Illustrator and writer Sven Nordqvist is the creator of what is arguably the best cat in world literature: a shrewd, touching, naughty, childlike pet who is forgiven for any mischief. And although the main purveyor of stories is Findus, more important here is the atmosphere, for which the cat’s patron and supervisor, the wacky farmer Petson, is responsible. Petson is a jack-of-all-trades, trying not to buy anything new, but to use, reinvent and reinvent old things. Books about this couple are expeditions into a world unique in today’s times, where handmade is undeniably more attractive than factory, mass-produced, and where primitive old, long-playing things are more valuable than high-tech disposables. The books convey a sense of environmentalism: rustic technology makes the world renewable – and deserving of love, not mere consumption. Witty commentators on the Nurdkvist cycle have even referred to Petson as an anthropologist Levi-Strauss term: a “bricoleur” – a self-thinking, technically competent and not dependent on other people’s raw materials. Not only that, he is a bearer of many other qualities that are usually attributed just to Swedes: self-sufficiency, independence, independent thinking, and the ability to create comfort. But the reward for all these virtues is royal: the world’s best baby cat.
