Pippi Longstocking, 80 years of freedom: 1945 marks the birth of the little girl who changed the rules of childhood.

“Here I am, Pippi Longstocking, that's my name, I really don't think anyone like mehas ever existed! ”. From the very first verses, the song that accompanied the Pippi Longstocking TV series, broadcast in Italy starting in 1969, in the midst of the feminist revolution, and dedicated to the book of the same name born from the imagination of the Swedish writer Astrid Lindgrenand first published in 1945(in 1958 in Italy) immediately makes things clear. Pippi is a little girl who subverts all the rules : at nine years old, she lives alone, with a horse and a monkey, she has a duffel bag full of gold coins, her colorful clothes have patches, her long socks are always a different color, her bright orange braids, which sprout at the sides of her head in a disheveled hairstyle, are as irreverent as her way of addressing adults and when necessary she uses superhuman strength and resorts to magic . Her story taught everyone that nonconformity and diversity, breaking the rules and a desire for adventure, were possible: like keeping a horse on the porch, or swinging from a rope in the kitchen.

A reproduction of Pippi Longstocking in her Villa Villacolle on display in Cuneo until April 26, 2026.

If there is one character who has taught generations to believe in themselves and to look at the world with freedom, it is Pippi Longstocking. Created in 1945 by the Swedish writer Astrid (Ericsson) Lindgren, Pippi is not only a protagonist of children's literature , but a universal symbol of independence, strength, and nonconformity . With her red braids, mismatched stockings (now a symbol of inclusion) , and contagious laugh, she has forever changed the image of the "good girl," paving the way for a new idea of ​​a free and courageous childhood.

Born from the imagination of Lindgren's daughter, Karin, who during an illness asked her mother to tell her a story about a little girl with a bizarre name, Pippi Longstockingdebuted in 1945 after an initial rejection. The book immediately became an international success and has since sold over seventy million copiesin more than eighty languages.

The story of Astrid Lindgren and Pippi Longstocking and an image from the 1969 TV series

Pippilotta Pesanella Tapparella Succiamenta , this is her full name, is only nine years old and lives alone in Villa Villekulla with her horse Zietto and her monkey Mister Nilsson . She is strong enough to lift her horse with one hand and is not intimidated by anyone. Her father, Efraim Longstocking , is an honest pirate and captain of the ship Hoppetossa, as well as king of the fictional island of Taka-Tuka.

Alongside her are Annika and Tommy , her "normal" sister and brother, who are swept away by her free spirit. With them, Pippi faces life with a wit and energy that overturns every rule, teaching them that even solitude can be an adventure when accompanied by imagination and courage.

In the 1960s, when female role models were still rigid, Pippi Longstocking (in the English version) represented for many little girls the discovery that everything was possible, and even fun. With her irony and independence, she embodied that gentle rebellion of the female gender that philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir would theorize in The Second Sex (1949) and recount in Memoirs of a Proper Girl (1958).

Today, in a landscape where books celebrating female autonomy at all ages are multiplying – from Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls ( Loredana Baldinucci, Francesca Cavallo, Elena Favilli, 2019) to Good Girls Go to Heaven, the Other Girls Go Everywhere (Ute Ehrhardt 1985) – Pippi's lesson, disruptive in the 1950s, remains relevant: the freedom to be has no gender (or even age), and diversity is a form of strength , even magical.

Astrid Lindgren and a small Pippi Longstocking on the 20 Swedish kronor note: a tribute to the great writer and her most famous character.

In Italy, Pippi hit the bookstores in 1958, but it was the 1969 television series , starring the unforgettable actress Inger Nilsson (born in Sweden in 1959), then a very young actress with a mischievous smile and magnetic gaze, that swept away the other 8,000 candidates and made her a worldwide icon. Lindgren wrote the screenplay to preserve the fidelity of the original character. The theme song, composed by pianist Jan Johansson , became a symbolic melody of an era.

Pippi has remained a cultural reference over time: her face today accompanies the Swedish twenty-krone banknote together with the portrait of Lindgren , and in 2020 the Pantone Color Institute dedicated a special shade of orange to her, Pippi Longstocking Orange.

Astrid Anna Emilia Ericsson , married Lindgren , was born in Vimmerby, in the Swedish region of Småland, on November 14, 1907, and grew up in a peaceful family environment on her parents' farm, playing, as she herself recalled, from dawn to dusk with her brothers and sisters . Lindgren drew inspiration from that free and carefree childhood to create the worlds of her novels.

From childhood, she cultivated a passion for reading , and after completing her studies, she began working as a proofreader and then as a journalist for Vimmerby Tidning. At just eighteen, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy forced her to leave her hometown and move to Stockholm, where she lived in difficult conditions , far from her son Lars, who was entrusted to a Danish family for financial reasons.

After a few years, in 1931, she married Sture Lindgren, her office manager at the Kungliga Automobil Klubben, and was finally able to reunite with her child. In 1934, her second child, Karin, was born. It was Karin, during an illness, who coined the name Pippi Longstocking and asked her mother for a story. Thus was born an unconventional literary figure, a symbol of independence, irony, and strength . The book, published 80 years ago, in 1945, was an immediate success. Between 1946 and 1970, Lindgren worked as an editor for her own publishing house, helping to build an important series of children's literature. In the meantime, she continued to write steadily: in addition to Pippi Longstocking and the series dedicated to Emil , she published more than 110 stories, including adventure stories, fairy tales, television scripts , and film scripts. Pippi Longstocking and another wonderful book, Holidays on Seagull Island, became TV series .

Astrid Lindgren was not only a successful writer , but also an intellectual committed to thedefense of children's and animal rights , values ​​that shine through in many of her works. Thanks to her commitment and her stance against corporal punishment of children, Sweden banned corporal punishment of children by law in 1979. Lindgren also shed light on how animals were treated on farms and spoke of the most vivid memory of her childhood: the meadows, the flowers, the rural environment in which she was fortunate to grow up.

She, who had lived through the Second World War, was also committed to nonviolence : "We all want peace. So is there a chance to change radically, before it's too late? To learn to distance ourselves from violence ? To simply try to become a new kind of human being? But how can we do it, and where do we begin? I believe we have to start at the bottom. With the children ."

The original Pippi Langstrump book, or Longsocks in English and Calzelunghe in Italian, and the reproduction of some characters

Lindgren received numerous international awards, including the Hans Christian Andersen Prize in 1958, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1973 for Pippi Longstocking, the UNESCO International Book Award in 1993, and the Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” in 1994.

In 1997, she was named “Swedish Person of the Year.” She died in Stockholm on January 28, 2002, at the age of 94. That same year, the Swedish government established the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in her honor , an international prize for children's and young adult literature , worth five million Swedish kronor , the most prestigious of its kind in the world. Her younger sister Stina Hergin also wrote the book Once Upon a Farm , published in 2002, which recounts the two sisters' childhood on the family farm. Her hometown, Vimmerby, has dedicated a theme park to her, Astrid Lindgren's World , which celebrates her characters and her imagination.

In Italy, Astrid Lindgren's books were first translated and published in 1958 by Annuska Palme and Donatella Ziliotto in the " Il Martin Pescatore " series published by Vallecchi. After the publishing house closed, many titles were republished in the 1980s and 1990s in Salani's "Gl'Istrici" series, also edited by Ziliotto, who passed away a few days ago. The series retained the original illustrations that had accompanied the first Swedish editions.

The poster for the Cuneo exhibition dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the first publication of the book Pippi Longstocking.

To mark the eightieth anniversary of her birth, Pippi Longstocking is the focus of the exhibition " Astrid Lindgren and the Power of Children : 80 Years of Pippi Longstocking (since the first edition in 1945), which opened in early October and is open, with free admission, until April 26, 2026 , from Tuesday to Sunday, at the Spazio Innov@zione at Via Roma 17 in Cuneo (Piedmont) . This is an important exhibition because, promoted by CRC Innova, an instrumental body of the CRC Foundation, and curated by the cultural association Cuadri Ets, it is produced in collaboration with The Astrid Lindgren Company of Stockholm and with the scientific consultancy of Samanta K. Milton Knowles. Information on opening hours and the exhibition can be found at crcinnova.it.

Designed as a unique and one-of-a-kind event, the exhibition takes visitors on an immersive journey into Pippi's world. The first room explores Astrid Lindgren's life and social commitment through videos, texts, interactive applications, historical editions, and memorabilia, alongside a 3D reproduction of the veranda of Villa Villekulla with Pippi, the horse, and Mr. Nilsson. The second room is dedicated to the characters and illustrators who shaped Lindgren's universe— Ingrid Vang Nyman, Björn Berg, Ilon Wikland, and Marit Törnqvist —and features a multilingual bookshop promoting linguistic and cultural diversity. Finally, the third room transports visitors aboard the ship Hoppetossa to listen to stories and songs written by the author , offering a visual and audio experience designed for both adults and children. Particular attention has been paid to accessibility : Braille panels, a QR code with audio content, and full versions of the book in multiple languages, including one read by Lindgren herself, make the exhibition accessible to everyone.