Her father, Max Pääbo was a civil engineer and her mother, Vida Pääbo-Juse was a painter and textile artist who had graduated from the Pallas Art School in Tartu.
Ilon spent her childhood in Haapsalu. "I have often thought that the best thing that happened to me was going to live with my grandmother and grandfather in Haapsalu. I was like their own child. They cared for me and loved me a lot," explains Wikland many decades later.
Ilon started school in Tallinn and then from 1939–1944 she attended the 1st Primary School in Haapsalu. In late September 1944, Ilon’s grandmother took her to the ship that was to take her, along with a school friend and her family, to Sweden. The war was drawing to an end and Russian
