Pippi Longstocking

Pippi Moves into Villa Villekulla

On the edge of the tiny little town was an old garden, all overgrown. In this garden was an old house and in that house lived Pippi Longstocking. She was nine years old and she lived there all alone. She didn’t have a mum or a dad, and that was actually quite nice because there was nobody to tell her to go to bed just when she was having the most fun, and nobody to make her take cod liver oil when she would rather eat sweets.

Pippi had a dad once, and she’d liked him ever so much—she had a mum too, of course, but that was such a long time ago she couldn’t remember anything about it. Her mum had died when Pippi was a tiny, tiny baby who lay in her cot and screamed and screamed so horrendously that no one could go near her. Pippi thought her mum was up in heaven looking down on her little girl through a peephole, and Pippi often waved to her up there and said:

Don’t worry! I’ll be all right!

Pippi hadn’t forgotten her dad. He was a ship’s captain and sailed the great oceans, and Pippi had sailed with him until the time he blew overboard in a huge storm and disappeared. But Pippi was absolutely certain he would come back one day. She didn’t believe he had drowned at all. She thought he had washed ashore on an island in the South Seas and become the island king, and was walking around all day with a golden crown on his head.

My mum is an angel and my dad is a South Sea Island king. Not every child has such special parents, you know, Pippi always said, sounding pleased with herself. And as soon as my dad can build a boat he’ll come and fetch me and then I’ll be a South Sea Island princess. What a time we’ll have, tra-la-la!

Many years ago her dad had bought the old house that stood in the garden. He had planned to live there with Pippi when he got too old and doddery to sail the oceans any longer. But then, of course, that annoying thing happened, when he was blown into the sea, so while she was waiting for him to come back Pippi went straight home to Villa Villekulla.

That was the name of the house. It stood there, ready and waiting, with furniture and everything. One beautiful summer’s evening she said good-bye to all the shipmates on her dad’s boat. They were so fond of Pippi, and Pippi was fond of them.

Cheerio, lads, Pippi said, giving each and every one a kiss on the forehead. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right!

She took two things with her from the boat. A little monkey called Mr. Nilsson—a present from her dad—and a big travel bag full of golden coins. The shipmates stood on the deck and watched Pippi walk away until they couldn’t see her any more. She strode on with Mr. Nilsson on her shoulder and the travel bag in her hand, and didn’t look round once.

A remarkable child, said one of the shipmates, wiping a tear from his eye as Pippi disappeared into the distance.

He was right. Pippi was a very remarkable child. And the most remarkable thing about her was her strength. She was so spectacularly strong that in the whole wide world there was no one as strong as she was, not even a policeman. She could lift up a whole horse if she wanted to. And she did want to. She had her own horse that she had bought with one of her gold coins the very same day she came home to Villa Villekulla. She had always longed for a horse of her own and now she had one, and he lived on the veranda. But when it was time for Pippi’s afternoon coffee she picked him up and put him in the garden with no problem at all.

Next to Villa Villekulla there was another garden and another house. In that house lived a dad and a mum with their two sweet little children, a boy and a girl. The boy was called Tommy and the girl was called Annika.

They were two very polite and well-behaved and obedient children. Tommy never bit his nails and he always did as his mum told him. Annika never argued when she couldn’t have her own way, and she was always very neat in her well-ironed cotton dresses, which she was careful not to get dirty. Tommy and Annika played very nicely together in their garden but they often wished for a friend to play with, and while Pippi was still sailing around on the ocean with her dad they used to hang over the fence and say to each other:

It’s stupid that no one ever moves into that house! Someone should be living there. Someone with children.

On that beautiful summer’s evening when Pippi walked through the door of Villa Villekulla for the first time, Tommy and Annika weren’t at home. They had gone to stay with their grandma for a week. That’s why they had no idea that someone had moved in next door. And the day after they came home and were standing at their gate, looking into the street, they still didn’t know that there actually was someone to play with so close by. Just as they were standing there, wondering what to do, and whether anything interesting was going to happen that day or whether it was going to be one of those boring days when there was nothing to do—just then the gate of Villa Villekulla opened and a little girl walked out.

She was the strangest little girl Tommy and Annika had ever seen. It was Pippi Longstocking, going for her morning stroll. This is what she looked like:

Her hair was the same color as a carrot and was in two tight plaits that stuck straight out. Her nose looked exactly like a small potato and was smothered in freckles. Under her nose was an extraordinarily wide mouth full of healthy white teeth. Her dress was quite peculiar. Pippi had sewn it herself. It was supposed to be blue but the blue material had run out, so Pippi had to put red patches here and there. On her long, thin legs she wore a pair of long stockings, one brown and the other black, and she was also wearing a pair of black shoes that were precisely twice as long as her feet. Pippi’s dad had bought them for her in South America, big enough for her to grow into, and Pippi wouldn’t wear anything else.