Anders is Hilda's father and ex-husband of Johanna, who was never seen or mentioned in the graphic novel series, but he is featured in Season 3 of the animated series. He also appears in the last books of the Hilda Tie-In Series released in November 2023.
Appearance[]
Anders is a Caucasian man with blonde hair and a mustache. He is usually clean-shaven, but grew a beard during his stay in Fairy Country.
Personality[]
Anders is an adventurous man who cannot stay in one place for long. He also has trouble keeping to a time schedule and not afraid to go against the rules, like allowing Hilda to drive a car even though she's too young for that.
Hilda inherited her sense of adventure from him. According to Johanna, Anders always disappears suddenly and without warning to his next adventure whenever he feels overwhelmed.
Relationships[]
Anders has a good relationship with his daughter Hilda, who shares his sense of adventure. Whenever he visits, the two have a great time.
He is on friendly terms with Johanna, but she has no high opinion of him due to his tendency to always run off on another adventure, sometimes being gone for years. When Tontu asked Johanna if Anders was going to live with them, she immediately told him no, and indeed at the end of the season Anders moves into his own apartment instead. Whatever their relationship was in the past, they are no longer lovers in the present day but just friends at best.
Biography[]
Animated series[]
At some point prior to the start of the series, Anders met Johanna and they had Hilda. By his own admission, Johanna's aunt Astrid never really liked him. Anders did not stick around to help raise Hilda but instead only dropped by occasionally for brief visits, the last one being back when Hilda still lived in her old house. Hilda and Johanna never talk about him, and don’t even have a picture of him around somewhere, however, Hilda does have a good relationship with her dad and the two gladly spend time together whenever Anders is around.
In "Chapter 5: The Job", he makes his way to Trolberg with a ferry, though he has barely enough money to pay for the ticket. He drops by unannounced at Hilda's house, much to the surprise of Johanna and the joy of Hilda. Hilda introduces him to David, Frida, Tontu and Alfur. David and Frida are surprised to see him as they both assumed he died years ago, and Hilda confesses to her dad that she does not talk about him much.
With Johanna's (reluctant) permission, Anders takes Hilda and her friends for lunch in The Salty Maiden. There, he promises he will try to stick around longer this time, but he needs a job. At that moment, a shady man known only as the Polecat enters the tavern, looking for someone to do a job for him. Hilda immediately volunteers Anders, and the Polecat accepts. He wants Anders to pick up a package at the castle ruins, where his crew will be waiting for him. Since Anders has no car, the Polecat lends him his truck. Hilda comes along for the ride since she knows a shorter way.
The trip to the ruins takes longer than expected as the truck gets a flat tire along the way, which needs to be replaced. Along the way Hilda tells Anders about her adventure from the movie, and Anders even allows Hilda to drive the truck for a while since they're in the wilderness anyway. When they arrive at the ruins, Anders mentions he and Hilda should go camping next weekend, which Hilda gladly accepts. In the ruins, they meet the Polecat's crew: Garth and Gunther. The package turns out to be a wooden chest at the bottom of a hole, which is too heavy to lift. Anders fetches a rope from the truck and on his instructions they use a rafter on the ceiling to make a pulley. All goes well, until Gunther reveals the chest is filled with gold, and part of a Troll's hoard. This upsets Hilda and she refuses to help them steal it. Anders sides with her, and gets into a fistfight with Garth because of it. Then Johanna shows up at the ruins, having been told by David where Hilda and Anders had gone to, and is furious about Anders dragging Hilda into this. Things get worse when the troll whose hoard they are stealing also shows up. Garth and Gunther flee in the Polecat's truck, while Anders distracts the troll by grabbing another box from it's hoard. The troll chases him deeper into the ruins, and corners him in the dungeon. But before he can smash Anders, Phinium and Lydia, who were watching the whole thing through a watchtower, interfere and use the tower to pull Anders into Fairy Country, away from the troll.
Hilda, who of course doesn't know what actually happened, first accuses the troll of having eaten her dad, but he's innocent. She and Johanna search around the ruins for a while, but Anders is gone and Johanna is certain he must have bailed out on them again like he always does. Hilda is disappointed, but Johanna assures her her father loves her.
Anders meanwhile has been dropped off on one of the outer islands of Fairy Country. The same island where Victoria Van Gale had ended up after her botched Nowhere Space experiment. Victoria takes Anders in and helps him survive Fairy Country, like staying away from The Eyes. Together they are able to put together a working radio transmitter to signal for help. In "Chapter 7: Strange Frequencies", their radio broadcasts are picked up by Hilda, who is able to decode them with help of Alfur. When Victoria also gets the microphone of the radio working, Anders is able to talk directly to Hilda rather than send cryptic signals. Thanks to Alfur doing some research, Hilda is able to pinpoint the source of the signals to be in Tofoten, and thus deduces her father is in Fairy Country. Along with her friends, she travels back to Tofoten and enters the Fairy Mound to find Anders. She and Twig manage to reach the island. Victoria stays behind on the island as Hilda and Anders try to make their way back to the human world. Unfortunately, one of The Eyes spots them and alerts Fairy Isle, which chases after them. Thanks to Frida opening a portal in the Fairy Mound with her magic, Anders, Hilda and Twig are able to escape, but Hilda immediately returns when she learns her mother has also entered the Fairy Mound to look for her. After Frida can no longer hold the portal open, the Fairy Mound collapses.
Anders spends some time digging in the ground where the Fairy Mound used to be in hopes of finding his daughter, but it's of no use. He is reunited with Hilda and Johanna after the Deer-foxes rescue them from Fairy Country.
At the end of "Chapter 8: The Fairy Isle", he settles into his own apartment, thus keeping his promise to Hilda to stay around and live in Trolberg for now.
Tie-in books[]
The events from "Chapter 5: The Job" are adapted into "Hilda and the Faratok Tree". Here Anders first meets Hilda and friends in the harbor as they are practicing there for their knot tying badge. Like in the series, he gets to work for the Polecat, but the Polecat has much less patience with him and easily gets annoyed by Anders' questions. Another difference is that, once they get to the ruins, Anders has no rope for the chest so Hilda volunteers to make one like she learned at Sparrow Scouts. Instead she ends up finding the Faratok tree and has an adventure in the past from which she returns with a coil of rope. With the rope, and by using a rafter from the ruins as a pulley, they begin to haul the chest up, until Hilda realizes the chest is part of a Troll's hoard. She warns Anders, who agrees with her they shouldn't steal a troll's treasure. Then the troll the chest belongs to shows up to take back what is his. In the struggle, Anders and the troll both end up at the bottom of the hole, while Garth and Gunther flee in the truck. After Hilda climbs down in the hole to help Anders, she can't find him anywhere. The troll has not eaten him and completely ignores Hilda. The story ends with Anders having vanished without a trace and Hilda fearing he might be in serious trouble.
The events from "Chapter 8: The Fairy Isle" are adapted into "Hilda and the Fairy Village". In this version of the story, the radio broadcasts from Anders are first picked up by David on the train ride to Tofoten, later by Tontu during a camping trip nearby a Fairy Mound. Like in the series, Hilda goes into the Fairy Mound to find her father, but unlike the series she fails to escape Fairy Country as she is picked up from the boat they were in by Phinium and Lydia, who take her to their home.
Appearances[]
| Season 3 | ||||||||||||
| Hilda Opening Sequence: | Absent | |||||||||||
| 1. Chapter 1: The Train to Tofoten: | Absent | 2. Chapter 2: The Fairy Mound | Absent | |||||||||
| 3. Chapter 3: The Giantslayer: | Absent | 4. Chapter 4: The Laughing Merman | Absent | |||||||||
| 5. Chapter 5: The Job: | Appears | 6. Chapter 6: The Forgotten Lake: | Mentioned | |||||||||
| 7. Chapter 7: Strange Frequencies: | Voice only | 8. Chapter 8: The Fairy Isle: | Appears | |||||||||
Trivia[]
- Luke Pearson used to be rather vague about Hilda’s father, with his only official statement being that he is around somewhere but currently lives apart [1].
- In the graphic novels, the only time Hilda ever showed interest in a father of any kind, was in "Hilda and the Mountain King"; after Trylla turned Hilda into a troll and took her in as her new daughter, Hilda asked her if this meant she now had a Troll dad as well, but Trylla told her no, since Trolls are not born the way humans are. This scene was also incorporated into the movie adaptation. Here, Hilda even seemed disappointed when Trylla tells her she has no troll dad, indicating that Hilda possibly misses having a father figure in her life.
- There was a theory among fans that the Keeper of the Bell is actually Hilda's father, due to his hair having a blue streak, and other similarities to Hilda. With the release of "Hilda and the Faratok Tree", this theory has officially been proven false; Anders and the Bellkeeper are two distinct characters. This theory is lampshaded in "Chapter 8: The Fairy Isle" where Anders briefly bumps into the Keeper of the Bell while in a crowd.
- He is not to be confused with one of Trevor's friends, who is also named Anders (though his name is only ever given in the Hilda Tie-In Series).