About Näs farm
In 1907, Astrid Anna Emilia Ericsson was born on Näs farm, which was then just outside Vimmerby. Näs was a vicarage lease and Astrid’s parents, Samuel August and Hanna, leased the land from the vicarage and ran the farm. It was not a large farm, but it was big enough that many people were needed to run it. All labour was needed and the farmer’s children worked side by side with maids, farmhands and hired labourers.
The beginning of everything
On the evening of the warm Walpurgis Night in 1895, two oxen trundled in between the houses at the vicarage at Näs on the outskirts of Vimmerby. It was Samuel Johan and Ida Eriksson’s family who moved into the small red house at the vicarage to take over the farm lease. The most enthusiastic of all was probably their third son, the eager twenty-year-old Samuel August. Perhaps he already knew that this was where he would start a family and make his home for life. Ten years later, it was time for Samuel August to marry his beloved Hanna – with whom he would live for fifty-six years. Two years later, a baby girl, Astrid Anna Emilia, was born.
Childhood
Astrid Lindgren has often described her childhood as a very happy time – ‘we lived a happy Noisy Village life at Näs, pretty much like in the books about the Children of Noisy Village’ – with the love of her parents as a constant reassurance and she enjoyed endless hours of play with her three siblings and the many other children who lived on the farm.
‘Let’s start with my life. Let’s take it from the beginning – in November 1907, that’s when I was born, in an old red house surrounded by apple trees, as the second child of the farmer Samuel August Ericsson and his wife Hanna, née Jonsson. The farm where we lived was – and still is – called Näs, and it was just outside a small town in Småland, Vimmerby.’
From ‘My Småland’ by Astrid Lindgren and Margareta Strömstedt
Back to Näs
Näs remained a fixed point throughout Astrid’s life. She often returned there. When her brother, Gunnar, stopped farming in 1965, he and Astrid bought the houses and the surrounding land. Gunnar and his wife continued to live in the large villa and Astrid began to restore the childhood home piece by piece, as she remembered it from her childhood. To this day, the childhood home and the yellow house are owned by Gunnar’s three daughters, Gunvor, Barbro and Eivor.
