Category: Sweden

Ronja the Robber’s Daughter – The Enduring Spell of a Book Cover

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“This is my forest. I know every stone and every root. No one can frighten me here.”

Ronja The Robber’s Daughter, Astrid Lindgren

Growing up, much of my time was spent in a centuries-old farmhouse in a moorland valley where my friend Annie lived. Outside her bedroom was a narrow landing, most of it taken up by a bookcase we’d need to shimmy past to get in and out. The shelves were so tightly packed, books would need to be prised free.

It was rare that I passed this bookcase without tugging out one book in particular – Ronja the Robber’s Daughter by Astrid Lindgren which had been read to my class at school. Usually, I wouldn’t even open the book, but just study the cover, especially the figure in the foreground: a wild-haired, barefooted Ronja, steadfast on a thin forest trail. Fearless and nature-led, she embodied everything I wanted to be.

For what was to be her final novel, (after Ronja, Lindgren shifted her focus to picture books) Lindgren drew inspiration from her densely forested home region of Småland, along with Thoreau’s Walden. City-based at the time, Lindgren ached for the forest and was inspired by Thoreau’s departure from society to lead a solitary, simple life in the woods.

Originally published in Sweden in 1981 as Ronja rövardotter and in English in 1983, the translated edition (unnecessarily) changed the spelling of Ronja to Ronia and featured a different cover by prolific children’s book illustrator Trina Schart Hyman.

I’ve always wondered why this cover had such a lasting impression, and I figure it may have something to do with Hyman’s art technique, which involved extensive layering. She began with a pencil drawing, then built layers using India ink and diluted acrylic. The result is a mesmeric, fabled atmosphere that enchants me to this day.

Oh, To Be In Moomin Valley – On Loving Snufkin

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A core childhood memory for me is the ritual of watching Moomin before school, and it took only a couple of episodes before I found myself excited to see one character in particular – the smock-wearing, pipe-puffing, saucer-eyed Snufkin.

I was besotted with the handsome philosophical nomad and his zen demeanour, my little heart fluttering whenever a breeze ruffled his cartoon hair.  

Over two decades later, Snufkin’s appeal hasn’t waned. I know, because I’m a mother to Saga, a seven-year-old who’s similarly smitten with his character. Saga was six when she looked at me shyly from underneath her hair, trying desperately not to break into an embarrassed smile. ‘I love him,’ she said with conviction. Her words had a familiar weight, but Saga’s infatuation went a bit further than mine did, as she went on to draw his portrait, complete with flute, something I’d never even considered doing.  

When, as a little girl, I found out that I wasn’t the only one who liked him, that to crush on Snufkin was actually a common experience, I was devastated! I felt the same devastation when I discovered I wasn’t the only one who fancied Atreyu from The Neverending Story and Madmartigan from Willow.

Now, as a grown adult woman, Snufkin is no longer my favourite character. His rank has been usurped by two characters in equal proportion: Snufkin’s sister Little My (a character I loathed as a child but can now wholly relate to) and the Groke, whom I also, in ways, relate to. Saga remains devoted to Snufkin, though it looks like he might soon be demoted by the more mysterious Hattifatteners.

Out of curiosity, I looked on Reddit to see what people said about Snufkin’s appeal. On a thread called ‘Why does everyone have a crush on Snufkin?’ the commenter Bunnything wrote: ‘He’s chill and a good listener and generally has a mature understanding of who he is and what he wants.’ Moneymilk69 simply wrote: ‘Oh, to be in Moominvalley.’

I suspect most of us, whether we once fancied Snufkin or not, have thought the same.

The Forest I’ve Carried Since Childhood: Reflections On Elsa Beskow’s Children Of The Forest

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Just now, holding a book gifted to my brothers at their christening in 1997, I found myself unexpectedly weepy.

Children of the Forest was one of several Elsa Beskow books my (lucky) brothers received. To finally have Beskow stories in our home was, for me, astonishing. These sumptuous picture books weren’t something we’d been able to afford. I’d need to leaf through them at school (Beskow herself had a liberal upbringing in a progressive family and is one of the keystone authors in early-years Waldorf schooling) or at a friend’s house whose bookcase was rainbowed with the instantly recognisable colourful cloth spines and gold foil lettering.

First published in Swedish under the title Tomtebobarnen in 1910 and in English in 1982, Children of the Forest follows the enviable escapades of four mushroom-hatted siblings gamboling through the seasons.

There’s a gentleness to the story, but every page has something to teach and hardships aren’t glossed over; their father, decked in a pine-coat suit with a birch-bark shield, kills Vara the viper (a hedgehog offers to take the body), one boy angers his father by playing with an apple pip instead of learning to recognise mushrooms, and the two brothers end up bitten by ants after poking their nest with hawthorn spears, modelled on the one that killed the snake. “Silly boys,” said their mother, as she put dock leaf ointment on their stings. “Never hurt the creatures of the forest, unless they mean you harm.”

When they’re not wondering where to bury a snake, nursing ant bites or being scolded for not paying attention, the children ride bats, play games with elusive, ‘light as thistledown’ forest fairies, and harvest berries to store for winter, encountering a forest troll when they do because, well, this is Sweden, after all.

The reasons I would constantly reach for these stories as a child are multilayered. I wanted to live under the roots of an old pine, of course, but they also gifted a serene escape from the chaos of growing up in a family of six.

Children of the Forest and every other Beskow story I read instilled in me, a sensitive child who knew she was different but didn’t know why, a profound calm and a sense there was somewhere I could belong. Looking back, I knew as a child what I needed to feel well in the world. Before we moved from the rural village I’d grown up in and from Waldorf education to a town and a state school, I had an impending sense of doom. I knew I wouldn’t cope, and spoiler, I didn’t.

I recall my first Swedish summer, picking blueberries in Värmland, the relief of finally reaching the forests of Beskow’s books. Afterwards, I volunteered to sort the berries before bagging them to freeze for winter. I’d love to meet someone who also finds scattering, scanning and sorting bucket after bucket of blueberries a meditative pleasure.

I felt weepy holding Children of the Forest because I’m nostalgic, but also because I knew from the beginning what I needed to be well. Even as a child, I was already orientating myself towards a slow, seasonal life in the north.

Forests Bring Out The Best In Me

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I regularly feel the need to downplay my delight about things that excite me, because, unrestrained, my enthusiasm can make people feel overwhelmed and awkward, especially if they’re mostly familiar with my depressed state.

It’s a good thing, then, that when I’m forest wandering, I’m almost always alone because forests bring out the best in me, especially forests in Sweden, which are heavily occupied with boulders.

Encountering boulders on my wanderings is always an ecstatic experience, and I can recall most of my meetings with remnants of ancient bedrock (or petrified trolls, as I’d prefer to believe) with gut-glass clarity. I have memories of wildly circling my Swedish ex like a border collie pup, tugging at his clothes and begging him to come to the woods and see the boulders I’d found on my daily hikes.

I glimpsed this boulder through the trees, and to reach it, needed to stray from the path, which I happily did. I rarely stay on any footpath for long anyway. The bliss I experienced in the presence of this, let’s admit, very beautiful rock, was something I wish I could bottle and give to people who don’t experience life as a highly sensitive neurodivergent wyrdo who gets blissed out by boulders.

Sweden was heavily glaciated in the last Ice Age, and the boulders – official title: glacial erratics* – were swept up during the advance/retreat of the glaciers and deposited where they currently sit. I don’t think this will ever cease to boggle my mind. I know I’ll probably be wondering forever about this boulder’s tale and its migration to where I found it in a serene, sun-dappled forest glade in the north.

*You may be as nerdishly thrilled as I to know that the word erratics comes from the Latin word errare, which means ‘to wander.’

A Delightfully Diabolical Church Ceiling At Borås Museum

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I recently visited Borås Museum with a friend, but due to missed buses and a long overdue catch-up (seven years overdue) in the museum café, we had only minutes to zip around before it closed.

My friend was especially eager to look inside Ramnakyrken. This quint red church had originally stood in Kinnarumma, a village about 15 kilometres from Borås. It was dismantled in 1912 and rebuilt in its current location in 1914. However, our time was up, and the church doors had been locked. An especially considerate museum employee took pity on us and offered to open the church, which she did with a key so gigantic I was, for a moment, convinced it was fake.

While the church was interesting, I kept my camera switched off, that was until we were making our way back out and I looked up. There was only time to snap a few shots of impressively vibrant demons before ducking back outside.  

The ceiling was originally painted, with lesser diabolical depictions, in 1706 by Nicklas Berg. It was painted over (rude) between 1752 and 1753 by a man called Ditlof Ross, though you can still make out ‘echoes’ of Berg’s original work. The ceiling was whitewashed in 1869-70 during a restoration (I’d love to know who ordered that job); however, in 1930, when the church was re-consecrated due to a need for additional church spaces in Borås, the paintings were uncovered and restored. It’s been a popular church for weddings and baptisms ever since. Are you also wondering how many children have been traumatised over the years by innocently looking upwards and making eye contact with these decorative servants of Satan?