Pippi Longstocking: A Celebration of Courage and Freedom
The Postcard #1 With love from Scandinavia
"I never tried that before, so I should definitely be able to do it."
— Pippi Longstocking
Welcome to the very first edition of The Postcard. Normally it will arrive in your inbox on the 4th Saturday of the month, but this time I just could not wait. Here’s the reason:
Today, May 21, 2025, it is exactly eighty years since the publication of Astrid Lindgren’s first book about the strongest girl in the world: Pippi Longstocking.
In recent years, opinions about Pippi and the about the books have covered a vast spectrum: Pippi has been seen as
a feminist icon, a cheerful anarchist, and a radically free spirit
an unsuitable role model whose irreverent and unfiltered behaviour should be entirely removed from children’s shelves and even thrown in the trash to protect them
a neurodivergent or even mentally ill child who should be institutionalised rather than celebrated
The Response of a Cultural Mythologist (me) 🥀
The spectrum of these interpretations reveals less about Pippi than it does about our own cultural anxieties. In my professional view it is not only unproductive, but also intellectually lazy and downright absurd to evaluate books like Pippi Longstocking by the standards of realism.
In his wonderful book The Uses of Enchantment Bruno Bettelheim argued that children are naturally able to distinguish between external and internal realities, and that the attempt in the 1970s to “outlaw” fairy tales and magical stories as politically incorrect did more harm than good. That, in fact, children not exposed to imaginative storytelling often are less able to cope with various problems later in life.
To read Pippi Longstocking as if it were a blueprint for real-life outer behaviour is a fundamental misunderstanding of genre. These are not realistic stories. They are mythic, allegorical, and playful. Like fairy tales, they speak to the inner life of the child, not to outer behavioural norms. Pippi lifting a horse with one hand, or sleeping with her feet on the pillow and her head under the covers is not an invitation to imitate, but to stretch our imagination.
Our Beloved Scandinavian Treasure Chest and Cultural Heritage 📚
More importantly, I am a Nordic person, and Pippi belongs to a cherished and absolutely wonderful tradition of Scandinavian children’s literature that has helped shape our cultural identity in the most enchanting way imaginable. Our beloved Swedish Astrid Lindgren, Norwegian Thorbjørn Egner, Danish Hans Christian Andersen have all offered generations of children stories that nourish a resilient, thoughtful, and emotionally rich sense of self.
Egner’s landscapes, the “Forest of Hucky Bucky” and “Cardamom Town” are kind, microcosmic meditations on community, civilised rules, and inclusivity. Andersen gave us unforgettable literary masterpieces like The Ugly Duckling, The Snow Queen, and The Little Match Girl—tales that hold within them profound truths about transformation, suffering, and hope. Lindgren gave us not just Pippi, but also Emil in Lönneberga, The Brothers Lionheart, and Ronja the Robber’s Daughter—stories full of archetypal depth, loss, courage, and growth. And it is in this wondrous, magnificent context and universe that Pippi Longstocking belongs—not in a manual on socially acceptable behaviour or psychological diagnoses.
My Own First Meeting with Pippi 🐒
I remember my first encounter with Pippi with unusual clarity. I was seriously ill with measles, still quite young, perhaps 5 or 6 years old. My mother was alone with me and my sister and had very limited time and resources, so she had borrowed the first Pippi book from the library to cheer and comfort me. In her free time, when she got home from work, she read the book to me. Despite my feverish state I remember so clearly lying on the sofa where she has made a little daybed for me with her always-crisp, freshly laundered linens.
I remember this in the way one remembers certain defining childhood moments; in vivid, sensory detail. I lay there, semi-conscious and miserable, focusing on my mother’s voice and being captivated by this girl. Pippi, who scoured the floor with brushes strapped to her feet. Pippi, who refused to be told how to behave. Pippi, who lived alone in a house with a horse and a monkey, doing exactly as she pleased. A girl—imagine that!—who did not strive to please, to fit in, or to obey.
Far from perceiving this as a literal or realistic example of how to behave, I was moved on a deep, archetypal level. Pippi represented something I had never really encountered before: the untamed girl, the inner rebel, the sovereign self. In retrospect, she may well have been the first archetype I internalised, the first fictional figure who pointed me toward the idea that it is possible to be something other than the ever-obedient child.
At the time, I was far more like Elsa before the transformation: the classic “good girl” we “always have to be”. Pippi revealed another path—an internal one, not to be lived out in outer antics and misbehaving, but to be recognised and integrated. That experience stayed with me and shaped a part of me.
Now that my life’s work revolves around stories, symbolism, and archetypes, I look back to that formative experience: back to my fevered little body on that clean, crisp daybed, my mother’s reading voice, and that unruly girl.
Gratitude 🧡
Thank you, then, to my mother for recognising precisely the right book at the right time.
Thank you to Pippi for being one of my first inspirations, not in the outer, literal world, but in the inner one.
And thank you to the inimitable Astrid Lindgren for giving the world a girl like that, and for trusting that children would understand exactly how to perceive her and what to do with her.
With love,
Annette 🫖
The Postcard 💌
The Postcard is a cozy, personal note from my favourite corners of the world: cafés or parks or bookshops or benches in London, Copenhagen, Paris, Nice, Dublin or Edinburgh. It will arrive in your inbox every 4th Saturday of the month.
Over a cup of tea or coffee, I will share with you my adventures in the places I travel to, or things that matter to me at the moment: books I am reading, restaurants I love, thoughts I am having, or the simple joys of life.
I hope The Postcard will give you an insight into my life and work and a moment of inspiration and reflection.
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