Lina who was the maid in Katthult had a really bad toothache. “You’ll have to go to the Sme-Pelle,” said Alfred. Sme-Pelle was the smith. He used to pull out painful teeth with his horrible big pliers.
Fact
In 1949, the young German publisher Friedrich Oetinger was in Stockholm to meet the author Gunnar Myrdal. In a bookstore, he happened to hear about Pippi Langstrumpf. The rest is history – he requested a meeting with Astrid Lindgren and obtained a German option for the Pippi trilogy. Verlag Friedrich Oetinger in Hamburg still publishes all of Astrid Lindgren's children's books, and her great popularity in Germany remains intact. The film adaptations of her books were, in several cases, German co-productions, and they are still shown on German TV, especially around Christmas. Several of Astrid Lindgren's songs are very well known in their German translations, such as "Hey Pippi Langstrumpf!".