Engelse editie van Verhalenreis

Productie voor museum Junibacken in Stockholm

The year was 1996. For three weeks, every morning at eight o’clock, I bicycled to Dalagatan 46 in Stockholm with a box of cream cakes on the luggage carrier. Astrid Lindgren was then 89 years old, and was writing what would be her last text, for the Story Train at Junibacken (“Junedale”).

Two years earlier, I had been given the commission to create a three-dimensional story world based on six of Astrid’s best loved books. The idea was that I would design scenes from the books, and monitor the construction of the entire scenography which was to be built on Djurgården in Stockholm. It was to be one thousand square metres, and seven metres tall. My head spun! Now, fifty of the best decorative craftsmen in Sweden were in the process of creating the story world I had designed.

Astrid alone could be the natural tour guide on the train, which was to bring the visitors through the stage sets. This was why I was visiting her every day. We read together from Emil and Karlsson and all the other books, and I described what the visitors would see from the Story Train. We studied my drawings with a magnifying glass, and I experienced how Astrid slowly but surely found the right tone for the Story Train script. A tone that melded with the books, with my drawings and with the experience that children and adults would have when travelling on the train.

I believe that Astrid enjoyed these sessions, “being busy with work” once again. And it felt as if we two together were on our own story journey, from Junedale to Nangilima.