Astrid Lindgren and the Nightingale’s Song

Abstract

^{Theme: Motherhood and Mothering. Ill. ©Stina Wirsén}

This article analyzes the nightingale motif in Swedish author Astrid Lindgren’s short story “Spelar min lind, sjunger min näktergal” (“My Nightingale is Singing”), first published in her collection Sunnanäng (The Red Bird, 1959). The lineage of the motif is traced back to ancient Greek folklore, where the nightingale’s lament symbolizes maternal grief over the loss of a child. It is argued that Lindgren’s story can be interpreted as a modern reimagining of a specific strand in the mythological tradition surrounding the rape of Philomela and the infanticide committed by Procne to avenge her sister. Lindgren alludes to a version of the story found in fable collections, which centers on the reunion of the two sisters after their metamorphosis into birds. In the Greek myth, especially as it was interpreted by Romantic writers, a bereaved mother is transformed into the nightingale, eternally lamenting her loss and thereby transfiguring human suffering into beauty. In Lindgren’s story, Malin longs to bring beauty to the bleak world of the orphanage, first miraculously causing a linden tree to grow in its yard, but ultimately giving her spirit to the tree, where it is heard in the song of a nightingale among its branches. “Spelar min lind, sjunger min näktergal” thus represents Lindgren’s innovative culmination of a long fable tradition with pre-classical origins, where the child becomes the agent of transformation.