Chapter 1, which is quite brief and is identical to Chapter 30, describes100-year-old Allan Karlsson climbing out his bedroom window in the Old Folks’ Home in Malmköping, Sweden. His goal is to avoid his birthday party. The mayor, all the retirement home residents, and local reporters plan to attend the party.

After escaping the nursing home, Allan rests on a bench facing a church cemetery. Seeing a monument to a man who was born in 1905, the same year he was born, Allan feels grateful to be alive. Jonasson writes, “[I]t had to be much more interesting and instructive to be on the run from Director Alice than to be lying rigid six feet under” (4). He realizes that he’s beginning an adventure.

Allan makes his way to the Malmköping bus station and asks the ticket seller how far he get with the scant money he has. A rough-looking young man named Bolt needs to use the restroom but holds a locked suitcase too large to fit in with him. He demands that Allan watch the suitcase, though Allan tells him he’s boarding a bus in three minutes. When the stranger doesn’t come out of the restroom in time, Allan boards the bus, taking the suitcase with him.