A Dirty Job
If Astrid Lindgren was particularly affected by the war on all its fronts, it was because she was closer to its horrors than most Swedes. Through the criminologist Harry Söderman, for whom Astrid had worked at the end of the 1930s at the Institute of Criminology and who was heavily instrumental in implementing nationwide mail censorship after war broke out, she gained employment in 1940 as an “inspector” for Swedish intelligence. This was a secret job based at the censorship department of the Central Post Office. Until Germany surrendered in May 1945, Astrid Lindgren read tens of thousands of letters to and from other countries, and was thus extremely well informed about what war does to the soul and to human relationships. A week after she started the job in 1940, she wrote in her war diary: “On the fifteenth of this month I started my secret ‘defense work,’ which is so secret I don’t even dare write about it here. I’ve been doing it for a week, and it’s now crystal clear to me that there is currently no country in Europe so untouched by the war as this one, despite the rationing, increased unemployment, and significant rise in prices. In terms of how people elsewhere perceive us, we’ve got it pretty good here.”
At the General Security Service’s mail-inspection center, letters and parcels were scrutinized twenty-four hours a day with the aid of Harry Söderman’s criminological equipment, consisting of flasks, pipettes, steam jets, ultraviolet light, chemicals, and sharp steel tools. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated fifty million items of mail sent between Swedish citizens and their relatives, acquaintances, and business partners overseas were opened and read by several thousand “inspectors,” who were scattered across fifty secret mail censorship offices between Kiruna and Karlshamn.
“My dirty job,” Astrid Lindgren called her confidential work, which was assigned only to skilled readers and highly reliable employees. Everyone in this invisible army of letter readers, including unemployed academics, teachers, clerks, students, and people from the neutral Swedish military, had signed a document promising to reveal nothing about the nature of the “post office job,” which kept censors busy day and night. Astrid Lindgren kept that promise—almost. She let slip only a few words about it in her letters, but in her diary she was able to get all those unbearable secrets off her chest. Occasionally Astrid would copy a particularly gripping letter and paste it into her diary, while other times she would simply empty her memory into it, for instance on March 27, 1941:
Today I had an extremely distressing Jewish letter, a document of our age in itself. A Jewish person recently arrived in Sweden was writing to a member of the same race in Finland, describing the deportation of Jews from Vienna to Poland. I think it was 1,000 Jews a day who were being forcibly transferred to Poland in the most wretched conditions. They get a sort of request through the post, then the person has to leave with only a very modest sum of money and a bit of luggage. Conditions before and during transportation and after their arrival in Poland were so bad the letter writer didn’t want to describe them. His own brother was among the unlucky ones. Evidently it’s Hitler’s intention to turn Poland into one big ghetto, where the poor Jews die of hunger and squalor. There’s no opportunity for them to wash, for instance. Those poor, wretched people! Hasn’t it occurred to the God of Israel to intervene? How can Hitler think you can treat fellow human beings like that?
There were gloomy missives from the Baltic states, written in fear of Stalin’s soldiers, and passionate love letters between Swedish women and German men who were now in uniform. All these glimpses into what was going on—and into the meaninglessness of life—made the censors at the Central Post Office feel as if they’d been initiated into a secret club, all-knowing but powerless, living with the guilty awareness of their own privileged lot. As Astrid Lindgren wrote in October 1940:
It’s also very strange to read letters from people who talk about women and children they know personally being killed in bombing raids. While you’re just reading about it in the papers it’s as though you can stop yourself believing it, but when you read in a letter that “both Jacques’s children died during the occupation of Luxembourg” or something similar, it suddenly becomes terrifyingly real. Poor humanity; when I read their letters I’m shaken by how much sickness and affliction, grief, unemployment, shortage of money, and despair there is on this sorry lump of earth. But the Lindgren family’s doing great! Today I went to the movies with my well-fed children and saw Young Tom Edison. We live in our warm, cozy home; yesterday we ate lobster and liver pâté for dinner, today ox tongue and red cabbage; hard-boiled eggs and goose liver on the table at lunch (Sture’s the loony one). But of course it’s only on Saturdays and Sundays that such gluttony can be permitted, and even then I’m tormented by my conscience when I think of the French and their 200g of butter a month.
In her war diary, Astrid also considered what it meant to be Swedish. Skimming hundreds of letters per week at the Central Post Office was like eavesdropping at countless doors, walls, and drainpipes, giving Astrid an overview of what Swedes from every social stratum thought about food hoarding, military support in Finland, Jewish aid, and the state-approved transportation of German troops by train in northern Sweden. Such moral dilemmas burdened the consciences of many Swedes, making them wonder about the neutral course their nation had chosen. Whose side would Sweden take, Astrid asked herself in her diary on February 9, 1941, if the smaller war in Finland suddenly got dragged into the larger one and they had to pick?
“The Germans are getting less and less big-headed in Stockholm,” said one letter I read yesterday. And the fact is, I think, that they’re not quite as high and mighty as before. At the same time we’re perhaps getting a fraction more sure of ourselves—thanks to our fabulously well-equipped military, which may be nothing compared to those of the major powers but which still adds weight to the scale. “Angels and Fritzes are both courting Sweden’s favor,” another letter said. Yes, and I only hope we’re left in peace—amen!
Small-Scale History
Astrid’s account of the Lindgren family’s ups and downs over the years—history on a small scale—was as important as her documentation of the bigger historical picture. At first it was mostly about the ups, and about overcoming the challenges of rationing. Occasionally her trivial reports of family life were grotesquely juxtaposed with terrible eyewitness accounts from newspaper clippings or the letters Astrid had to assess at her job. In fall 1941, the Lindgren family had just acquired a four-room apartment in Dalagatan, where Astrid would live until her death. The occasion felt especially joyous, thrown into relief against the usual dejection and sense of unease about the state of the world. Yet there were new trials on the home front, where those with a degree of foresight had long since started preserving large quantities of eggs in sodium silicate. On October 1, 1941, Astrid made an entry in her diary—the first three words in English:
Things have happened since I last wrote. On September 17 the Swedish navy suffered a terrible catastrophe at Hårsfjärden. For reasons still unknown, the destroyer Göteborg exploded and sank, dragging the destroyers Klas Horn and Klas Uggla down with it. Burning oil spread across the surface of the water, where the poor crew were trying to save themselves. 33 men died (luckily most of them were on leave). According to “our letters,” it was a dreadful sight to behold. Arms, legs, and torn-off heads were scattered everywhere, rescue teams were going around with sticks, fishing shreds of flesh and guts down from the trees. . . . On the home front, I can now report that we’re running low on eggs. I’m glad I preserved 20 kilos, because we only get 7 eggs per month per person. The Finns have taken Petrozavodsk, the newspapers say, and the Murmansk Railway is completely closed. But nothing decisive will happen in Russia until the winter. And we’ve moved from Vulcanusgatan 12 to Dalagatan 46, despite the war and the shortages. I can’t help being pleased with our beautiful apartment, even though I’m constantly aware that we don’t deserve how lucky we are here, when so many others don’t even have a roof over their heads. I l
ost my diary from 1940 in the move. We’ve got a big, beautiful front room, the children have a room each, and we have a bedroom too. We’ve bought a whole load of new furniture and made it really nice; I hope it doesn’t all get bombed one day.
A Swedish nuclear family in the year 1941, living almost offensively well off Sture’s salary as head of department (he was soon to be promoted to senior manager), the income from Astrid’s “dirty job,” the reliable food parcels from Småland, and Sweden’s persistent neutrality, as Astrid acknowledged and often gave thanks for in her war diaries.
In her war diary, Astrid continued to jot down observations about Lasse and Karin, recording various details—great and especially small—to do with the children’s physical and psychological well-being and development, as well as about their schooling and illnesses. She also kept account of what gifts they received and from whom on birthdays and at Christmas. It was as though their mother were forcing herself to focus on what was near at hand so that she didn’t get swallowed up by events far away. For most of the war diary’s three thousand pages, these two perspectives, world history and family history, were in constant flux, and gradually a third one developed out of the second, centering around the diarist herself. It registered Astrid’s anxieties about the future of the world, her personal dreams and desires, and an increasing concern about Sture and her marriage. Until 1944 Astrid Lindgren largely kept herself aloof from her descriptions of family life, her Småland modesty making itself felt. Even in a diary, it was important to watch one’s words.
Before 1944, her passion and commitment were most evident in her frequently emotional comments about the war and her analyses of the combatants. In places the diary almost became a psychological study of power, as she tried again and again to penetrate the iron masks of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, three representatives of evil incarnate. Evil touches most people at some point during their lives, and this force would later appear in Astrid Lindgren’s work under such mythological names as Kato, Tengil, and Katla.
As Astrid explores the nature of evil in her diary, her clippings and notes come across in many places as a protest, an outcry originating from a mutinous woman’s heart, speaking on behalf of all mothers. Similarly, a short story from this period, “Jorma and Lisbet,” can be read as a mother’s call for peace, and should be understood in light of the seven thousand Finnish children fostered with Swedish families during the Winter War of 1940. The effects of this large-scale humanitarian action were felt in the Lindgren family orbit one day in March 1940. Gunnar, who had many Finnish connections, suddenly appeared on their doorstep with a little boy who’d been flown in from Turku the night before. The sight of the unhappy, frightened child, fighting back tears, who disappeared again with Gunnar almost as quickly as they had arrived, inspired Astrid to write “Jorma and Lisbet,” which was printed in Santa’s Wonderful Radio of Pictures. A story for both children and adults, it carries an unambiguous political message: “She thinks of the unknown mother in Finland, who had to send her child away to a foreign country. She thinks of all Earth’s mothers. Has it ever been as hard to be a mother as now? And isn’t that what all of humanity is crying out for—love, a mother’s love? Mothers of all lands—she thinks—unite! Send love across the whole world, so Earth’s children do not perish.”
The war diary, New Year’s Eve, 1939–40: “As the New Year begins, it is with trembling that we look to the future. Will Sweden stay out or join in? Lots of volunteers are going to Finland. And if we do join in, Skåne will most likely become an English-German conflict zone. So they say.”
Pippi in Shorthand
The phenomenon known as Pippi Longstocking first appeared in the spring of 1941, but we have to skip forward three years to find her mentioned by name in the war diary. On March 20, 1944, Astrid Lindgren wrote: “On the home front, Karin’s had the measles, a nasty case, and she’s still not allowed out of bed. I’m keeping myself well amused with Pippi Longstocking.”
We hear nothing more about Pippi until two weeks later, by which time Karin’s mother is the bedridden one. During a snowstorm, Astrid slipped on the icy path in Vasa Park and twisted her ankle. The pain was so bad she couldn’t stand by herself, so two men had to carry her through the park, across Dalagatan and up to her second-floor apartment. The doctor assured her that evening that nothing was broken, but told her to rest and take good care of the badly sprained ankle for the next four weeks. On April 4, 1944—a few days after Astrid and Sture had danced long into the night at a fortieth-birthday party—she noted in her diary:
Today I’ve been married thirteen years. The blushing bride is currently confined to her bed, which gets decidedly dull after any length of time. I enjoy it in the mornings, when I get tea and white bread with smoked salmon served in bed, and I get my bed made and everything tidied around me, but I loathe it at night, when I have a hot compress on my foot and it itches and itches, and Sture is sleeping when I can’t. I read Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage and write about Pippi Longstocking. Doesn’t look like there’ll be peace in Finland. There’s a children’s program just coming on the radio, so I can’t write any more for now.
During the daytime, however, when Sture was at work and Lasse and Karin at school, Astrid enjoyed the sudden, unexpected “vacation.” She buried herself even more deeply in the Dagens Nyheter, following the latest news about the Warsaw ghetto. She read The Land without a Quisling (originally titled Kraj bez quislinga) by the Polish author Tadeusz Nowacki, who described the true situation in Poland under German occupation. In her war diary she remarked that it was now clear the vast majority of people in the Warsaw ghetto had died from causes other than hunger: “I don’t think the Germans are even bothering to deny that Jews are being exterminated.” It was during those days that Astrid decided to write a book of stories about Pippi Longstocking, which would be Karin’s tenth birthday present on May 21, 1944. Karin loved writing short books herself, and, like her mother, she toyed with the idea of becoming an author.
On the use of shorthand in her process of fiction writing, Astrid Lindgren said: “I write and rewrite, tearing out pages and throwing them away and writing on new ones until I’ve got every single sentence precisely as I want it.”
Writing down the oral Pippi stories in April 1944, Astrid used neither ordinary cursive nor a typewriter; instead she used shorthand, employing the Melin method she had learned at the Bar-Lock Institute in Stockholm in 1926–27 and had since practiced at various companies, among lawyers, lecturers, and office managers. Using highly distinctive signs that were often developed further by the individual stenographer, it was possible to capture thoughts and ideas in flight, writing down chains of sentences at lightning speed. The only tools needed for shorthand were a pen and pad, which meant that it could be done lying down. The method soon proved eminently practical for a bedridden amateur author, and so conducive to scribbling down everything she had in her head that Astrid Lindgren continued to write her rough drafts in shorthand for the rest of her career. Often while in bed. As she noted in the war diary on December 13, 1947—by which time the Melin method had become part of her working routine and she had filled her first seven or eight notepads with shorthand—“I’m lying down and writing a few lines of Pippi III.” And when a journalist from the Stockholms-Tidningen asked in 1952 whether Astrid Lindgren had a favorite outfit, she answered: “Yes, that would be pajamas. By now probably the whole of Sweden knows I’m so lazy I lie in bed to write.”
In the index of Astrid Lindgren’s papers at the National Library in Stockholm, there are few entries for handwritten manuscripts of the old-fashioned kind, on loose paper, full of crossings-out and corrections. Instead one finds an infinitely long series of neatly typed pages, virtually unaltered. Elsewhere in the archive there is a corresponding number of stenographic pads—660 of them—containing the real drafts of Astrid Lindgren’s books throughout fifty years, and they will forever be unreadable to anyone but a professional, expert stenographer. Even h
e or she would have trouble interpreting all the extra flourishes in the symbols Astrid Lindgren the secretary had mastered, and behind which Astrid Lindgren the artist hid the first Pippi manuscript in April 1944. This manuscript was not identical with the version of Pippi Longstocking published in 1945, and it was not until 2007 that the book appeared in its original form, under the title Original Pippi (Ur-Pippi).
Karin Nyman remembers that the eleven chapters in Original Pippi, her tenth birthday present from her mother, were written down in one of the spiral-bound stenographic pads Astrid Lindgren always had lying around the house. By that point they were living in Dalagatan, and Astrid didn’t yet have her own study. In 1944 the room next to the living room, which had a view of Vasa Park, belonged to Lasse. Later, this was where she would sit and make fair copies of her shorthand drafts or answer her thousands of fan letters, but for the time being Astrid sat in the big living room overlooking Dalagatan, at the dining table by the bookcase. There she would clatter away on her old Halda typewriter, which was eventually replaced with a more manageable Facit, but never with anything electric. Her mother used to put carbon paper between two sheets, recalls Karin, sticking them behind the cylinder and typing at incredible speed: “Typing out a fair copy took only a few hours. She went at the pace of a practiced secretary, and all the final corrections had already been made to the shorthand manuscript.”