Mio, min Mio

Mio, min Mio ("Mio, my Mio"; published in English as Mio, my Son) is a Swedish language children's book by Astrid Lindgren. The book has been described as a work in the genre High fantasy.

As both Mio, min Mio and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings were published in 1954 and can be said to carry some apparent similarities, a Swedish humorous newspaper article concocted a fictitious conspiracy theory that Tolkien and Lindgren must have secretly met some time in the 1930s and agreed upon writing "fairy-tales of their own but with a common theme" ("var sin saga med gemensamt tema"). The joke aside, the similarities are quite abound:

• cloaks granting invisibility
• energy bread (Tolkien: lembas; Lindgren: Mio eats a magic bread which takes away hunger)
• apparently dead trees
• intelligent horses (Tolkien: Shadowfax; Lindgren: Miramis)
• black scouts (Tolkien: the Ringwraiths of Sauron; Lindgren: the black scouts of Kato)
• an evil tyrant who is defeated by two "halflings" – an involuntary hero and his loyal squire
• after the death of the tyrant, a tree who was believed to be dead is flowering again