Forest of Burzee


The Forest of Burzee is a fictional fairy-tale land originated by L. Frank Baum, famous as the creator of the Land of Oz. The forest is located beyond the Deadly Desert on the western boundary of the Land of Oz, and is situated close to Noland.

History

Baum first introduced the Forest of Burzee in his 1902 book The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, where the fictional setting receives its most extensive treatment and detailed description. The opening chapter of Baum's Queen Zixi of Ix is also set in the Forest of Burzee. A small cluster of Baum short stories also employ the Forest of Burzee as a setting, or at least involved the Forest in some way; these include "A Kidnapped Santa Claus," "The Runaway Shadows," and "Nelebel's Fairyland."
Baum pictures Burzee as a great forest, with "big tree-trunks, standing close together, with their roots intertwining below the earth and their branches intertwining above it;" a place of "queer, gnarled limbs" and "bushy foliage" where the rare sunbeams cast "weird and curious shadows over the mosses, the lichens and the drifts of dried leaves." Among the "giant oak and fir trees" are clearings where "the grass grew green and soft as velvet." The Forest is populated by Fairies, ruled by a queen, along with Nymphs, Gnomes, Pixies, and species of beings invented by Baum consisting of Ryls, Knooks, and Gigans.
At the east of the Forest of Burzee is the Laughing Valley which was empty for years until Santa Claus built his house there. He still lives there to this day.
Burzee is not an entirely benign place however. It contains predators like Shiegra the Lioness and Kahtah the Tiger.
At first, Burzee had no direct connection with Oz. A link was forged in the fifth Oz book The Road to Oz, in which visitors from Burzee attend the grand celebration that closes that book. The map of Oz and its neighboring lands that appeared in Tik-Tok of Oz included the Forest as one of those border regions. Eventually, Royal Historian Jack Snow featured the Forest of Burzee in his first Oz book, The Magical Mimics in Oz, in 1946. Later Oz authors occasionally mention Burzee; David Hardenbrook's The Unknown Witches of Oz is one example.

Known inhabitants

The Forest of Burzee is inhabited by different creatures: