When I was in my preteens and early teens, THE most influential author and illustrator for me was Inger Edelfeldt, a Swedish author and illustrator. She had an enormous impact on me. She was young; only about 15 years older than me and looked incredibly cool. In fact the one and only fan letter I ever wrote, I wrote to her. And she answered! A very nice long letter too. And yesterday she commented one of my photos on Facebook. I know, super silly of me to get excited about, and no real mystery either. It was a photo of Myra and S, and a quick check confirmed she and S are friends. Still. It reminded me of how much I loved her art, and I thought it would be much nicer to talk about her instead.

If you are a Tolkien fan you may have encountered her art; in 1985 she illustrated the Tolkien calendar. She also made the covers not only for Tolkien but for a lot of other books as well. My first encounter with her was the cover of the books in the original Earthsea-trilogy, and it was those cover which made me want to read them.











Born in 1957 she debuted in 1977, but I didn’t read her until I was eleven so I will talk about the three books which meant the most to me in the order I read them. This was in the early ’80s, and the word “queer” didn’t exist. I knew what homosexual meant, but that there were any other flavours of sexuality or lack thereof or transsexuality, simply didn’t exist in media. In the books, I read het was the norm, and so it was in the show I watched. If a gay character was ever introduced it was only for an episode, and never as an important character in his or her own right. Edelfeldt changed my world by introducing other ways to be than the norm.

Missne och Robin Arum and Robin) is a fantasy where twelve-year-old Torun in increasingly uncomfortable with her changing body and how other girls are preoccupied with how they look and talking about boys. During the summer she goes with her family to their summer cottage, and in a box, she finds an old hat she always wore when she played Robin Hood when younger. She decides she wants to be Robin; a daring hero, rather than Torun. During a walk in the nearby woods, she steps on some cottongrass, vaguely remembering they are supposed to have magical qualities, which as it turns out, it actually has. She stumbles into an alternate version of her woods, a place inhabited by beings from Swedish mythology, as well as ghosts and personifications of various plants. She meets the mysterious Missne. He is beautiful and attractive and, Robin quickly finds out, dangerous; he tries to lure her into water to drown. She is saved by a woman; Esmeralda who repels Missne by calling him his real name; Calla Palustris. Robin is angry and disappointed but Esmeralda explains Missne can’t help himself- he has to follow his nature. He is also not really a he, as Robin gets to know more of the supernatural beings she learns some people thinks Missne is a she- and Missne refuses to answer the question altogether.

Naturally, the magic woods are under a threat and sorely in need of a hero. Robin is drafted into the fight against the evil King Ag who wants to destroy all originality and joy, and with the help of Missne and a giant, she saves the day. The books end with Robin feeling it might not be so bad growing up, and that she’s a little in love with Missne, regardless if Missne’s gender is male or female. The plot was very exciting, but the book was also my first introduction to the idea that not all people are comfortable with their gender. Or rejects the idea altogether- Missne may be one or another, both or neither.



Having read Missne och Robin I wanted more, and found Duktig pojke (Good Boy) in the library. This is Edelfeldt debut, and it was also the first Swedish book aimed to pre-teens and teens with a homosexual protagonist. The plot is simple; a young man, Jim, looks back growing up, with every chapter beginning with a few words from his mother's point of view. His family is ordinary in a set-up familiar to someone growing up in the 60s and 70s with a stay-at-home mother. Jim is rather shy and sensitive which his father thinks is unmanly but that his mother approves of. He is somewhat bullied at school, but he has a friend too, even if he never feels he fits in. Eventually, he realises he is interested in boys, and by the end, he is in a relationship and has also come out. Jim’s father reacts with anger and rejection, but though his mother feels she has done something wrong with bringing up Jim, she accepts Jim’s orientation even if she doesn’t understand it. Jim’s much younger sister is the only one in the family who has no problems at all with her brother’s love life, and the book ends with the possibility of Jim’s father coming around eventually.

In the early ’80s, HIV became a household name, and homosexual men were extremely vilified in media. He was a predator, an abuser and a threat to society. Now my parents never displayed any homophobic tendencies, but society at large certainly did, and it meant a lot reading about a perfectly normal person who just happened to be homosexual.



And then I read Juliane och jag (Juliane and I), As much as I loved the two first books I read by Edelfeldt and how they expanded my worldview, this book was the one I identified with. The narrator, Kim, is a 14-year old girl. She is not a particularly popular girl, but neither is she bullied. She had a sort-of best friend who she hangs out with, but has very little in common with. Kim likes to read and draw and is interested in the occult- especially vampires. And she really, really wants to have a friend who understands her and likes the same things. Juliane is her new classmate, a girl who both looks and behaves out of the norm, and she very quickly becomes bullied. But Kim finds her interesting and eventually, the two becomes friends. I was very much Kim and I longed to find a friend like Juliane. I never did back then; I eventually gained more friends, but it wasn’t until I was in my late teens I started to find friends who had interests and views more closely corresponding to mine.



I can’t forget mentioning Edelfeldt comics. Hondjuret (The She-animal), a chain-smoking prickly personality who mostly directs her sarcastic world views on her friend Fluffy.



("I revolt against the everyday. You won't get any water today. Again.")

And Den kvinnliga mystiken- En kortfattad guide (The Female Mystique- A Short Guide, and Den manliga mystiken- Den ultimata genuseanalysen (The Male Mystique - The Ultimate Genus Analysis) which basically is what it says on the tin. In a very sarcastic way.



(The inner life of women has always been something of an enigma. A lot of women are so confused, they can hardly understand themselves. A really intelligent analysis of the eternally female can naturally only be made by an outsider's point of view. So you should really be grateful so many men through the ages have felt themselves called to put light on what is the eternal feminity")