Hailing from Haapsalu, Ilon Wikland illustrated more children’s books by Astrid Lindgren than anyone, though not Pippi Longstocking. Exiled to Sweden in 1944 aged 14, another 45 years would pass before Ilon would sight again the yellow house of her grandparents where she had lived as a small child.
We travelled with friends by car to Haapsalu, the former seaside resort of Tsarist times, the highlight, lunch at a traditional kõrts; I had a beetroot soup, shared a plate of fried herrings, and enjoyed a dark-coloured fizzy drink called kali, or kvass.
Admiring streets lined with old wooden houses, we strolled along the waterfront, and to the long wooden railway station where once trains from St Petersburg spilled out the Russian nobility every summer to enjoy the famous mud baths. We did not visit Ilon’s Wonderland museum, and now set this omission to rights.
Ilon was 23 years old when she met the Swedish children’s story writer Astrid Lindgren in 1953, while working as an illustrator at Rabén & Sjögren. Lindgren was already a prolific children’s author at that time, and saw immediately that Ilon could “draw fairy tales”. Ilon was hired to illustrate Lindgren’s next book, Mio, my son.
For her part, Lindgren (1907-2022) wrote 34 chapter books and 41 picture books, translated into more than 100 languages, selling more than 165 million copies worldwide. She was a humanist, and advocated for the rights of children, equality, and animal rights. “The meeting with Astrid Lindgren became pivotal for my life,” Ilon later said.
Tough times
Ilon was born in Tartu in 1930, and remained in the university town with her grandparents on her mother and father’s shifting to Tallinn. The grandparents and Ilon then moved to Haapsalu, to a yellow house by the church, with Ilon’s dog, Tito, a great dane. Ilon had already started drawing by this time.
On 22 September 1944 grandma Julie took Ilon from the yellow house, the day the Red Army bombed and invaded Tallinn, and boarded the Sea Star, the last boat to leave for Sweden and the free world. Initially, they stayed with Ilon’s aunt, herself an artist, who noticed Ilon’s talent for drawing. The aunt arranged for Ilon to study at Akke Kumlien’s book and advertising school.
After two years in Sweden, Ilon (16) took on various jobs to support herself and to live independently, including at a bookbindery, a decoration studio, and as a designer for magazines at Bonnier. A long road of study and work lay ahead of her, and then finally lasting success on meeting Astrid Lindgren.
New directions
In 1990 Ilon ended her partnership with Rabén & Sjögren, and returned to Estonia for a visit, after a 45-year hiatus, the first of several trips to the homeland. She illustrated her own series of children’s books, published between 1995 and 2007, in which Ilon described her upbringing in Estonia and escape to Sweden. The long, long journey (1995) with text by Rose Lagercrantz tells the story of a child fleeing a ruthless war, and the happiness of coming to a peaceful Sweden.
Ilon wrote the text to Sammeli, Epp and Me, in which Sammeli is a dog, modelled on Tito. For In my grandmother’s house (2005) and Potatisbarnen (2007), Ilon worked with the writer Barbro Lindgren.
Postscript
Her website says, “Ilon Wikland puts the time into capture people’s characters and emotions. To do this, she redraws the same image many times, first with pencil, and using marker pens.” Children’s rights and the importance of childhood as well as being allowed to dream and play, form Ilon’s vision of storytelling.
In June 2024 Ilon received the inaugural Sweden-Estonia co-operation prize at an event at the Estonian Embassy in Stockholm, a few months after Sweden joined NATO. In New Zealand, we would call her a “living treasure”.
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