Ronia - The Robber's Daughter

[baleanoptera]

I am still going through this nostalgic tv-show thing. The last thing that has touched my sentimental heart is the tv series based on Astrid Lindgren's book Ronia-The Robber's daughter.



On the night that Ronia was born a thunderstorm was raging over the mountains, such a storm that all the Goblin folk in Matt’s Forest crept back in terror to their holes and hiding places. Only the fierce harpies preferred stormy weather to any other and flew, shrieking and hooting, around the robber’s stronghold on Matt’s Mountain. Their noise disturbed Lovis, who was lying within, prepared to give birth, and she said to Matt, "Drive the hell-harpies away and let me have some quiet. Other wise I can’t hear what I’m singing!"
The fact was that Lovis liked to sing while she was having her baby. It made things easier, she insisted, and the baby would probably be all the jollier if it arrived on earth to the sound of a song. - from the English translation of the book





The story centres around Ronia, here seen in snow, the only daughter of the Robber baron Mattis, or Matt in the English translation. They live in a castle deep in the forest, along with all of Matt's Robbers.



Although her mother, Lovis, kicks all manner of ass Ronia is essentially a Daddy's girl. And this is her with her father. She has turned twelve and her dad thinks its time she went exploring in the forest. He gives her advice first - and tells her to look out for gnomes and harpies, but most importantly she must not fall into the water fall.
"What will I do if I fall into the water fall?", Ronia asks.
"Then you won't do much at all", her father says. "You'll be dead".
Being a sensible girl Ronia runs straight to the water fall - but does not fall in.


Sometimes she stays at home, where the robbers sing and put on women's clothing. No really - they do. After all it is Lindgren - and so the whole gender thing will be given a nudge, nudge.


But let's get to my favourite part of the story. Because one day Ronia meets Birk - and they become great friends. There's a catch though - Birk is the son of Borka, also known as Mattis' greatest rival. Like Ronia, Birk is expected to follow in his fathers footsteps and become a robber, but he doesn't really want to. He'd rather wander around in the forest and "just bein the spring" as he says. he is also very poetic about flowers. At first Ronia thinks he is somewhat of a wet blanket, but after they've saved each others lives a few times she changes her opinion.



Here she is stuck in the snow, and he saves her. I love his little hat here. As far as fictional crushes go, Birk was probably my first. Yes, embarrassing confession here, moving on.



Here Birk saves Ronia from the trolls. When you're a kid this scene is very, very creepy. There is lots of mist and eerie singing.



And here they have been arguing - or more precisely Ronia has been yelling at him, and he is moping.



So far it seems like Birk has been saving her a lot huh? And not so much the other way around.Well, she has saved him once at the start of their friendship - but her biggest heroic act is the one pictured above.

For one day Birk gets captured by Mattis, and this is where the whole story goes from being cute to something much more dark and upsetting. Because Mattis beats Birk and leaves him bleeding in a corner, and Ronia realizes that her father isn't just the nice guy she is used to. Turns out Mattis is prepared to use Birk to blackmail Borka, and threatens to kill the boy if Borka doesn't do what Mattis asks.
In an act to save her friend, which she at this point has started to call brother, Ronia runs over to Borka - and evens the score. Mattis's attempt at blackmail has failed, and not only that but he renounces his daughter and claims that he doesn't have a child.



After that Ronia and Birk run away and live in the forest. A lot of other things happen, but it all becomes all right in the end.

There are many reasons I love this story:

+ The whole plot with a parent renouncing his child is very powerful. It upset me as a child, and as an adult I find it very fascinating. there is also the aspect that Birk and Ronia start refering to each other as "brother" and "sister" - and so family in Lindgren's world becomes just as much a choice as a biological fact.

+ The whole romance and Romeo & Juliet thing that Ronia and Birk have going. As mentioned they refer to each other as siblings, and as Birk's mother dryly comments: "We know how that will turn out in a few years"

+It looks so Scandinavian. The deep pine wood forests, the wild waterfalls and the forest bottom covered with white anemones. This was the nature I was used to, that I grew up with – and so in a lot of ways Ronia’s forest was my forest.

+ The Music - the televison adaption has some of my most beloved film music ever. I have no idea if it is available on cd or not. (if it is, then PLEASE let me know). But I have a few of the tunes here:

+ main theme +
+ robber's song +
+ mattis-borka +

This little clip is a fan video made with the original music. It gives you a good sense of the mood of the show.

Comments

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

Eeeeeeee. Both these posts are filled with things rich and strange to me, and they're absolutely wonderful. I'm just about to leave work, but I will return on Monday to download most of this. Really, each of your posts seems to expand my horizons that much more. :)

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

Just so you know all this praise is making me blush. Not a nice colour either - but more on the beet red side. ;)

As for "Ronia" - I can do nothing but highly recommend it. I'm more than a little biased though. This book, and in part this series, shaped me. To the degree that should I point to writers who inspired me and helped me form my views on the world, one of the first would be Lindgren.

I also hope you like the music. I recommend the Ronia music as well. Sung by the Stockholm Opera Choir IIRC.

[reginaspina.livejournal.com]

I'll have to wait until later to watch the clip and listen to the music, but just from the pictures, I can tell this is something I would just LOVE! Thanks for sharing!

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! While writing this post it occurred to me how much of my childhood was shaped by Astrid Lindgren books and series. Maybe it isn't so strange as I suspect every Scandinavian child is brought up on a healthy dose of Lindgren. (Her books and the Moomin books are one of things that bind Scandinavians together. ;D)She is of course best known for her Pippi Longstocking books, but they never grabbed me.

"Ronia" was the big favourite, probably because it has a female heroine who is strong and smart (and more realistic than Pippi). Also because, even when I was little, I loved the whole "just because its tradition doesn't mean you have to follow" theme.

Another favourite is "The Brothers Lionheart" which, um, deals with death and democracy. I know. It doesn't sound like particularly cheerful material for a children's book, but it also contains dragons, valleys filled with cheery trees, rides on wild horses and one of the most beautiful sibling relationships I know of. (Being an only child I've always been extremely fascinated by the sibling thing.)
Truth be told I cannot recommend "Ronia the Robbers daughter" or "Brothers Lionheart" enough.

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

*face palm* And in the above comment it should of course be cherry NOT cheery trees. Well, at least they cheer me up? (yes, bad pun to hide my grammatical ineptitude. No cookie for the BluWhale)

[richlayers.livejournal.com]

Seriously... you come up with the best posts ever. This book has been on my shelf for a reread for about ... 6 months now? With one thing and another I haven't gotten to it yet, but now I really want to!

Especially since I have another week to wait before the last HP....

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

Thanks! "Ronia" is one of my favourite books of all time. That, and as I mentioned in a comment above, "The Brothers Lionheart".
It always amazes me how Lindgren manages to write these books that when you read them as a kid they seem pretty straight forward. For instance "Lionheart"; two brothers fight an evil overlord who owns a dragon. The I read it as an adult and a whole new dimension of the book opened up.

And the last HP... I had actually though I was getting detached from those books, but I'm slowly noticing the excitement build up. Especially since I'm pretty sure she is going to kill one of the trio. *sob*

[sunnyskywalker]

This sounds so awesome. Thanks for the rec!

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

It is awesome! Both the book and the series! Just bear in mind that I grew up with this, so my judgement is pretty much non-objective here. ;) And be sure to check out the music, which is love.

I must say that before Leia or Eowyn or Ripley - there was Ronia. My first female hero. The girl is just wickedly cool, but never ever Mary Sue-ish.

[sillyheart.livejournal.com]

oooh funny! i got the music too :-) and the swedish version of the film, don't understand a thing but i know it so well so i don't need that :-)

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

You're watching the film without subtitles or dubbing? I'm impressed! I don't think I'd have the patience.

But I have to ask - do you have more of the soundtrack than the three I've posted? I'm on an eternal quest to find the whole soundtrack, but sadly that has proven to be very difficult.

[finnygan.livejournal.com]

Hello! I followed you here from applegnat's journal (that does sound a bit stalker-ish, doesn't it?), and I saw this post - which is lovely, by the way - and I downloaded the music, and you have no idea how grateful I am that you posted it, because I have been trying to find it for years. And I'm absolutely with you on the Ronja thing - the film version was the first film I ever saw in the cinema (sitting on my father's lap when I was four), and I will adore it for all eternity - and I can't count all the ways that I love Astrid Lindgren. They are manifold.

Clearly, I'm rambling on a bit here (and not too concerned with the rules of English grammar), but my point was: thank you!

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

Well, as long as its friendly stalking I'm all for it. ;)

you have no idea how grateful I am that you posted it, because I have been trying to find it for years.

Hee. You're welcome. I'm just glad to meet a fellow Lindgren lover. (also love the Emil icon.) I'm constantly amazed by how her books continue to affect me, even when I'm (reasonably) grown-up and reading them for the unknown time. Her style is really so simple and at times almost stoic, and yet she manages to say and convey so much.

I find Ronja to be one of the better movie adaptions. As much as I love "Brothers Lionheart" the book, I'm not too crazy about the series. It's just too seventies and Jonathan has this really horrid haircut.

As for the music - I used to have a lot more of it (including "Rid over Skog" and most of the instrumentals), but then my old computer crashed and I lost it. At one point I had to stop myself from calling the repair shop and go: "But my Ronja-music is on there! It has taken me months to track it down! You must save the Ronja music!"

I'm rambling on a bit here (and not too concerned with the rules of English grammar), but my point was: thank you!

Rambling is always good, and I've been known to skip some rules of English Grammar myself - and you're very welcome.

ps. thanks to applegnat I'm currently reading your Iliad football fic. It is very good, and I'll try to be more coherent later.

[finnygan.livejournal.com]

Not to worry - I am (mostly) very friendly. :)

It's actually amazing, the way that Lindgren's books keep really touching me. Whenever I re-read Brothers Lionheart (as I often do), I always end up crying - even if I always realised that as far as happy endings go, that is a happy ending. And it really is quite a feat to convey that to a five-year-old - but you need a very distinct sort of style to be able to convey that to both a five-year-old, a twentyfive-year-old, and a seventyfive-year-old, which I think was what Lindgren accomplished.

I have to agree with you about the film version of Lionheart, though. I actually went to see it at an arthouse cinema in Bologna a few months back (curiously, the audience was exclusively made up of Scandinavian-looking girls in their 20s), and while I did have this vague idea that it wasn't as good as the film version of Ronja (or the tv series of Pippi or Saltkråkan or Emil), I was rather disappointed. The awful haircuts aside, there's also Katla the big bad papier-maché doll.

Oh, and thank you! The football Iliad has been giving me so much trouble, and been eating so much of my brain-space, so I'm glad that you like it.

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

The ending of "Lionheart" is a thing of beauty. As you say its a happy ending, but its also extremely ambiguous and that I feel is part of its strength as well. When I read it as a kid I felt is was very straight forward. They went to Nangijalima and things were good. Then as an adult there is suddenly this whole aspect of how its all about Karl/Skorpan facing death and no longer being afraid.

Again, as you say, the fact that Lindgren manages to work on all these levels is part of what sets her apart.

The only one of her books that I hadn't read by the time I was eight is Mio - it continued to scare the hell out of me until I finally managed it at the age of twenty.

Hee! I know exactly what you are talking about! As a kid I actually made my mother lock away my copy of Mio. It was the only way I managed to go to sleep. Personally I blame Kato and that creepy drawing of his black hand. ;)

The awful haircuts aside, there's also Katla the big bad papier-maché doll.

Hee. You took the words right out of my mouth. Katla is sort of the big anti-climax of the whole thing.
I actually saw a good theatre production of "Lionheart" once - where Katla didn't come on stage at all. Instead she was all sound and darkness, with fast dimming of light and a slow rumbling bass. She was in fact truly scary! But then again they had revamped the whole look, and given Jonathan a very punkish, post-apocalyptic look with dreads! All in all I thought that worked rather well.

That said I wouldn't mind a new film version of "Lionheart". one with a little more oomph - but also one that shies away from the Hollywood gloss and shine.
But as far as Ronja, Saltkråkan, Emil etc are concerned to me those films are too iconic to remake.

Speaking of friendly - do you mind if I friend? Because I've been done some stalking too (albeit very friendly), and it looks like we have some things in common.
I find the "hating-the-da-vinci-code" particularly poetic - because if any book could be labelled 'a wretched hive of scum an villany' then that is it. (and I say this as one who has even seen the movie. Why did I out myself through such an experience? I don't know your Honour, and plead insanity on all charges.)

[finnygan.livejournal.com]

I think that whenever my mother tried reading Mio aloud to me, we always had to stop in the same place - where they're about to leave for Kato's lands (so I've read the first part of the book a million times, and the last part only once). Which is odd, seeing as I never had a problem with Lionheart, and that should be just as awful, shouldn't it? Mio is just so much scarier, somehow.

Oh, don't even get me started on The Da Vinci Code (you just did, I'm afraid). I can't even begin to tell you how much I resent that book. And I do say that as someone who has read it - which entitles me to hate it unequivocally and criticise it at every turn, I think - and then, out of some sort of morbid curiousity, I read Angels and Demons, just to see if it was just as bad (it was). And I must be quite the masochist, because I've also seen the film. I suppose I just couldn't bring myself to believe that about Ian McKellen.

Now, I recognise the fact that the world needs bad books. Sometimes I even need to read a bad book. There's nothing wrong with pulp fiction, as long as it just realises that's what it is. What the world doesn't need is badly written, pretentios crap books with authors who act as though they've, pardon my French, found the Holy fracking Grail. I think I'd just be so much more tolerant of the book if it wasn't claiming to be so much more than it is.

(Oh, and I worked in a bookshop and actually sold the wretched thing to people. Will I go to hell for that?)

About the friending - of course I don't mind! I was going to ask you the same thing. Though I should probably warn you that there's nothing terribly interesting to be found in my journal - mostly just complaining about my thesis and/or Italy, and various forms of procrastination from said thesis.

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

Mio is just so much scarier, somehow.

"Mio" is scarier, but I find it hard to pinpoint why. I think, at least for me, a large part of the horror was the whole feel of Kato's lands. Also the plot with the missing children was really disturbing.

And I must be quite the masochist, because I've also seen the film. I suppose I just couldn't bring myself to believe that about Ian McKellen.

Hee. For me it was Ian Mckellen and Paul Bettany (though I rather liked his albino monk), but the rest of the films was just awful! There were scenes upon scenes of people talking about the plot. Not acting the plot or doing the plot which would be normal in a visual medium, but actual talking. WTF?
Then again I've had a problem with St.Tom Hanks since "Saving Private Ryan".

I think I'd just be so much more tolerant of the book if it wasn't claiming to be so much more than it is.

Oh absolutely. The whole turn it has made from pulpish fiction to pseudo-science is really annoying.
But I've tried to see it on a more meta level, and I guess the "DaVinci" phenomenon says something about people and their need for symbols and the feeling that everything is connected and makes sense. You just have to have the key, and then you can unlock all the strangeness in the world.

But I salute you for having trudged through "Angels & Demons". I tried (perhaps I have a masochistic streak as well?) but I got to the part where just one journalist was covering the popes funeral, and my suspension of disbelief snapped. I promptly put the book away.

[meko00.livejournal.com]

*follows links off queenofthorns' profile*

Ronja! Birk! They were my first OTP, actually. (Or maybe I was just hung up on Birk? Hmm.)

Thanks. I love this book, and the film. (I even have an old board game.)

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

OOH! Icon LOVE!

(Or maybe I was just hung up on Birk? Hmm.

You and me both. ;) He and oddly enough(?) Kalle Blomkvist were my favourite Lindgren boys. (Jonathan Lionheart was always just a bit too noble for some reason)

I actually remember the old board game. A cousin of mine had it and I was absolutely green with envy. So great to meet others who also love the book and film.

Tunes

[saint-morphine.livejournal.com]

Hello! :)

I watched the "Ronja" in German TV last Sunday after so many years, and oh how much I still love it! I'm also so in love with the music. Unfortunately I didn't find any soundtrack available.
The links you posted don't work anymore. Would you mind loading up the tunes once more? Would be much appreciated... :)

Greets,

Jenn

Re: Tunes

[baleanoptera.livejournal.com]

hello!

I'm sorry it has taken me ages to reply to this, but I've been caught up in exams and such. But hopefully better late than never?

At any rate - Hooray for a fellow Ronia fan! I love this story so much, and I think the film adaption is just wonderful.

I've included the links to the songs in this comment here. Give me a shout if something doesn't work (and I promise I'll be quicker in replying this time. ;) )

Robber's dance (http://www.sendspace.com/file/fda2vu)
Robbers Song (http://www.sendspace.com/file/18e3cm)
Mattis-Borka (http://www.sendspace.com/file/ka4fd1)