Heidi and Alm-Uncle, her grandfather

Heidi and Alm-Uncle, her grandfather, are bound first by family duty and then by a companionship made tangible through shelter, food, skilled work, and mutual trust. When Dete leaves Heidi in his care, the old man’s isolation and brusque manner make the arrangement seem precarious; the relationship that follows instead shows him becoming the child’s steady guardian, while Heidi’s affection opens outward into care for his neighbors and, eventually, his household’s guests.

Kinship, first meeting, and acceptance

Dete brings Heidi up the mountain on the premise that Alm-Uncle, as the child’s grandfather, must take responsibility for her. She tells Barbel that she has cared for Heidi since infancy and now intends to accept a well-paid position in Frankfurt, leaving the next of kin to do his duty. Barbel doubts that the old man can care for a young child, and Dete herself meets Alm-Uncle with an argument rather than an appeal to affection. She reminds him of the burden she has carried and warns him that he will answer for any harm that comes to Heidi.

Alm-Uncle responds to Dete’s accusation with anger, ordering her off the mountain. His sharp rejection of the adult who has brought Heidi does not become a rejection of the child. When Heidi reaches him first, she offers her hand and greets him as her grandfather. He shakes her hand abruptly and scrutinizes her, while she studies his striking appearance without flinching. The encounter establishes their contrast: he is guarded and commanding; she meets him directly, without fear or ceremony.

The practical work of making room for Heidi quickly replaces the dispute over whether she can stay. She prepares a bed in the loft, laying hay thickly enough to soften the floor and arranging it so she can see through the round window. Alm-Uncle finds a coarse piece of cloth to serve as a sheet, adds more hay beneath it, and helps her spread the heavy fabric. At supper he fills a bowl with milk, sets it within reach of her low three-legged stool, and gives her bread and cheese. These acts make his acceptance visible in ordinary provisions: a bed fitted to the child and a meal suited to her after the long climb.

A household made secure

The first night reveals how quickly Alm-Uncle’s responsibility becomes personal attention. During a violent storm, while gusts shake the hut and break branches among the old fir trees, he gets up because he fears Heidi will be frightened. He climbs to her bed and watches her sleep in the shifting moonlight before returning downstairs. The scene quietly revises his gruff first impression: he does not announce tenderness, but he rises in the night to check that the child is safe.

Their care for one another also appears in small acts of cooperation. When Heidi insists on visiting Peter’s Grandmother despite the deep snow, Alm-Uncle finally agrees, brings down the thick sack she uses as a cover, and takes her by sled across the glittering mountain. He wraps her warmly and holds her securely on the descent. The journey is both a grandfather’s practical protection and a response to Heidi’s determination to keep a promise of companionship to an older woman.

That concern for Peter’s Grandmother draws the pair into a shared pattern of service. Heidi notices a shutter banging in the wind and learns that the blind woman hears the house creak and fears it may collapse. Heidi is distressed by the grandmother’s blindness, but turns her grief into an assurance that Alm-Uncle can mend the house. He does: when Heidi returns, the grandmother mistakes the sound of his hammer for danger until Heidi explains that he is repairing the cottage. Alm-Uncle works around the walls and roof, using the nails he has brought, then carries Heidi safely home in his arms as darkness falls.

The winter visits become a repeated bond among the three. Peter’s Grandmother listens for Heidi’s quick footsteps and finds that the afternoons no longer drag on in darkness; Heidi sits beside her, talks animatedly about mountain life, and returns whenever the weather is fine. Alm-Uncle does not merely permit these visits. He takes Heidi down in the sled, brings tools, and spends many afternoons making the cottage sound and secure. The house ceases to groan and rattle through the night, and the grandmother can sleep in peace. Heidi’s affection for her grandfather thus includes confidence in his ability to act, while his affection for Heidi includes supporting the care she chooses to give others.

Separation and the continuing bond

Heidi’s life in Frankfurt separates her from the mountain household she longs for. With Clara Sesemann, she describes the Alm and her days there, and the memories intensify her desire to return. The contrast is material as well as emotional: at dinner and supper she saves the white rolls placed beside her plate because she knows Peter’s Grandmother has only hard black bread. The rolls become a promise of care carried across the distance, just as Heidi’s recollections of Alm-Uncle and the mountain keep her former home present while she is away.

When Heidi prepares to leave Frankfurt, Clara gives her dresses, aprons, handkerchiefs, and working materials, along with twelve white rolls for Peter’s Grandmother. Heidi also retrieves the book she has kept under her pillow and packs it with the rolls. She wraps another treasured possession in her old red shawl, but Fraulein Rottenmeier removes the bundle from the basket and throws it aside. The departure gathers the two sides of Heidi’s attachment: gifts for the grandmother she has been helping, and personal belongings connected to the home and life she is returning to.

Back on the mountain, Heidi turns the help she has received into continuing provision. She tells Peter’s Grandmother that she can write to Clara for more rolls, then remembers the money she has and proposes buying fresh white rolls in Dorfli—one each day and two on Sunday—with Peter bringing them up. Alm-Uncle’s role in her life is not limited to protection inside his own hut: the security he has given her makes room for her to notice need and devise practical ways to answer it. Her plans also show how relationships across households can be sustained by food, money, and repeated visits, not affection alone.

Shared care and lasting family

Alm-Uncle’s guardianship later extends to Clara Sesemann when she comes to the mountain. After Clara sleeps in the hut, he attends to her with gentleness and understanding, asking whether she is rested and ensuring that she has slept through the night. Because her wheelchair cannot pass through the hut door, he has removed two boards from the side of the shed to make an opening wide enough for it, leaving them loose so they can be replaced. His care is practical and adaptive: he changes the space to accommodate Clara rather than expecting her to manage an inaccessible entrance.

The relationship’s wider ethic of care culminates in Heidi’s request for the bed she used in Frankfurt. She explains that Peter’s Grandmother lies with her head downhill, can hardly breathe, and has to wear a shawl in bed for warmth; the high pillows and thick coverlet would make her nights more comfortable. The request is Heidi’s, and Clara’s grandmother responds by arranging for the bed to be sent from Frankfurt. The episode echoes the first night in Alm-Uncle’s hut, when he thickened Heidi’s hay bed and found a sheet for her: across the story, a bed is not merely a possession but a concrete measure of whether a vulnerable person can rest safely.

Alm-Uncle and Heidi’s bond is therefore shown less through declarations than through recurring acts: preparing a child’s bed, feeding her, checking on her during a storm, carrying her through winter, repairing a neighbor’s cottage, and making room for a sick guest. Heidi’s trust in her grandfather becomes a source of action beyond their household; his authority, in turn, becomes a dependable shelter rather than the threat Dete and Barbel feared. Their relationship gives the mountain home its emotional center while showing how care can pass from one generation to another and outward to people beyond the family.