teaching materials for Andersen’s fairy tales, we also conclude that the task of countering the inexpedient influence of cultural policy in teaching materials should not be underestimated.