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Little Claus and Big Claus
Vivían en un pueblo dos hombres que se llamaban Claus el Grande que tenía cuatro caballos, y Claus el Pequeño, dueño de uno solo. Durante toda la semana, Claus el Pequeño tenía que arar para el Grande, y prestarle su único caballo; luego Claus el Grande prestaba al otro sus cuatro caballos, pero sólo una vez a la el domingo. Ese día, Claus el Pequeño se mostraba orgulloso arando con los cinco caballos y en cuanto pasaba la gente, gritaba «¡Arre mis cinco caballos!».Esto no gustaba a Claus el Grande, que enfadado agarró un mazo y dio un golpe en la cabeza al caballo de Claus el Chico, y lo mató.El pobre Claus, echándose a llorar, despellejó el animal muerto, puso la piel a secar al viento, la metió en un saco, que se cargó a la espalda, y emprendió el camino de la ciudad para ver si la vendía. Se hizo tarde y tuvo que pasar la noche fuera. Al día siguiente volvió al pueblo cargado de dinero y fue a verle Claus el Grande.
32 pages, Hardcover
First published May 8, 1835
3 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
About the author
Hans Christian Andersen
7,594 books3,508 followersHans Christian Andersen (often referred to in Scandinavia as H.C. Andersen) was a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories — called eventyr, or "fairy-tales" — express themes that transcend age and nationality.
Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Little Mermaid", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Nightingale", "The Emperor's New Clothes" and many more. His stories have inspired plays, ballets, and both live-action and animated films.
Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Little Mermaid", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Nightingale", "The Emperor's New Clothes" and many more. His stories have inspired plays, ballets, and both live-action and animated films.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
January 15, 2018
بیشتر از خود داستان بامزه ی هانس کریستین اندرسن نحوه ی خوندن داستان بهم چسبید. اینطوری بود که عضو یه گروه تلگرامی شدم که اعضا به نوبت یه پاراگراف از داستان رو میخونن و فایل صوتی رو میفرستن تا بقیه هم گوش بدن. این روند تا اتمام داستان ادامه داره و بعد با داستانی جدید از سر گرفته میشه.اگه به خوندن و شنیدن داستان های کوتاه به زبان انگلیسی علاقمند هستین شما هم می تونین ملحق شین
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April 21, 2015From the clever, slyness of Little Clause, to the clumsy, idiocy of Big Clause, I loved this story from start to finish and laughed throughout. The vulgarity, brutality and ruthlessness of the plot aside, it was an enjoyable read from start to finish. A twisted fairytale from the master of it all.
May 27, 2022
I have arranged the only thought I had on this particular story into a haiku:
"Pity to the souls
Tangled up in the conflict
When two assholes clash."
Just, neither of these guys seem like good people. I feel bad for all the poor people and animals around them.
"Pity to the souls
Tangled up in the conflict
When two assholes clash."
Just, neither of these guys seem like good people. I feel bad for all the poor people and animals around them.
March 1, 2019
There's something innately calming about Andersen's style that heightens his stories beyond just his impressive creativity. His storytelling is so casual, even when violence or evil occurs (which it does, often) within them. This unpretentiousness imparts a sense of sitting around the fire and listening to your grandmother speak the words rather than--in my specific case--reading one every so often in my office as I take a break from working. It reminds me of filmmaker Wes Anderson's work; timeless, whimsical, colorful.
While the stories themselves are not universally appealing to my tastes, I almost always find myself immediately enraptured whenever I do open one of his tales. This is telling of his quality, considering I typically prefer overly serious and more subtle stories and Andersen's work is most certainly not that. I believe their appeal should be nearly universal; to children and adults regardless of personal preference. Indeed history has shown it so, as these stories have been read and enjoyed for nearly two centuries and adapted (even aped) into countless other forms of media.
Little Claus and Big Claus is one of his less well-known stories, but one I enjoyed more than some of his other stuff I've read. Little Claus is an unabashed con-man who regularly outwits Big Claus, and I was also pleasantly surprised to see the dark humor the story features, as my own sense of humor is like a strong cup of black coffee.
I read a Tiina Nunnally translation of the original Danish, whom I believe has also done a well-regarded translation of the Scandinavian classic Kristin Lavransdatter. I found her work adequate. There are times which I could tell I was reading a translation, but such is to be expected if you want something reasonably accurate to the source material. I imagine it would be difficult to do a better job and thus I'd recommend her.
My recommendation: Read Hans Christian Andersen. Read him if you like Pixar. Read him if you like Harry Potter. Read him if you like Wes Anderson. And read him if you don't like these things anyway, because he'll probably still appeal to you on one level or another.
While the stories themselves are not universally appealing to my tastes, I almost always find myself immediately enraptured whenever I do open one of his tales. This is telling of his quality, considering I typically prefer overly serious and more subtle stories and Andersen's work is most certainly not that. I believe their appeal should be nearly universal; to children and adults regardless of personal preference. Indeed history has shown it so, as these stories have been read and enjoyed for nearly two centuries and adapted (even aped) into countless other forms of media.
Little Claus and Big Claus is one of his less well-known stories, but one I enjoyed more than some of his other stuff I've read. Little Claus is an unabashed con-man who regularly outwits Big Claus, and I was also pleasantly surprised to see the dark humor the story features, as my own sense of humor is like a strong cup of black coffee.
I read a Tiina Nunnally translation of the original Danish, whom I believe has also done a well-regarded translation of the Scandinavian classic Kristin Lavransdatter. I found her work adequate. There are times which I could tell I was reading a translation, but such is to be expected if you want something reasonably accurate to the source material. I imagine it would be difficult to do a better job and thus I'd recommend her.
My recommendation: Read Hans Christian Andersen. Read him if you like Pixar. Read him if you like Harry Potter. Read him if you like Wes Anderson. And read him if you don't like these things anyway, because he'll probably still appeal to you on one level or another.
August 24, 2025
#Binge Reviewing My Previous Reads #Classic fairy tales with Modern Implications
This tale, at first glance, appears to be one of his more “folk-tale-ish” pieces—bawdy, dark, and almost cruel in its humour. Nevertheless, when one reads it through a 21st-century lens, especially with a postmodern ear, the story refuses to remain merely an amusing morality tale. Instead, it opens up a troubling and strangely contemporary allegory of capitalism, cunning, and survival, asking us to reckon with what it means to thrive in a world where wit trumps morality, and laughter often cloaks violence.
The tale itself is deceptively simple. Big Claus has five horses; Little Claus has only one. Little Claus, to boost his own pride, boasts about “all” his horses—those belonging to Big Claus but lent for a day. This infuriates Big Claus, who kills Little Claus’s only horse, setting off a spiral of cunning counterattacks. Little Claus uses deception after deception—tricking a sexton, manipulating a farmer’s wife, selling illusions, and finally conning Big Claus into his own death.
At the close, the supposed underdog emerges triumphant, his cleverness rewarded, while Big Claus is destroyed by his gullibility.
Read naively, this is a fable of wit over brute force. But postmodern analysis resists that neat closure. The text performs a subtle destabilisation of moral binaries: Little Claus is not noble, nor virtuous, nor even “innocent”. His victories arise not from justice but from cunning scams, lies, and even exploitation of death.
For instance, when he hides a corpse in a sack and convinces others that it is a magical figure producing wealth, Andersen layers comedy upon the grotesque. Death is commodified. Grief is turned into currency. Little Claus is not unlike the “entrepreneurial subject” of late capitalism, who capitalizes on crisis, tragedy, or ignorance to survive.
In this sense, the story anticipates the neoliberal figure: clever, opportunistic, amoral, yet hailed as “successful.” Postmodern critique reminds us that Andersen himself was writing in the throes of Denmark’s transformations, when traditional peasant culture was being reshaped by markets and bourgeois rationality.
The fairy tale is thus already a satire of economic modernisation: Big Claus, with his brute accumulation of horses, represents inherited wealth and dull authority; Little Claus, the trickster, embodies a new, cunning adaptability that thrives in loopholes and scams.
He wins not by building but by resignifying — by narrativising objects into commodities of desire.
The gender politics here, too, are striking. Women in the story appear largely as dupes or bodies to be managed within the economy of exchange — the farmer’s wife, the grandmother, and the sexton’s wife. They form the nodes through which Little Claus manipulates social systems, but their subjectivities are erased.
A 21st-century feminist reading might see this as emblematic of how women’s labour and presence were already instrumentalised in Andersen’s society. But the very grotesqueness of their portrayal also destabilises the “innocence” of the fairy tale form, exposing its own cruelty.
In contemporary terms, Little Claus and Big Claus reads like a parable of scam culture, clickbait economies, and the triumph of those who can weaponise narrative over substance. Big Claus is almost quaint — an analogue figure, too slow, too literal for the symbolic manipulations of his opponent. Little Claus thrives precisely because he can transform objects into stories, stories into money, and money into power. That his methods are morally dubious is irrelevant; what matters is that he wins.
Postmodern irony here bites deep: the reader is caught in uncomfortable laughter. We are entertained by Little Claus’s ingenuity, yet if we pause, we realise his victories are drenched in deception and cruelty. The fairy tale exposes how laughter itself can be complicit in systems of violence — we laugh at the trick but ignore the corpse.
For 21st-century readers, then, Andersen’s tale is not just an odd folk retelling but a mirror. We live in an age where wealth is accumulated not by brute possession but by symbolic manipulation — branding, marketing, speculation, and hustle.
Little Claus and Big Claus uncannily anticipate this economy of trickery. The little man wins not because he is morally better but because he can better narrate the world.
In that sense, this tale offers a darkly comic but prophetic meditation: in modernity, cunning outpaces capital, and morality becomes the first corpse stuffed into a sack.
This tale, at first glance, appears to be one of his more “folk-tale-ish” pieces—bawdy, dark, and almost cruel in its humour. Nevertheless, when one reads it through a 21st-century lens, especially with a postmodern ear, the story refuses to remain merely an amusing morality tale. Instead, it opens up a troubling and strangely contemporary allegory of capitalism, cunning, and survival, asking us to reckon with what it means to thrive in a world where wit trumps morality, and laughter often cloaks violence.
The tale itself is deceptively simple. Big Claus has five horses; Little Claus has only one. Little Claus, to boost his own pride, boasts about “all” his horses—those belonging to Big Claus but lent for a day. This infuriates Big Claus, who kills Little Claus’s only horse, setting off a spiral of cunning counterattacks. Little Claus uses deception after deception—tricking a sexton, manipulating a farmer’s wife, selling illusions, and finally conning Big Claus into his own death.
At the close, the supposed underdog emerges triumphant, his cleverness rewarded, while Big Claus is destroyed by his gullibility.
Read naively, this is a fable of wit over brute force. But postmodern analysis resists that neat closure. The text performs a subtle destabilisation of moral binaries: Little Claus is not noble, nor virtuous, nor even “innocent”. His victories arise not from justice but from cunning scams, lies, and even exploitation of death.
For instance, when he hides a corpse in a sack and convinces others that it is a magical figure producing wealth, Andersen layers comedy upon the grotesque. Death is commodified. Grief is turned into currency. Little Claus is not unlike the “entrepreneurial subject” of late capitalism, who capitalizes on crisis, tragedy, or ignorance to survive.
In this sense, the story anticipates the neoliberal figure: clever, opportunistic, amoral, yet hailed as “successful.” Postmodern critique reminds us that Andersen himself was writing in the throes of Denmark’s transformations, when traditional peasant culture was being reshaped by markets and bourgeois rationality.
The fairy tale is thus already a satire of economic modernisation: Big Claus, with his brute accumulation of horses, represents inherited wealth and dull authority; Little Claus, the trickster, embodies a new, cunning adaptability that thrives in loopholes and scams.
He wins not by building but by resignifying — by narrativising objects into commodities of desire.
The gender politics here, too, are striking. Women in the story appear largely as dupes or bodies to be managed within the economy of exchange — the farmer’s wife, the grandmother, and the sexton’s wife. They form the nodes through which Little Claus manipulates social systems, but their subjectivities are erased.
A 21st-century feminist reading might see this as emblematic of how women’s labour and presence were already instrumentalised in Andersen’s society. But the very grotesqueness of their portrayal also destabilises the “innocence” of the fairy tale form, exposing its own cruelty.
In contemporary terms, Little Claus and Big Claus reads like a parable of scam culture, clickbait economies, and the triumph of those who can weaponise narrative over substance. Big Claus is almost quaint — an analogue figure, too slow, too literal for the symbolic manipulations of his opponent. Little Claus thrives precisely because he can transform objects into stories, stories into money, and money into power. That his methods are morally dubious is irrelevant; what matters is that he wins.
Postmodern irony here bites deep: the reader is caught in uncomfortable laughter. We are entertained by Little Claus’s ingenuity, yet if we pause, we realise his victories are drenched in deception and cruelty. The fairy tale exposes how laughter itself can be complicit in systems of violence — we laugh at the trick but ignore the corpse.
For 21st-century readers, then, Andersen’s tale is not just an odd folk retelling but a mirror. We live in an age where wealth is accumulated not by brute possession but by symbolic manipulation — branding, marketing, speculation, and hustle.
Little Claus and Big Claus uncannily anticipate this economy of trickery. The little man wins not because he is morally better but because he can better narrate the world.
In that sense, this tale offers a darkly comic but prophetic meditation: in modernity, cunning outpaces capital, and morality becomes the first corpse stuffed into a sack.
February 21, 2020
This is one of the underrated tales of ol' HCA himself. Sure, he often writes sweet, tragic, often saccharine fairytales that feel like overstuffing yourself with chocolate cake, but this is one of the really great ones. Witty enough to make you laugh, but disturbing enough to make you CRINGE. (Well, actually, all of his fairytales are disturbing in some shape or form, so…)
My one criticism of this tale was how absolutely stupid Big Claus was. No rich people are that idiotic, so I'm sorry, dear Mr. Andersen, but your story has helped little in our conspiracy to trick the top 1% into jumping into a volcano.
This story was in a collection thingy with other stories mocking the upper class such as The Princess on the Pea and The Tinderbox, and all three are just 👌👌👌. I recommend reading about HCA's rags-to-riches life to get a well-rounded idea on why he wrote these stories.
My one criticism of this tale was how absolutely stupid Big Claus was. No rich people are that idiotic, so I'm sorry, dear Mr. Andersen, but your story has helped little in our conspiracy to trick the top 1% into jumping into a volcano.
This story was in a collection thingy with other stories mocking the upper class such as The Princess on the Pea and The Tinderbox, and all three are just 👌👌👌. I recommend reading about HCA's rags-to-riches life to get a well-rounded idea on why he wrote these stories.
January 4, 2024
I was expecting a cosy Christmas story but that's not what this was at all. However, it was intriguing to see how smoothly and successfully Little Claus, a villain in his own right, outwits and cons everyone he comes across, including the equally (if not more) villainous Big Claus.
April 14, 2025
Another twisted tale as Little Claus’ idle boasts lead to equine murder and trickery aplenty.
July 1, 2014
I've read it when I was still young. I got so entertained that I still remember the story till this day (the age of smartphones and book apps).
The strategy of little claus amazed me, and for a child, the turn out of events is something that you won't expect.
The strategy of little claus amazed me, and for a child, the turn out of events is something that you won't expect.
January 3, 2025
I didn't care for this one at first but it grew on me. Big Claus's stupidity and the lengths he was going through to get back at Little Claus was quite funny. I mean killing his home grandma? Come on Big Claus.
February 28, 2014
I grew up with H.C.Andersens stories.. and i will love them all till i die.
May 14, 2017
Revenge at its finest! Big Claus, king of the greedy idiots!
January 8, 2022
Naur this is too dark for children 😭
June 1, 2022
Little Claus is quite cunning in getting his way. Rags to riches once again with murder, suicide and adultery included.
June 26, 2016
Felt tears within me with the death of the horse, but... whoom! What a change of heart and thus fortune! Hilarious and macabre in one go. Very similar to the Grimm Brothers tale "The Little Peasant."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 3, 2020
I gotta say that I found this tale more entertaining than The Tinderbox, because of all the cons Little Claus pulls of, but I still wish it would’ve given me something more. Everyone does bad things, and they don’t get punished, except by their own stupidity, and believe me, Little Claus is the only character who’s not stupid. He may not be a hero, or any kind of a good person, but his charm and cunningness makes him a compelling character to read. Link to video review: https://youtu.be/uDbEc1MyomI
July 11, 2024
FULL REVIEW ON MY WEBSITE
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
This one was really not for me. Maybe reading children stories as an adult isn’t the best thing to do for some people.
I personally found this story to be very boring and uninteresting. I really had hard time reading it because I just couldn’t get into the story.
The story is pretty quick read, but that’s the only good thing about this story for me personally.
The writing style in this one was very generic which every fairytale has.
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
This one was really not for me. Maybe reading children stories as an adult isn’t the best thing to do for some people.
I personally found this story to be very boring and uninteresting. I really had hard time reading it because I just couldn’t get into the story.
The story is pretty quick read, but that’s the only good thing about this story for me personally.
The writing style in this one was very generic which every fairytale has.
January 24, 2022
I read the M R James translation.
The story is rather inadequate. If I recollect correctly, it is one of Andersen's few stories that is a retelling or refiguring of something else. The tale follows the rich and rash Big Claus and the sly and poor Little Claus. Both are horrible people who do horrible things to others. Like in life, the clever get away with the worst, and only those who cannot conceal get what is coming to them.
The story is rather inadequate. If I recollect correctly, it is one of Andersen's few stories that is a retelling or refiguring of something else. The tale follows the rich and rash Big Claus and the sly and poor Little Claus. Both are horrible people who do horrible things to others. Like in life, the clever get away with the worst, and only those who cannot conceal get what is coming to them.
July 20, 2017
This strange short story is sure to make you laugh as you read about how a desire for vengeance leads the witty Little Claus down a dark yet comical path. This path being one of great despair for Big Claus, undeniable satisfaction for Little Claus and a multitude of memorable/comical moments for the reader!
December 24, 2023
The most barbaric thing you could ever read to a child. Skip this story for the little ones, please.
No wonder why HC Andersen had so many bad reviews when he originally published this story, being described as "relativizing murder for children as if he was talking about killing a fly". Back then, of course, people had decency, character and strong moral values to speak up against these things, unlike now, but that's another story.....
No wonder why HC Andersen had so many bad reviews when he originally published this story, being described as "relativizing murder for children as if he was talking about killing a fly". Back then, of course, people had decency, character and strong moral values to speak up against these things, unlike now, but that's another story.....
March 14, 2019
Nunca pensei que um conto de fadas poderia mostrar as características necessárias de um vendedor , mantendo-o "honesto" enquanto aproveita as oportunidades que a vida lhe dá .
Ou simplesmente ... Little Klaus é uma pessoa muito inteligente e sabe aproveitar TODAS as oportunidades que vida lhe dá .
Ou simplesmente ... Little Klaus é uma pessoa muito inteligente e sabe aproveitar TODAS as oportunidades que vida lhe dá .
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August 15, 2021While I don't enjoy the casual violence and killing in this story, I do enjoy finding out the various ways that Little Claus outwits Big Claus. I feel the same way about Grimms' Master Thief--highly entertaining but not commendable.
November 28, 2022
A hilarious story about a man fooling his enemy in the most insane ways possible. This is definitely the most bonkers fairy tale I’ve ever read. My favorite part was when Little Claus tricks Big Claus into murdering his own grandmother for money. Don’t know if I’d ever read this story to my kids.
August 28, 2018
4.5 out of 5
January 20, 2019
Ongoing project to read more fairy tales..
September 29, 2020
Both Claus are horrible people. They should have both died.
January 5, 2022
Así que... nunca sean tan crédulos.
Cuento entretenido y astuto.
Cuento entretenido y astuto.
July 9, 2022
Such a classic! It definitely reads different as an adult than as a child, it is worth it to come back and see it with other (older) eyes.
July 13, 2022
Read this to my daughter over the course of three bedtimes. It was cute
October 16, 2022
Virgin big claus Vs chad little claus
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews