Note: The text first appeared in the September 2019 issue of VIEW magazine. He reappears here to mark the 5th anniversary of Greta Thunberg’s school strike.
It was pretty uncomfortable. And tight of course. Also because she had taken so much with her: a doll’s house, teddy bears, even a tricycle. But at least she didn’t get bored that way – back then, many years ago, in the back seat of her parents’ Volvo.
If you want to understand where Greta Thunberg gets her incredible strength from, her ability to ignore everything that doesn’t matter and not to be nervous even in the presence of the most famous people, you can’t avoid going on a journey back in time.
Greta Tintin Eleonora – just the name that the Stockholm artist couple Malena Ernman and Svante Thunberg gave their newborn daughter on January 3, 2003 sounds like the heroine of an Astrid Lindgren novel.
Exciting years follow: Mother Malena’s career as an opera singer picks up speed. Father Svante therefore gives up his job as an actor. Greta and he can accompany Malena to her engagements in Salzburg, Paris or Berlin in the family Volvo. When Greta’s sister Beata was born in 2006, family happiness seemed perfect. But it won’t stay that way for long.
When Greta starts school, the time of traveling together ends. Even worse: the very quiet girl is bullied, cries a lot and isolates herself at home. Only Moses, the family’s golden retriever, can get close to her.
Greta stops eating and loses weight dramatically. The girl, doctors say, suffers from Asperger’s, a form of autism often associated with high intelligence and the ability to focus extremely. But also because those affected find it difficult to make social contacts or understand the feelings of other people.
Mother Malena gives up her job as an opera singer in order to be able to take better care of her daughter – and to support her. Because Greta has come across a topic that scares her: climate change. A topic that runs in the family. One of Greta’s father’s ancestors, the Swedish Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius, discovered the connection between increasing CO2 emissions and global warming in 1895.
In May 2018, Greta Thunberg won an environmental protection writing competition, on August 20th she dared to take the big step into the public eye. Greta sits down in front of the Swedish parliament all alone with her self-painted sign “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (“School strike for the climate”). The rest is history.
The worldwide “Fridays For Future” movement grows within months from the action of one individual; the girl with the two braids becomes the figurehead of the global fight against climate change – and that has a lot to do with what made life difficult for Greta Thunberg years ago.
People feel that precisely because this girl lives in her own world, she is protected from the temptations of fame. Even if she wins the Nobel Peace Prize now, Greta Thunberg will never be like U2 singer Bono, who likes to claim to want to save the world but hides his many millions in tax havens.
Ego, fame, wealth are terms that play no role in Greta’s world. The only thing that matters is what is at stake. And it’s worth fighting for.
