The Authors and Illustrators - Profiles

Astrid Lindgren 

  Astrid Lindgren was born Astrid Anna Emilia Ericsson in Vimmerby, where she grew up on her parent's farm. She was the second of four children of Samuel August, a tenant farmer, and Hanna Jonsson Ericsson. Her parents gave much freedom to the children, Astrid, Gunnar, Stina, and Ingegerd. A natural part of their upbringing was storytelling; they were encouraged to use their imagination and enter the world of literature. From 1924 to 1926 she worked as a reporter at the local newspaper, Wimmerby Tidning - her first text had appeared in the paper in 1921. She also occasionally participated in services at the Salvation Army compound, where she met her friends and sang hymns. Astrid's carefree youth ended at the age of 18, when she became pregnant. It was a shock to her family. She left home and moved to Stockholm, where she studied for an office employeer. In Copenhagen she gave birth to her son, Lars, who was given to a foster home. Eventually Lindgren's parents took him to Vimmerby.
  In Stockholm Lindgren worked in an office at the Royal Automobile Club. She married in 1931 Sture Lindgren, her office manager, and started a family. Between the years 1946 and 1970 Lindgren was a children's book editor at Rabén & Sjogren. In 1940 she worked at the Swedish intelligence service, censoring letters. In 1941 she moved to Dalagatan 26, her home in Stockholm for the following decades. Lindgren's husband Sture died in 1952 and her son Lars in 1986.
  As her children were growing up, Lindgren told them stories that she had heard in her own childhood. At the age of 37, she began to write down the Pippi tales. Her daughter, Karin, made the name up. In full it is Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim's Daughter Longstocking. Pippi is a red-headed, athletic, and orphan. Pippi lost her mother when she was a baby, and her father, a sea captain, disappeared in a storm. Pippi believes that he is a South Sea cannibal king. She is so strong that she can heft horses. Pippi is also untidy, wears mismatching stockings, and she loves her freedom.
  The first Pippi adventure, Pippi Långstrump (1945), published by Raben & Sjogren, was followed by Pippi Goes on Board (1946) and Pippi in the South Seas (1948). The anarchistic protagonist was condemned by some authorities in the heated discussion of permissive upbringing. "She had no mother and no father," wrote Lindgren, "and that was of course very nice because there was no one to tell her to go to bed just when she was having the most fun, and no one who could make ger take cod liver oil when she much preferred caramel candy." In her articles from 1939 and 1949, Lindgren defended the right of children to be treated like human beings without being oppressed: if the children are given love, good behavior will look after itself. "I don't consciously try to influence the children who read my books," Lindgren said. "All I dare hope for is that they may contribute a little bit towards a humane and democratic view of the world in the children who read them." In Pippi in the South Seas (1948) the young heroine journeys with her friends Tommy and Annika to the legendary Kurrekurredutt Island, where she has to choose between fantastic adventures and the safety of Villa Villekulla.
  Pippi Longstocking differed radically from the familiar literary tradition, which is represented in Johanna Spyri's classic Heidi series or L.M. Montgomery's stories of orphan Anne. The carrot-haired Pippi is more related to Heinrich Hoffmann's Slovenly Peter (Der Struwwelpeter) or Wilhelm Busch's anarchistic rascals Max and Moritz. Pippi is both mentally and physically strong. Her pets are not cats or dogs or goats, as in the case of Heidi, but a horse and a monkey, Mr. Nilsson - her primitive doppelganger in Jungian sense? The nine-year-old Pippi lives alone, and fulfills every child's dream of freedom and adventure. Jørgen Gaare & Øystein Sjaastad have argued in Pippi og Sokrates (2000) that Lindgren writes before all else about taboos - she interpreters and breaks them. They have also found in Pippi's thinking and character connections with the philosophy of Socrates, Nietzsche, and feminist theoreticians, especially Simone de Beauvoir. Pippi, like all children, asks philosophically fundamental questions - what is knowledge, what is courage, what is friendship etc.
  Lindgren also broke conventional literary codes later. Her novel The Brothers Lionheart brought up in children's books the taboo of the death and the doctrine of reincarnation. In Mio, min Mio, the classical story of good and evil, is colored by suggestive, flexible rhythm, derived from such sources as the Bible, the folk tales, and the lyric poetry. Both of these books were illustrated by Ilon Wikland. Lindgren and Wikland become friends in the 1950s, when Lindgren worked for Rabén & Sjögren. Other illustrators were Ingrid Wang Nyman, who drew Peppi Longstocking, Eva Billow, and Björn Berg, who drew Emil books
  A young detective, Kalle Blomqvist (Bill Bergson) appeared in 1946, and the Bullerby children next year. In 1963 Lindgren created another popular character, Emil, a five-year-old boy, whose adventures started in EMIL IN LÖNNEBERGA. The energetic Nyman kids, Jonas, Maria, and Lotta were introduced in The Children on Troublemaker Street (1958): "Daddy says that befotre there were any children in the house, everything was peace and quiet. The noise started the minute Jonas was big enough to bang his rattle against the edge of the crib."
  Ronja Robber's Daughter entered in Lindgren's fiction in the 1980s, and launched a more modern variation of Pippi Långstocking. When Pippi is a real 'father's daughter', the relationship between Ronja and her father is more problematic. She admires her father, Matt, although he is week and she turns out to be strong. She is born Ronja lives with the robbers in a castle which was split in two on the night of her birth. When she becomes older, she finds from the forbidden part another human being, Birk, the son of her father's greatest rival, and starts her life with him. They run away and live in a cave in the depths of a forest, experiencing the beauty and harshness of the nature. "They stood silently, listening to the twittering and rushing and buzzing and singing and murmuring in their woods. There was life in every tree and watercourse and every green thicket; the bright song of spring rang out everywhere."
  From the 1940s Lindgren had voted the Social Democrats, and in the 1960s she opposed the Vietnam war. In the 1970s her critical opinions about the ruling Social democratic government were hailed by the right-wing parties. Lindgren's adult fairy tale, 'Pomperipossa in the World of Money', which was published in the newspaper Expressen in 1976, attacked unjust taxation. She had counted that her income was taxed at an annual rate of 102 percent. When the famous film director Ingmar Bergman was arrested and charged with income-tax fraud, he suffered a nervous breakdown, and left the country. In the late 1970s the laws were changed more reasonable. Lindgren also influenced the acceptance of another law, which insured farm animals freedom from cramped conditions. "Every pig is entitled to a happy pig life," Lindgren wrote in an open letter to Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson. The law, known as Lex Astrid, was passed in 1988. Lindgren's memoirs, Mitt Småland, appeared in 1987. In 1999 she was voted the most popular Swede of the century.
  Lindgren died at the age of 94 peacefully in her home, in Stockholm, on January 28, 2002. She published over 100 books, which sold tens of millions of copies. They have inspired many television and screen adaptations, among others Luffaren och Rasmus (1955), not so stylish Pippi Långstrump i Söderhavet / Pippi in the South Seas (1974), Bröderna Lejonhjärta (1977), and lively Ronja Rövardotter (1983). Pippi has appeared in four Swedish films in 1969-71, where she was played by Inger Nilsson, and in an English-language movie, The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988), starring Tami Erin.

Astrid Lindgren

 

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