HOW THE WORLD’S STRONGEST GIRL HAS CONQUERED THE GLOBE
Incredibly, Pippi Longstocking is 75 today. Here the author’s great-grandson reveals the secret of her enduring success
SHE WAS christened Pippilotta Viktualia Rullgardina Krusmynta Efraimsdotter Långstrump… but the world knows her better as Pippi Longstocking and, despite being forever nine years old, she was born 75 years ago today. With her carrot-coloured pigtails, fiery freckles, stripey, mismatched socks and ability to lift her horse above her head one-handed, author Astrid Lindgren’s remarkable heroine has entertained generations of young readers and their parents.
In the three quarters of a century since her first publication, the world’s strongest girl has become a global sensation – selling more than 65 million books in 100 languages.
Today, her tales are just as fresh and exciting as they were when their creator first dreamed them up in wartime Sweden.
Astrid would go on to become one of the world’s most famous children’s authors. When she died in January 2002 aged 91, her funeral was described as the closest you can get to a state occasion.
“I am very proud of what she achieved,” says her great-grandson, Johan Palmberg, 29, from Stockholm.
“From time to time, it really hits you what an individual she was. She was almost 40 when her first book came out and it wasn’t until her 60s or 70s that she became a huge icon.
“I often visited her with my father. My main memory is she had this thing very few adults have – she knew what you wanted to talk about, what you were interested in and she was on the same level as you when she spoke. I can also remember reading her stories to her and she was very amused by them! She laughed a lot.
“She loved to write but she also felt she had a responsibility to help as many other people as she could. It’s now our responsibility to honour her and it is our mission for as many children around the world as possible to read Astrid’s books.”
His pledge to continue to ensure Astrid’s legacy lives on is all the more poignant given the child rebel was partly created by Astrid as a way to entertain Johan’s grandmother, Karin, who was off school sick at the time.
Her stories were initially rejected publishers but, in 1945 she was finally given a book deal by the firm Rabén & Sjögren.
But not even Astrid herself could have predicted how much of a success her character would become.
The first novel sees plucky Pippi, armed only with a suitcase of gold coins, move into a house with her monkey, Mr Nilsson, and her horse. It’s apparent early on that she is very unconventional and leads an independent lifestyle. It’s soon revealed her mum died soon after her birth and her father, Captain Ephraim Longstocking, is missing at sea.
Like Peter Pan, Pippi doesn’t want to grow up. She is playful, unpredictable and despite various attempts to make her conform, she lives free from social conventions, befriending the two children next door, Tommy and Annika Settergren.
After Astrid’s first novel sold out, the author was asked to write two more – Pippi Goes On Board and Pippi In The South Seas – between 1945 and 1948. Overnight, they became a success.
Asked why he thinks the novels have struck a chord, Johan cites Astrid’s own thoughts on Pippi: “Her own theory, and I think it is correct, is that the thing that children crave most is independence. All of your life as a child is dictated by grown-ups. Because Pippi had this money, her parents are away and she is a strong kid, she can do whatever she wants. “That is fulfilling a fantasy and people take to her. She is also so much fun! She stands up to authority with no repercussions.”
Astrid wrote more than 30 novels and 41 picture books, generating sales of 165 million, turning her into one of the world’s most influential writers. But fame, says Johan, was not something she craved.
“I don’t think she liked being famous that much,” he admits. “She found it a bit strange. She got famous relatively late in life. It hindered her writing, as she had to answer mail, do interviews and receive awards! She would much rather write.”
PERHAPS the most fascinating aspect of Pippi is how her disregard for society’s norms were an echo of Astrid’s own experience as a young single mum in the conservative, rural Swedish community of Vimmerby. Like Pippi, she defied convention and was quite the rebel.
At the age of 16 she “underwent a colossal change, turning from one day to the next into a proper jazz gal”. Inspired by La Garçonne, a cult bestseller about a woman who rejects gender stereotypes, she had her hair cropped and dressed in trousers, jackets, ties and a cap.
Determined to become a journalist, she landed a traineeship at the Vimmerby Tidning newspaper, where she thrived.
But that career came to an abrupt end when she embarked on an affair with the editor-inchief, Blomberg, who was embroiled in a divorce case with his wife, Olivia. As she explained in an interview years later, it was the danger of the illicit affair that was part of the attraction.
“Nobody had ever been in love with me before, and he was,” said Astrid. “So of course, it was rather thrilling.”
When she fell pregnant with his baby, Astrid’s horrified parents forced her to flee rural Sweden and rent a room in Stockholm before travelling to Denmark to give birth to her son, Lasse.
Initially he was brought up by a foster mother and for decades after she became famous, Astrid allowed the public to believe she had gone to Stockholm to attend art school, where she met Sture Lindgren, who she later married.
It wasn’t until her 70th birthday that the partial truth was revealed.
In 1929, ill health forced the foster mother to hand Lasse back and Astrid’s parents agreed to look after him. He remained with them until 1931 when he went to live with Astrid and Sture. Three years later, she gave birth to Karin.
She went on to work at the Institute of Criminology and then as an inspector for Swedish intelligence but it was the world war and the bullying brutality of Hitler that particularly fascinated her.
“She had one of these lives that symbolises the whole century,” says Johan. “She was born at the beginning of the century and died when it just finished. The Second World War became her political awakening.”
IN 1945, PIPPI Longstocking was published and the rest is history. By then she was in her 40s and although her marriage to Sture survived an affair he had, it ended when he sadly died aged 51.
She never remarried – a deliberate choice, according to her great-grandson.
“It was part of her personality. She wrote in a letter after Sture had died that she would not give up her newly found loneliness for anything,” says Johan.
“She did not want to be in a relationship because she treasured so much to live on her own. She was very independent.” Now as her family celebrate her incredible achievements on Pippi’s 75th anniversary, Johan – who works as a rights manager in Stockholm for Astrid’s books – reveals there are many projects in place to keep her legacy alive. As well as an audiobook of her first novel released this week narrated by lifelong fan Sandi Toksvig, there are also plans, once the pandemic is over, for a musical circus, produced by Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus. Pippi’s World will open at a Swedish theme park and there is even an ice-cream named after her.
As for how Pippi and Astrid would have coped during the lockdown, Johan reckons they would have embraced it wholeheartedly. “Astrid described her writing as when she was the most happy and so she would have used this time to write,” he adds. “And Pippi would want to help people as much as she could using her strength!”
As for whether Johan ever contemplated taking after his famous great-grandmother, he laughs as he proudly declares: “She got all the talent – that was concentrated in her!”
Sandi Toksvig is narrating audiobook editions of Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking series. The first novel, Pippi Longstocking, is available on Spotify and iTunes from today