In the Beginning

You are nothing. You do not exist. You have not been created.

It is of course foolish to suggest that all stories start at the beginning. They start with the creator, and this one is no different.

And though the nature of the creator can in many cases be tricky to ascertain, this one is fortunately clear. The official story, at least, is known well enough- it’s told in history books, online encyclopedias, animated short films, DK visual dictionaries; it’s even available right on the company website.

So, in the seeming absence of other stories, let’s start there: With the three Danish men of one family who make up the main history of the company. Ole Kirk Christiansen, the carpenter who founded the company and coined the name; his son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, who patented the famous brick building system; and his son Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the one perhaps most responsible for many of the tenets that make the  brand what it is today. Together, the three of them form what can be said to be the official creation of LEGO.

A spark of light flashes: you fall into being. But it is not life yet. Darkness stretches across the world around you- the formless void of existence reaches on to eternity.

Creation.

The details of this creation, of course, are by now familiar, such that recounting them becomes a somewhat dry affair, as if this were simply a textbook. Which, fair enough, let’s play the part. Ole Kirk Christiansen was born near Billund in 1891 in the farming community of Filskov, the tenth son of an impoverished family. Christiansen began work as a carpenter in 1916 when he purchased a woodworking shop that helped construct houses and furniture. He married his first wife, Kirstine Sörensen, the same year, and would have four sons with her- Johannes, Karl Georg, Godtfred, and Gerhardt. With this life in place, Ole Kirk would persevere through an accidental fire in 1924 and the trials of the Great Depression to form the basis of what would become the LEGO Company.

Suddenly, from the darkness strews a multitude of matter that soars and envelops the void, reaching out through all of existence. Light shines from above and weeps down to the horizon, as strokes of earth creep forth from below. With a rumble the two meet and intertwine, forcing the darkness away. Wind bellows across the skies as liquid fire hardens to stone, and frozen ice melts to create the seas. Together linked, hardened, and formed, the world is created.

I could truthfully continue the rest of the history in this style, but there wouldn’t be much point. No, we know the story, and those who don’t would have an easy time looking up the details in the myriad of places online where they’re printed in full. As with any piece of history it gets retold so often that it simply becomes boring to hear. We know that after the fire and the Depression Ole Kirk began building miniaturized versions of his products, which inspired him to make toys. He started with simple wooden toys, though business was rough enough in 1932 that he ended up having to borrow money from his siblings to keep the business afloat.

We know that even as the business struggled he continued to make toys, with his son Godtfred assisting. And we know that he had a fierce commitment to quality and craftsmanship- as the legend goes he once forced Godtfred to return a shipment of toys and repaint each one himself when he learned Godtfred had skipped a layer of painting to save money. We know that as the business continued Ole Kirk often found himself having to sell toys door to door, often in exchange for food. And that as the toys continued they became more advanced and complex, and began to feature a wider variety of animals, such as elephants, goats, and of course, the wooden duck.

The primordial soup from
which all life begins.

You wake up and find yourself on a beach. The 
world lies before you, brimming with the potential for life. You take your first steps and move towards a nearby forest. As you brush past the growing leaves and branches, you see an assortment of new creatures, crawling and running and seeping through the forest. Above you, long-armed mammals climb through the trees and situate themselves on high branches. Below you, a strange mire moves slowly across the ground, as a swarm of insects scurries around you, anxiously hurrying away. The life you see is unfamiliar to you- the prehistorical beings that will soon form the rest of this world.

By this time the company had found its name, in another oft-historicized detail- the word “LEGO”, coming from an amalgamation of the Danish phrase leg godt, meaning “play well” (or, depending on how loosely you’re willing to interpret Latin, “I put together”).  And as the years went by wooden toys soon gave way to plastic, especially when Ole Kirk bought an injection molding machine in 1947. Wooden cars gave way to plastic tractirs, wooden ducks to plastic bears. Though the wooden toys continued to be manufactured well into the 1950s, they dwindled in comparison to the ever-growing plastic market. And once LEGO came out with the “Automatic Binding Bricks” in 1949 and they were patented in 1958, production on the wooden toys ceased altogether as LEGO moved towards entirely plastic toys.

Evolution.

Ole Kirk would unfortunately not live to see the toys become the massive worldwide success they are today, as he died of a heart attack in 1958, leaving the company to his son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen. But it was his perseverance and hard work that led to the solid foundation that the LEGO company has been built on after all these years. That’s the story of the creation. All familiar details, historicized to the point they exist as part of a larger master narrative: of a foundling company that, through hard work and creative thinking, became a worldwide icon.

So what is the purpose of recanting events such as these? What’s the point of engaging in a walk through history if the paths that are open to us are so well-worn and travelled? The point, it would seem, is to find something new to say. Something about ourselves or our world that is revealed to us through the path we take.

So let’s take a new path, then- a new foray into these oft-historicized events. And as it would happen, there’s a path already available to us. Because in the histories above, there’s something missing. A name that doesn’t come out in the midst of these stories- a secret buried underneath the master narrative.

The murmur of the forest grows uncertain. The climbers find shelter in the leaves, the insects scurry away even faster. There are stormclouds gathering above. Wind torrents around you, leaves fly about, and ice starts pelting from the skies. Something is not well up above.

The name is, of course, Hilary Page.