a picture for everyone Per Dahlström
There’s something about birch board pictures, which reminds me of the Sweden of my youth. I grew up among timber workers, family farmers and birch groves in western Värmland during the sixties. Much of rural society was unchanged, even though Sweden was becoming a modern country. Our games were simple and uncomplicated. I can still remember my joy when I would throw a stick into the spring creek and watch it whirl downstream, or the smell of a warm moped motor, or how the newly laid eggs felt in my hand when I was in my grandmother’s chicken pen. The birch board picture is a link to that time when I would play in the present. These days, we are often in some other place than where our bodies are located. There’s a gap between reality and the artificial life, which is happening somewhere else. The birch board picture is a link to my beginnings and to a time when experiences were analog and not something found on the net. They are a link to a time and a rural Sweden, which has disappeared, never to return. The era of my grandparents and a family farm Sweden, which was still living when I grew up. It was an innocent time, when things were getting better and better and people still believed in the future. The birch board picture was popular from the beginning of the twentieth century into the seventies, although it was not considered a sign of good taste to have one on the wall. Today its motifs appear simple and somewhat plain. They portray small town and village scenes: squares, bridges, waterfalls with power stations, and other examples of the wonders of the day — things, which were practically tourist sights but have now been mostly forgotten. Sweden was modernized much later than other countries in Europe. When we Swedes started to move into apartment buildings in the larger cities during the beginning of the twentieth century, we longed for the outhouses and
cow pastures. Our hearts remained in the countryside and we dreamed of buying our own little red cottage when we would be able to afford it. Perhaps this is why we hung birch board pictures on our walls. They were remembrances of well-known places — pictures of birch trees as an expression of a nostalgic sentimentality. The birch board picture was part of a past we clung to. The birch board picture appeared, and was common when working class people did not aspire to be elegant, and vanished when we wanted to become like our social betters. During the entire twentieth century, there was a campaign in Sweden to enlighten the Swedish people as to what belonged in a proper Swedish household. The author Ellen Key and the The Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts tried to make the average Swede understand the right way to furnish and decorate a household through magazines such as Skönhet för alla (Beauty for all), which appeared in 1899; Vackrare vardagsvara (More beautiful Everyday Objects), which appeared in 1919; and Acceptera (Accept), which appeared in 1931. Within modernism, there was the idea that beautiful and ugly were objective values, which the initiated understood best of all and therefore were best suited to spread the message to the masses. Beautiful and ugly were compared to right and wrong as well as true and false. Beauty could change and ennoble people and contribute to a more harmonious society. Ellen Key belonged to the previous century’s most influential tone-setter and played an important role within the feminist movement. She is most famous for the book Barnets århundrade (The Century of the Child), published in 1900. It was translated into a number of languages and made the author internationally famous. Ellen Key also had ideas about the importance of the environment of the home and was convinced that beautiful objects within the home could change and ennoble the people living there. They would be healthier, friendlier and happier if their homes 28