The Child at the Mirror: Niels Bredal’s Børne Speigel (1568)

Niels Bredal’s conduct book Børne Speigel (1568) has received surprisingly scant attention despite being considered the first work of children’s literature in Danish. In Børne Speigel, an adult speaker directs his words to a young narratee, a ‘you’. In this article, Anna Wegener explores the identity of this ‘you’ in an attempt to picture how children in early modern Denmark might have lived. She also discusses Bredal’s possible sources of inspiration, showing that Børne Speigel is indebted not only to Erasmus’ De civilitate morum puerilium(1530), as many scholars have pointed out, but also to Martin Luther’s Kleiner Katechismus (1529).