Before I knew anything about Gotland…
Before I traced my mitochondrial haplogroup to ancient women buried in Fröjel…
Before I tried to pronounce skymning or packed sunscreen and ibuprofen for Medieval Week…
I knew one thing with absolute certainty:
Super strong girls rule.
And no one ruled harder than Pippi Långstrump—the freckled, red-braided Swedish icon of rebellion, strength, and joyful chaos.
Or as we knew her in the States: Pippi Longstocking.
📺 My First Taste of Sweden
I grew up watching reruns of the dubbed Pippi TV shows. I saw the Disney version too—the one with the American accents and slightly off dubbing, but I didn’t care. Pippi slept with her feet on her pillow. She had a suitcase full of gold coins. She lived with a horse and a monkey in a crooked little house, and she never, ever let grown-ups tell her what to do.
I didn’t know it was Swedish.
I didn’t know it was feminist.
I just knew I wanted to be her.
Now, as an immigrant living in Sweden, preparing for my first ever Medieval Week on the island where Villa Villekulla still stands, I realize how deep those early influences ran. Pippi was more than a character. She was permission.
🏡 Yes, Villa Villekulla Is Real—and It’s in Gotland
If you didn’t know: the house used in the original Swedish Pippi films (the ones from the 1960s and 70s) was filmed in Gotland.
That crooked yellow house with its blue trim?
It’s still there, just outside of Visby, inside Kneippbyn Amusement Park.
You can walk through it.
Stand where Pippi stood.
Pretend you, too, have a monkey named Mr. Nilsson and enough gold to ignore capitalism.
And yes, I will be going.
💪 What Pippi Taught Me (That Still Applies at … cough cough 29;))
You don’t need to follow anyone’s rules to belong.
Strength doesn’t always look polite.
Having a suitcase full of weird, magical things is always a good idea.
Girls who are “too much” are usually just enough.
Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is be joyful and unbothered.
There’s something subversive about Pippi even now. She lives alone, does what she wants, and makes joy a kind of power. She’s basically the patron saint of weird little girls who grew up into women who refuse to shrink.
So yeah—maybe this trip to Gotland is about DNA and history and Viking-era ship burials.
But maybe it’s also about honoring the loud, strange, unruly girls who planted the seed.
Maybe that’s why I’m really going.
🇸🇪 Swedish Word of the Day: “busig”
Busig (adj): mischievous, cheeky, playfully naughty
Used in a sentence:
Pippi var alltid busig, men hon hade ett hjärta av guld.
(Pippi was always mischievous, but she had a heart of gold.)
Swedish Wanderlust 