Content Warning: This section contains references to racial stereotypes contained within the novel.

Pippi Longstocking’s story begins with a description of what led to her current circumstances. Pippi’s mother died when she was just a baby, and she doesn’t remember her. She looks up to the skies, hoping her mother is in heaven and saying, “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll always come out on top” (12). Her father, on the other hand, was blown off his ship. Pippi still holds out hope that he is alive and stranded on an island somewhere, perhaps having become “king of all the cannibals” (12). When Pippi left the sailors of the ship, she also took with her a monkey named Mr. Nilsson and enough gold to keep herself supported. She moved into the house her father bought, Villa Villekulla, in a garden at the end of a small town. Pippi is strong enough to lift her horse, which she bought with her gold.

Before the accident that took her father, Pippi was always out at sea with him. Their neighbors, a boy and girl named Tommy and Annika, often wondered if anyone lived in the house at all.