Visit to Vimmerby, Home of Astrid Lindgren

The Manuscript

How I loved reading the Pippi Longstocking books as a girl!  She was a character

like no one else I knew at the time...she lived by herself with a monkey and a horse, didn't choose to go to school, was a whiz at making pancakes, had a father who was away at sea, and had no  tolerance for silly rules and pompous people.  She lived next door to Tommy and Annika and rescued them from a life of boredom by her many antics and ideas.

I sure would have liked to have been her neighbor, but she would have been my parent's nightmare.

I think that might have been the author's intention...she wrote for kids, not their parents.

 Over the weekend we visited Vimmerby, Sweden to check out the Astrid Lindgren (b. 1907, d. 2002) childhood home as well as the excellent museum at the same site. It was wonderful, informative and inspiring.   As much as I loved the work of this author, I confess to not knowing much of her personal life details:

She was one of four children.

She was allowed free rein in playtime.  She also had farm chores to do.  There was a balance between the two; her parents believed in both freedom and responsibility. It is written that "she grew up in a home where the parents not only felt, but openly demonstrated deep fondness for their children, which was rather unusual at the time." This security at home also shaped Astrid.

 During her adolescent years, Astrid experienced angst as she realized her childhood was slipping away from her.  She became melancholic and turned to writing as a way to immerse herself back into childhood.  The piano, above, is from Astrid's time at home when she started becoming interested in jazz music. She was the first to cut of her long hair into a shorter bob - the first girl in Vimmerby to do this! At age 16, Astrid began working as an apprentice journalist at the local newspaper.

 By 1926, young Astrid was pregnant and gave birth to Lars. She was 19 and unwed. And she knew she had to leave her beloved home for good.

This must have been a very difficult time in her life.  Her son was left with a foster family in Denmark and Astrid, working elsewhere, had short visits with him.

Eventually, Astrid Anna Emilia Ericsson married Sture Lindgren in 1932 and they added a daughter, Karin, to the family. 

Karin proves to be a pivotal influence as the source of inspiration for the "birth" of  Pippi Longstocking...she gets pneumonia around age 9 and  needs some good-night stories!  She basically says, 

"Mom, here's a name for you.  I made it up; it's Pippi Longstrump.  Go!"

So, Mom started making up stories about the girl we (almost) all come to love.  Fast forward about a year or so, and Astrid has fallen on ice and sprained her ankle and is stuck in bed recovering.

She starts writing down the story to give to Karin on her tenth birthday and also sends off a copy to an editor who rejects the manuscript. Astrid persists, revises the manuscipt and eventually another publisher takes on the Pippi project and the book is finally published when Astrid is 38 years old.

In all, Astrid wrote over 40 books; three about Pippi.

What I learned most, though, is that there was a lot more to Astrid Lindgren than the books she wrote:

She was a pioneer who believed in children at play - and lots of play with lots of time to imagine. 

She believed in writing for children with stories that would engage them, not their parents with predictable, moralistic plots and avoidance of topics of loss, poverty and pitfalls.

She believed in love winning out in the end.

She believed in using her voice in protest, particularly as she grew older.

She believed in living a simpler life.  She remained in her Stockholm apartment long after she 

made adequate funds from the sale of her books.

She believed in humane treatment of animals.

In closing, I thought it would be fun to include Pippi dolls throughout the years of her popularity.

I think they're a hoot! 

 Do you have one?

 Here are some of the buildings we saw on the childhood home property, too.

Her home.

The family's OLD woodshed.

The woodshed

The other side of the OLD woodshed where Wes couldn't resist!

And here's the entire property map.

Word has it that my Nelson relatives were also Vimmerby residents!