Astrid Lindgren about becoming spanked as a child…

Astrid Lindgren 16 years.

[Updated August 31, and slightly edited in the first part]. I have been on a course in the parts of Sweden where Astrid Lindgren was born, and found a book containing Astrid’s description of her childhood home, and thus also childhood, written to her nieces.

Astrid and her one year older brother Gunnar (dead already 1974 only 68 years) bought their childhood home together, and 1987 Astrid gave her part to her brother’s daughters Gunvor, Barbro and Eivor (of whom Barbro is mother to the author Karin Alvtegen, her home site).

Astrid and Gunnar also had two younger sisters, all siblings were married, but one sister never got any children I think. So Astrid had one heir and one heiress (a son and a daughter) but gave her part of the childhood home to her nieces nevertheless, of some reason.

I will try to translate what Lindgren writes later, so this posting will become updated this weekend hopefully.

I just want to remind eventual readers about Lindgren’s speech 1978 “Never violence.”

Earlier postings under the label “Astrid Lindgren.”

Addition August 31: In the book referred to above Astrid described how her childhood home at Näs looked like, and how it was furnished and she also describes some scenes from back then.

In the second part of the book she comes to the sofa in the living-room (what we called “sal”), a sofa which stands at the same place as it did when she was a child. On this sofa she and her brother got spanked the first time she writes.

The reason for this spanking was that she and her brother Gunnar had gone to “the murmuring ditch” (porlande dike) where Gunnar quickly climbed the stones, and Astrid of course followed him, with the result that she fell down between two stones in it. Gunnar ran home and told their maid Signe who went to the parsonage (prästård), where their mother was, something Astrid always thought was very stupid. Because their mother came fetching her two kids.

First she spanked Gunnar with the birch (riset), which Astrid thought was very funny to watch she writes, and then Astrid, something she didn’t think was fun at all,

“…when I for the first time in my life got spanked”

as she writes.

She didn’t become spanked again until she turned five or six when she had decided to move to the loo, from home (so at the first occasion described above she must have been smaller!!), because she had been unfairly treated of some reason (for what and how she had forgotten by then? She only rememered that she had been unfairly treated).

She was convinced that all should come running asking her to move home for God’s sake, but, no, they didn’t.

She bore being at the loo for five minutes, she thinks, and during this time her mom had taken the opportunity to offer sweets to the other people or kids. This was more than Astrid could stand, so when her mom came passing Astrid kicked with her foot, of course so she didn’t kick her mom, she only kicked at her mom as a sort of demonstration. But she shouldn’t have done that, because then she got spanked for the second time in her life as she writes.

The third and last time was when she and her younger sister Stina had been invited to a Mia (cousin?) in a nearby village. They had gone there on foot. Mom had said that they should be home by 7 that evening.

However, it was “unnaturally fun” at Mia’s. And Astrid had albuminuria (äggvita) and felt that she hadn’t the strength walking home. Their aunt Hardine (mother's younger sister) then said:

“I think you can stay, I take that on me!”

She took the responsibility on her. At this time there was no phone in this village, and they trusted aunt Hardine and stayed. But at 9 o’clock in the evening "their Pelle" (the farm-hand?) came and fetched them, and when they came home their mother met them at the yard saying:

“Is it seven o’clock?”

and walked further and fetched a birch with which Stina and Astrid got spanked, not on the sofa, but on their room one stair up. Astrid recalls this because

“…the birch laid frayed (trasigt) on the fireplace the next morning, where it was discovered by Signe (the maid) who said: ‘I think you are too big to get spanked!’”

The girls thought so too as Astrid writes. Astrid continues that

“That spanking I apprehend as abuse, although it probably was scarcely perceptible [wasn’t it??] because the birch was of such a bad quality that it got broken immediately [did it actually?? Or was the spanking so severe? So Astrid had to deny what she had been exposed to, including how extremely humiliating it had been?].”

So how rosy was this childhood actually? But Astrid and her siblings had witnesses around them? And the strictness wasn’t total?