Previously unknown side of Astrid Lindgren’s creative process revealed

How did Astrid Lindgren go about creating her famous children’s book characters? Literary scholar Malin Nauwerck runs the project The Astrid Lindgren Code, in which she leads the work to decipher the notebooks left by the author after her death.

“Astrid Lindgren’s original manuscripts reveal a previously unknown dimension to her authorship. In drafts of the novel The Brothers Lionheart we see how carefully Lindgren crafted the battle between the dragon Katla and the lindworm Karm, a scene that was already prefigured in her

War Diaries 1939-1945, as well as more curious details – such as the fact that Jonathan Lionheart’s golden hair was jet black in one early version of the first chapter,” explains Nauwerck.

The notepads, a literary treasure trove both legendary and largely unexplored, may reveal Lindgren’s creative process from initial concept through to completed novel. That nobody has taken on the task before can be explained by the fact that Astrid Lindgren wrote her notes in shorthand, leading to the strongly held view that this would render them almost impossible to decipher.

“Once we began reviewing the material to see if it would be possible to interpret using digital methods, we realised that even manual reading would be relatively easy with a mastery of shorthand,” says Nauwerck.

The extant manuscripts comprise one of the world’s largest collections of stenographic material and the hope is that the digital text-recognition tools now being developed will pave the way for further studies of handwritten documents.

– Åsa Malmberg

PHOTO: SVENSKA BARNBOKSINSTITUTET