Heidi

The orphan Heidi is sent to live with her gruff grandfather on the high alp above a Swiss mountain village, where she thrives among the goats and the sunshine, until she is taken away to be companion to the invalid Clara in Frankfurt and pines for the mountains. Spyri set her village, the Dörfli, at Maienfeld in the canton of Graubünden: the grandfather's hut on the alp above the town, the high pastures where Peter grazes the goats, and the return from Frankfurt to the healing air of the heights.

The Alm-Uncle

The grandfather's hut on the alp

Chapter 1

Five-year-old Heidi is left with her estranged grandfather, a hermit the villagers fear, in his hut high on the alp. Against everyone's expectation she thaws his hard heart, and the mountain, with its goats, its hay bed and its enormous sky, becomes the paradise the rest of the book aches to return to.

Chapters 1-4

inspired by The Alm-Uncle's hut stands on the high alp above the village; Spyri drew the setting from the mountainside above Maienfeld, where the 'Heidialp' is now marked. The hut itself is invented and sited on that real alpine slope.

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