Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking Page 4

  Gunnar, who had also fancied the journalism route but, as the only son at Näs, was expected to take over the farm, got a sense of how much young Astrid dreamt of a future as a “newsperson” in a letter dated March 18, 1925. A radiantly happy little sister informed him that she would soon be leaving for Stockholm, where she would learn to draw (although she struggled even to spell the word croquis, or life-drawing). It was a skill that might be useful in her future activities as a journalist, thought Blomberg, who had gotten Astrid into his brother’s newly established art school in the capital:

  I’ve got big news for you. I’m going to Stockholm on April 1 and enrolling in Henrik Blomberg’s art school. It lasts two months. You probably think it would’ve been more appropriate if you’d been allowed to do it instead. And I definitely think so too. You’d certainly have been much better suited to being a newsperson than me. But, you know, I nagged and begged until I got permission. It’ll be fun, I hope. But it’s a shame I won’t be there when you come home in the spring. I’m supposed to learn crocis, or whatever it’s called. It’ll benefit me as a newsperson, they tell me. But probably not straight away at the Vimmerby paper.

  Wandering Women

  Astrid Lindgren, looking back on her time as a diligent trainee, specifically mentioned writing a few of the unsigned articles, notices, and columns in the Vimmerby Tidning between spring 1924 and summer 1926. And Blomberg called some of these longer articles “stories” in his recommendation letter of August 1926, emphasizing them as Astrid Ericsson’s particular strength. One of them, printed in the newspaper on October 15, 1924, was about the opening of a new stretch of railway between Vimmerby and Ydrefors. The event had brought together all the bigwigs at the railway company, as well as the mayors, the parish councilors, and most of Småland’s journalists: sixty in all, exclusively men, many of whose names were supposed to be rattled off at the beginning of the four-column article. After the first paralyzingly boring column of names, upon which the editor in chief had apparently insisted, the sixteen-year-old reporter was finally allowed to reveal her facility as a storyteller. The mood of the article immediately lifted; suddenly you could hear the train, see the smoke in the distance, and then . . .

  It finally arrived. Flags and garlands on the carriage. After a minute’s pause it set off again, while thirteen flags waved a cheerful farewell. In America, as we know, the trains whistle off at such terrifying speed that days and nights flit past like streaks of black and white. This train, however, did not. It puffed off at a thoroughly appropriate speed, so you could enjoy the beautiful Småland countryside. Now and again you reached a little station with a red guardhouse and long, decorative festoons, filled with people staring and waving. And everywhere, of course, the Swedish flag was flying.

  Readers were offered another example of Astrid Ericsson’s journalistic talents in the summer of 1925. “På luffen” (Traveling) was the title of a spirited, feminist-minded serial in three installments, following six Vimmerby girls on an exhausting summer walking tour through Småland and Östergötland. In accordance with good journalistic practice, the premise was explained to readers at the beginning of the piece, printed in the Vimmerby Tidning on July 11, 1925:

  This will be travel reportage, allegedly. It will, without doubt, be a miserable example of it, but we ask for your forbearance—pleading our youth. For this article is the product of six young ladies who set off on foot one morning, taking Vimmerby as their starting point. It consists of impressions and episodes from this walking tour, which we wish to share with a large public. So let’s look lively! It’s probably best to begin at the beginning, which took place on the square when the church bell had just struck nine. We had rucksacks on our backs and sturdy shoes on our feet. We then proceeded to march off down the dusty track and loudly christened ourselves knights of the road.

  Five hale and hearty hikers in a row (plus a sixth, the photographer), heading westward. Ahead of them lies a nearly two hundred–mile route along Vättern, an enormous lake, through the towns of Motala and Linköping, and home again to Vimmerby.

  It was something of an event, widely noticed and discussed in Vimmerby. Six proud daughters of the town, two of whom had just left school, got ready to set off on the main square one July morning, clad in identical, practical walking dresses with short arms and high necklines, with girl scout–like neckerchiefs, cloche hats or students’ caps on their heads, rucksacks and blankets on their backs, and sturdy boots on their feet. Elvira, Anne-Marie, Astrid, Greta, Sonja, and Märta had known one another since their first year at school, as Greta Rundqvist recounted in 1997 in the Vimmerby Tidning: “A clique of five, six, seven girls who went everywhere together until life pulled us apart, and we started studying and working. But none of us became nurses, which was the future everybody dreamt of in the 1920s.”

  The year before, four of the girls had pretended to be men in the photographs taken on Anne-Marie’s seventeenth birthday, and in 1925 they still found it easy to imitate the opposite sex, this time as traveling journeymen venturing out into the unknown. And venture they did, doing five to twenty miles per day and nearly two hundred in all. Most of those miles were on foot, but also, where possible, by train, car, boat, and horse-drawn cart, sitting on bales of hay and cans of milk. Their route took them from Vimmerby toward Tranås and Gränna, farther up along the eastern bank of Vättern, an enormous lake, over the mysterious, wooded mountain of Omberg, and out across the flat country around the Abbey of St. Bridget at Vadstena. Then came a boat trip through Motala, via the locks, onward to the major city of Linköping, and finally due south, back to where they’d begun.

  Walking so many miles on foot required endurance, good comradeship, and solid footwear. In a long letter to Gunnar dated July 26, 1925, written in the playfully pompous jargon the two used in their correspondence, Astrid summarized the many challenges of the trip into three main points:

  You’ve probably been reading our charming travel reportage in the Vimmerby rag. In which case you already know most of what’s happened. I would, however, like to draw your attention to the following: First—that we managed the aforementioned journey on foot remarkably nicely, despite all the derisive words and remarks when we set off. Second—that we received no blisters worthy of the name apart from on the first day, which induced me to buy a new pair of slightly more comfortable shoes on credit at Tranås. Third—that we didn’t drive a car or permit ourselves to be transported by any other vehicle for more than a very modest portion of the journey. Now come and tell us we can’t hike!

  Astrid’s well-developed sense of irony revealed itself in the way the series of articles slyly punctured the six girls’ mannish project. Indeed, one obvious way of reading the articles is as the younger generation’s humorous contribution to the discussion of gender roles, a discussion that still hadn’t really reached Vimmerby. With a twinkle in her eye, the correspondent-at-large admitted that even young, strong, feminist women could get dehydrated, develop blisters on their feet, and accept a chivalrously offered ride. In fact, the travelers ended up being driven almost every day. After all, who could say no to such lively, intelligent company?

  Once we’d walked about ten kilometers in the blazing sun and had started hallucinating oranges, we saw a car approaching. Quickly we arranged our faces into suitable expressions, until we were the very picture of despair, arms hanging limply down our bodies, feet dragging a few meters behind, and a call of distress from six throats: “Can we get a riiiide?” Best possible result! Offered a lift all the way to Stora Åby. Sweden’s most beautiful country road. Rejoicing! . . .

  The two hundred–mile journey practically wrote itself, and readers at home in Vimmerby never knew what news the next article might bring—whether the girls would be overnighting at a manor house, a hotel, a hostel, or a hayrick. On the second leg of the journey, having reached Gränna, a small town known for its polkagris candy, when they ought to have been tending their blisters in the falling dusk, th
e girls were drawn into a party with the locals. This was one of the episodes the seventeen-year-old correspondent didn’t telephone to dictate in its entirety for the serial, which was read by the six girls’ mothers as carefully as the Vimmerby Tidning’s recurrent stories about the white slave trade. It was only Gunnar who, in a letter dated July 26, 1925, got the whole story about the six vagabonds from Småland at the street party:

  Things didn’t get really fun until Gränna. We were put up at the manor house at Vretaholm, a little way outside the town, because Elna had a friend who had a friend who was married to the steward there, and currently Elna’s friend was visiting her friend. Are you following? As it happened, there was a local festival going on in the good city of Gränna, and naturally we took part to pep the whole thing up a bit. As you read in the Vimmerby Tidning, we gatecrashed, which was uncommonly easy. They didn’t dance, they just played singing games. At first we didn’t want to join in, but then, “after many invitations” . . . Then the Gränna girls got furious because we were laying claim to the handsomest menfolk. Alas, it’s not easy being human, and marriage isn’t a ceasefire.

  Ellen Key’s Bedhead

  Two days later, after having spent the night at the ruined castle near Alvastra, the girls decided to walk the final miles down the winding, hilly path to writer Ellen Key’s fabled villa, Strand, which lay on the steep slopes down toward Vättern. Perhaps the seventy-five-year-old author of the world-famous book The Century of the Child would be at home. She might even invite them in. As the girls approached the big house, its mistress suddenly appeared on a balcony and shouted, “Vad vill flickorna?” What do the girls want?

  The knights of the road rest their legs on Göta Kanal between Motala and the lock at Berg, aboard the good ship Pallas, which was filled with Swedish and especially German tourists. In the evening they sang each other’s national anthems and danced, and one particularly spirited German, wrote the Vimmerby Tidning’s correspondent, drank to “my health, your health, all pretty girls’ health!”

  Ellen Key, who in the 1910s had made Strand a nodal point for a range of cultural, female-oriented networks, and whose guestbook contained many thousands of names, felt increasingly irked by unannounced visitors as she got older. It was therefore something of a scoop that the six Vimmerby girls got the author’s permission to take a closer look at the huge and distinctive garden around Strand, laid out in plateaus down toward the lake and planted with wild Swedish flowers, exotic perennials, and bushes. Various fantastically shaped beehives stood at the end of winding paths on terraces with names like “Rousseau’s Way,” and out on Vättern was a round landing stage with an antique roof and columns, intended to resemble a Sicilian temple of the sun. During the extraordinary visit, Key’s big dog suddenly revealed its inhospitable side and bit one of the girls. The housekeeper, Miss Blomsterberg, hurried to help, and naturally the Vimmerby Tidning’s correspondent seized the opportunity to scribble most of it down on her pad:

  A terrifying St. Bernard came hurtling out and sank its teeth into one of our twelve legs. (The owner of the aforementioned leg is now wandering proudly round and telling people she was bitten by Ellen Key’s dog.) Ellen Key’s good heart ran away with her, and to comfort and reward us we were given permission to view the interior of Strand. It was a very special occasion! One would have to search a long time to find a lovelier home.

  Six pairs of eyes could scarcely believe what they saw during their tour of the house: light, cheerful colors everywhere and beautiful, simple furniture, collections of books in most rooms, and fantastical architectural and decorative details, great and small, wherever you looked. At the top of all four walls in the entrance hall, for instance, various maxims were painted, including one from the Swedish Enlightenment philosopher and poet Thomas Thorild: “Denna dagen, ett lif” (This day, one life). It’s difficult to imagine a better caption for their intense morning and unforgettable encounter with Strand, Ellen Key, and her dog. Astrid never forgot the words on the wall, but the young trainee never mentioned it in her travel reportage in the paper, nor did she include the rather peculiar moment when the famous writer suddenly asked for help buttoning her petticoat.

  Fifty years later, in Margareta Strömstedt’s biography of Astrid Lindgren, the younger author recalled the episode clearly, but looked back on it with very different and much more Key-critical eyes than in 1925. Now, suddenly, it was not the author but her formidable dog that had made the first move, while Ellen Key herself seemed equally fierce as she stood there in her undergarments, hair all messy, shouting angrily at the girls. Strömstedt wrote: “‘What do you want, girls?’ she yelled, shrill and annoyed. The girls explained shyly that they wanted to see Strand, but Ellen Key made no move to let them in. Suddenly the door downstairs flew open and Ellen Key’s big dog came dashing out and bit one of the girls in the leg. Huge commotion. The housekeeper let them into the entrance hall to bandage up the girl who’d been bitten. Ellen Key herself came down as she was, half-dressed, holding her petticoats together with one hand. Suddenly she turned to Astrid and said sharply: ‘Button my skirts!’ Embarrassed and taken aback, Astrid did as she was told.”

  The truth about the visit to Strand probably lies somewhere between the euphoria of the 1925 articles and the rationalization of the 1977 biography, in which the seventy-year-old Lindgren evidently wanted to express reservations about Ellen Key’s personality that she didn’t have as a seventeen-year-old. Whatever really happened, the girls were each given a rose before they set off toward Omberg and Borghamn, and in a photo taken of them in Ellen Key’s garden even her dog seems sociable, posing nicely at the bottom of the frame.

  After the publication of The Century of the Child in 1900, Ellen Key became a much bigger and more recognizable name overseas than at home in Sweden. Her landmark book contained chapters with titles like “The Right of the Child to Choose His Parents” and “Soul Murder in the Schools,” and was a remarkable mixture of visions, dreams, and debates about upbringing, emphasizing the necessity of love between parents and children. Key believed the way people lived together would alter drastically in the future, and for the better. More than any previous historical era, the new century would focus on humanity’s most important resource—its children.

  The cooling of Astrid Lindgren’s enthusiasm for Ellen Key echoed the skepticism and mistrust of the Swedish feminist movement in the 1970s toward her ideas and worldview. She was considered outdated, too reactionary to be a proper role model, her views too esoteric and full of contradictions. Key had, for example, advocated for women’s rights to education, work, financial independence, and the vote, yet she had simultaneously insisted that a woman’s most important contribution to society lay in the family and in her role as a mother, a role she ought to maintain as long as she could.

  From today’s perspective, and without having to determine which Astrid was correct in her assessment of Ellen Key, there is something magnificently symbolic about the meeting at Strand on July 7, 1925, between the aging humanist and the curious young journalist. Lindgren’s revolutionary children’s book two decades later would launch a career that drew in many respects on the ideas found in The Century of the Child, including Key’s faith in human creativity, her thoughts about a freer upbringing, and—especially—her rejection of corporal punishment. As Ellen Key put it: “These brutal attacks work on the active sensitive feelings, lacerating and confusing them. They have no educative power on all the innumerable fine processes in the life of the child’s soul, on their obscurely related combinations.”

  Ellen Key died on April, 25 1926, less than a year after the six travelers had dropped by. The Vimmerby Tidning published two articles about her death and burial, both featuring photographs and prominently positioned on the paper’s back page. The author of the articles was, as usual, not mentioned, but it wasn’t a writer accustomed to obituaries. The anonymous obituarist did, however, seem to possess extremely detailed knowledge of the author’s house, inc
luding the layout of the garden and its surroundings. It was almost as if she were picturing Strand in her memory: “That beautiful path over the evocative plains toward Vättern and up to the ridge, where she so often stood and observed the magnificent landscape that composed the foreground to her own beautiful home.”

  The Vimmerby Tidning’s readers were offered no grand literary-historical assessment of the renowned Swedish author’s work and significance: Not so much as a book title or date was even mentioned. Instead, the obituary was crammed with the vivid adjectives typical of the previous summer’s series of articles, which had ended with the teasing and—given the writer—prophetic words: “Dear little Vimmerby, it’s not that you’re a stupid town to come home to, but God preserve us from having to stay here forever.”

  THREE

  The Mysteries of Procreation

  WHAT WAS SHAPING UP TO BE AN EXTREMELY promising journalistic career came to an abrupt halt in August 1926, when it could no longer be hidden that the Vimmerby Tidning’s trainee was pregnant. It was only a question of time before people started whispering and gossiping, and the grander ladies of the town stuck their noses in the air when they caught sight of Astrid Ericsson on the street. That’s just how it was in those days, recalls an elderly Småland woman in the book The Rebel from Vimmerby (Rebellen från Vimmerby), in which she also describes the options open to a young country girl who fell pregnant without being married or engaged: “Flee and give birth, or stay and bring shame on your family.”