Abstract
In many fairy tale stories, there is a significant motif of journey to a strange place somewhere beyond the borders of this world, to the Otherworld. This work deals with the question why the fairy tale characters set on the journey to the realm of the dead, which is how the Otherworld is usually depicted in fairy tales, and on what conditions they come back among the living.
The interpretation is mainly based on Russian, Czech, German, and Celtic fairy tales about magic.