Jonas Ferry’s blog

I’m reading the children’s book Karlsson-on-the-Roof by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. It’s from 1955 and a real classic, and for good reasons. Again and again I’m amazed by the language; Astrid had a very effective language that conveys the scenes in as few words as possible. The dialogue is fun as well.

As an example, the main character Lillebror (Little Brother) comes home with a bump on his head and meets his mother in the kitchen. I’m translating from Swedish:

- Krister has thrown stones at me, Little Brother said angrily.
- Oh, my, said mother, such a bad boy! Why didn’t you come in and tell me?
Little Brother shrugged.
- To what use? You don’t know how to throw stones. You couldn’t even hit the wall of a barn.
- Oh, silly, said mother. You don’t think I would have thrown stones at Krister, do you?
- What else would you throw, wondered Little Brother.

Karlsson is a little man with a propeller on his back and a tendency to lie and exaggerate. When Little Brother complains, he just flips his hand and says “that’s a worldly thing”. As a kid I used to get really mad at the constantly cheating Karlsson, but now I can see through the rhetorical tricks he uses. I still get mad, and impressed by the language and the fun situations.

Astrid was a really cool person in real life as well. In 1987 the government gave her a animale care law as a present on her 80th birthday, which she later called “farty” because they didn’t keep what it promised. In 1976 she noticed she had paid 102% in taxes and wrote the story Pomperipossa in Monismania about the event. The finance minister mocked her in a government debate and said that she were better at stories than math. When she was proved right she replied that maybe they should trade jobs, since he was the better one at telling stories.