Cartoonist Mats Jonsson is current with the serial novel Stina’s jojk. The book is based on Kristina Larsdotter’s life story. Stina was also related to the author.
– When I was working on my previous book, “When we were Sami”, I realized that Kristina Larsdotter and I were related. I had heard of her and read about her in Åke Lundgren’s books, but it became a different matter when I saw how she fit in among the family threads, says Mats Jonsson.
Know very little about what she was thinking
Somewhere, Mats Jonsson got the idea to write a book about her himself. Much has been written about her but very few of her own words have survived. Much is known about where she traveled but very little about what she thought and felt.
– The book is like my attempt to guess how she felt and thought, he says.
Writing books has given him many insights. It has been important to him to try to portray her life as well as possible. She was used to people looking at her, because she was so tall, they had done that all her life, so it became like everyday life for her, Mats Jonsson believes.
– When I try to depict a trauma for her, it is not that she is stared at, because it is her everyday life. Instead, I got stuck on something that I found in a protocol at Karolinska Institutet, where it said that she couldn’t have children, says Mats Jonsson.
In the protocol, you can read that she never started menstruating, which Jonsson believes may have been a trauma for her.
– That something as basic human as being able to have children of her own was not possible for her must have felt.
“She was an ordinary person”
What many people know about Kristina Larsdotter is that she suffered from an illness that caused her to never stop growing and she was exhibited in various places around the world.
– But she was, after all, a completely ordinary person who probably cried over what everyone cries over.
Mats Jonsson says that it has been very emotional to make this serial novel, but that it has been important for him to show the person Kristina Larsdotter.
– People should not be remembered by their nicknames. I simply call her Stina, that’s fine, he says.
A book for everyone
Stina’s jojk is Mats Jonsson’s fifth book. It is a book for the middle ages, but he firmly believes that it is suitable for everyone.
– It is a children’s book, from the age of nine, but in my opinion it is a book for everyone. One can easily read it without thinking that it is aimed at young readers.