Piratenmuseet

Just a stone's throw away from the author's childhood home, the long ago demolished railway station building, the Piratenmuseet is housed in a former railway caretaker's house. The museum's permanent exhibition presents a steadily growing collection of information material about the life and writing of the popular storyteller. In addition to the sale of books, audio books and DVDs, there is also an antiquarian bookshop there with old books by the author.

Fritiof Nilsson Piraten

The author was born the son of the stationmaster in Vollsjö under the name Nils Fritiof Adam Nilsson, but was called Piraten (The Pirate) from an early age. One theory is that he received his nickname from his fellow students during his time at university, as he would recount his experiences during a brief episode as a sailor in imaginative stories.

At first, Fritiof Nilsson Piraten actually took up a profession that actually had nothing whatsoever to do with fictional stories. He studied law, which he successfully completed in 1918, and subsequently became a quite successful lawyer. His appearance in court hearings, however, is said to have often been quite entertaining.

He devoted most of his free time, together with a friend, to inventing and telling fictional stories. Over the years, he spent more and more time writing stories, so that eventually he only worked a few hours a day in his law office. He left most of the work to his secretary, including the fair copies of his literary manuscripts.

In 1932, his breakthrough as a writer came with his instantly successful debut novel Bombi Bitt och jag (Bombi Bitt and Me). The novel bears autobiographical traits from the author's memories of his youth and tells a kind of Swedish version of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in southeastern Skåne.