6. “The Best Swedish Film Ever Made”

6. “The Best Swedish Film Ever Made” Terje Vigen (Victor Sjöström, Svenska Biografteatern, 1917)

Bo Florin

It was January 1917 and Europe was at war. The French film industry, which had blossomed up to that point, collapsed like a house of cards. Denmark, also a cinematographic leader at the start of the decade, had lost ground as well. American films had triumphantly crossed the Atlantic and invaded Europe. Meanwhile, the enthusiasm and expansiveness of the production company Svenska Biografteatern’s first years at the studio in Lidingö outside of Stockholm had ebbed. Calls for public supervision of the industry had long since won a hearing. The censorship board, which had been institutionalised in 1911, continued to irritate producers by cutting out sequences or, worse still, banning entire films. The time had come to try new approaches. On 29 January 1917, Victor Sjöström’s Terje Vigen, based on Henrik Ibsen’s poem by the same name, opened simultaneously at the Röda Kvarn Theatre in Stockholm and Paladsteatret in Copenhagen (and a week later at Bøndernes Hus in Kristiania, Norway). The daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter’s cultural section contained something quite unusual the following day – a review of Svenska Bio’s new film signed B B-n, otherwise known as Bo Bergman, an established poet and a theatre critic for the newspaper (normally film was discussed in the entertainment section of the paper). The article started off by paying tribute to the contribution that Terje Vigen had made to the prestige of filmmaking, “the artistic significance of which has always been the

subject of controversy”1 (Dagens Nyheter, 1917). For an industry that was striving mightily to shed the label of vulgarity, those were eagerly awaited words. The investment had apparently paid off. At a cost of 60,000 Swedish kronor, Terje Vigen was the most expensive Swedish film made up to that point, with a budget three times as big as that of any earlier production (Forslund 1980, 87). Moreover, it represented a big step forward in Svenska Bio’s steadfast new focus on fewer but higher quality productions (Florin 1997, 9–10).2 The decision to change the production policy was taken by Svenska Bio as the dominating “international style” seemed to have become less successful at attracting new film spectators. Terje Vigen was the first of a number of more expensive Swedish film productions that, in retrospect, comprise what has been defined as the “Golden Age” of Swedish cinema and which are often based on prestigious literary works, several of them by Nobel laureates. Historians largely agree that this occurred during the period from Terje Vigen in 1917 to Gösta Berlings saga in 1924 (Forslund 1980, 83). However, it would be a serious mistake to see this period as an isolated phenomenon. On the one hand, the release of the quality film Ingeborg Holm in 1913 had already prefigured the shift (Olsson 1994). On the other hand, of the 115 Swedish films made during the period, several were not part of a general transition but spread over a number of different initiatives and genres and some were produced by a number of smaller film companies (Florin 1997, 11ff). Thus, Terje Vigen was not the starting point of a “new Swedish cinema” but the result of a newly established film policy that would eventually lead to a number of significant changes. In this chapter, my focus is dual. Firstly, more generally, I address the idea of a “national style” of Swedish cinema, of which Terje Vigen has been cited as the first, and one of the most prominent, examples, versus the explicitly transnational character of both the devices

1 All quotes from Swedish newspapers are translated by the author. 2 The outline of the starting point for the “Golden Age” of Swedish cinema in the first paragraphs of this article is based on the introduction to my dissertation Den nationella stilen, Studier i den svenska filmens guldålder (1997).

and sources that served as the foundation for this style. Secondly, I intend to go into more detail to study the specific adaptation of Ibsen’s poem from one medium to another against the background of the more general concept of intermediality. These two considerations – the national/transnational and the adaptational/intermedial – are indeed closely intertwined themselves. Silent cinema in around 1920 was, nationally as well as internationally, dependent to a considerable extent not only on literary adaptations but also on intermedial circulations, where the dynamics between words and images were put into play in complex ways (Rajewsky 2005). While Bo Bergman’s status as a critic in a field more established than film and the fact that his review appeared in the cultural section of a major newspaper might have led historians to exaggerate the influence he wielded, his assessment of Terje Vigen was far from unique (Furhammar 1991, 68). On the contrary, the press was remarkably unanimous in its praise. Stockholms Tidningen (1917) wrote that “Svenska Biografteatern’s ‘Terje Vigen’, eminently directed by Victor Sjöström, is indisputably a welcome departure from traditional films”. According to Aftonbladet (1917), “Yesterday’s opening of Ibsen’s Terje Vigen at the Röda Kvarn Theater scored a notable triumph for the art of Swedish moviemaking.” Stockholms Dagblad (1917) agreed: “It is no exaggeration to call Svenska Biografteatern’s production of Terje Vigen the best Swedish film ever made.” Svenska Dagbladet (1917) raised expectations even more: “Terje Vigen is not only a major artistic triumph for Svenska Biografteatern and everyone who contributed to its making, it is likely to lend Swedish industry an illustrious international reputation.” At the time, Ibsen was in the air, both in Sweden and internationally. In 1911, the US production company Thanhouser Film Corporation made three one-reel film adaptations of Ibsen’s works (see King and Yalgın in this volume), and a short film based on Terje Vigen was also made the same year in Germany (Hanssen and Rossholm 2012, 159; see also the filmography in this volume). In 1915, a number of feature films were made, based on Gengangere and Brand in Russia and, in the US, on Gengangere and Peer Gynt, followed by Samfundets

støtter – Pillars of Society – in 1916. Of these films, only the American version of Gengangere – Ghosts, starring Henry B. Walthall, and with Erich von Stroheim in a minor role – came to Sweden (Wredlund and Lindfors 1991, 84; see also Sandberg in this volume). In Sweden, the rights to four works by Ibsen had already been acquired in 1913, but this did not include Terje Vigen (Forslund 1980, 83). Nevertheless, the Swedish actor and director Gustaf Molander wrote a script in 1915 based on Terje Vigen, for which he also acquired the rights that same year, and which would later form the basis for Sjöström’s film (Åhlander 1986, 346f). Sjöström, though, already had a history of his own with Ibsen’s literary works. Early in his career as an actor, Sjöström had, according to his own records, failed completely in his 1898 role in Kongs-Emnerne (The Pretenders) by Ibsen (Forslund 1980, 28). In the summer of 1911, the year before he enrolled with Svenska Bio, he returned to Ibsen while working for a theatre company (“Skådebanans ambulerande teatersällskap”) where he appeared more successfully as both actor and director of Hærmændene paa Helgeland (The Vikings at Helgeland) (Forslund 1980, 36). Thus, at the time when Sjöström started working on Terje Vigen, he was already familiar with Ibsen as a writer and Ibsen was also well-known and appreciated within the general context of Swedish culture. Thus, when Svenska Bio was changing its production strategy, its choice to make this film based on Ibsen’s poem the first in the new vein was well grounded, primarily given the author’s literary reputation and his standing within the wider cultural context, including that of theatre and film. In retrospect, one of the most striking things about Terje Vigen is the degree to which Sjöström, in his adaptation, stays close to Ibsen’s poem. The film recounts the story of an ageing sailor who looks back on the injustices he has suffered at the hands of the British but who refrains from exacting revenge by virtue of the wisdom that life has taught him. While Sjöström abridges, compresses, and rearranges individual scenes, the intertitles are largely true to the wording of the poem. As I hope to show here, what he does is animate the poem by making changes to the text, mostly to the extent that certain sections become redundant once you can physically see what is going on.

Below, I explore the relationship between the film adaptation and the original text of Ibsen’s poem and the relationship between the film, written text, and original illustrations to the poem by the Norwegian painter, illustrator, and author Christian Krohg, which were first published in 1892. In 1975, John Fullerton noted the similarity between Krohg’s illustrations and the film, but without providing any detailed analysis (51–54). In an article on Sjöström’s adaptation, Eirik Frisvold Hanssen and Anna Sofia Rossholm note how “the poem of Terje Vigen was associated with specific imagery long before the film was made” (2012, 151) and furthermore argue that certain scenes in Sjöström’s film “actually attempt to recreate motifs, poses, and compositions from Krohg’s illustrations, establishing further intertextual links” (ibid.) but without visual exemplifications. Hanssen and Rossholm, however, had a very broad aim – the application of an adaptation and translation studies approach to this case – whereas my own is to explore the intermedial approach in more detail and consider what the film adds to the text and the illustrations. Intermediality can, as literary scholar Irina O. Rajewsky has shown, be understood either in a broad sense as “a fundamental condition or category” or in a narrower sense “as a critical category for the concrete analysis of specific individual media products or configurations” (2005, 47). In my approach to intermediality, I follow Rajewsky’s more specific definition of what she calls “a literary conception of intermediality”, which narrows the concept down to three distinct subcategories: medial transposition, media combination, and intermedial references (51–52; see also Holt in this volume). These three subcategories are all highly applicable to the film Terje Vigen. As an adaptation of a poem, it is a clear example of medial transposition. By including both the text of the poem and the visual imagery, it also combines two different medial forms of articulation. In the film’s clear references to Christian Krohg’s illustrations of the poem, which themselves are examples of a media combination within Ibsen’s literary work, the film also includes several intermedial references. The intersections between these subcategories, however, are overlapping rather than clearcut.

How, then, has Ibsen’s Terje Vigen more concretely been integrated into Sjöström’s film? In the intertitles of the film, the exact wording has been retained but includes three different types of adaptations:

1. Mere shortenings: Whole stanzas or parts of stanzas have been omitted. 2. Compressions: One and the same intertitle contains a shortening insofar as the beginning of the text originates in one stanza and ends in another. 3. Inversions: On three occasions the order of the stanzas has been reversed.

Naturally, shortenings and compressions are justified in the first place by the length of the poem (43 stanzas in all),3 but it is also important to note that some parts of the poem become redundant when they are rendered visually – a clear example of media transposition at work. One example is the scene in the film where Terje is sitting at home with his child on his knees and his wife standing in the background. A gang of sailors enters, laughing. They are clearly trying to persuade Terje to come along but do not succeed and leave. The scene in the film corresponds to stanza nine of the poem, which appears only partly in the intertitles:

On Sunday evenings, when the dance-tunes blare wild from the nearest-by farm, he would sing his happiest ditties there where little Anna tugged his brown hair and lay in his folding arm. (Ibsen 1986, 65)4

Thus, one of Sjöström’s strategies, though rarely used in Terje Vigen, is to rework parts of the poem by rendering them cinematically. But the

3 All quotes from Ibsen’s Terje Vigen have been translated by John Northam (Ibsen 1986 [1862]). All original Norwegian quotes are from the first edition published in 1862 and reprinted in Henrik Ibsens skrifter 11 (Ibsen 2009). 4 In the Norwegian first edition: “Om Søndagskvælden, naar Dandsen klang/ Vildt fra den nærmeste Gaard,/ Sine gladeste Viser han hjemme sang,/ Mens lille Anna laa paa hans Fang/ Og drog i hans brune Haar” (Ibsen 2009, 386). The first two lines are omitted from the intertitle.

Fig. 1. Scene from Terje Vigen (1917). Courtesy of the Swedish Film Institute, © AB Svensk Filmindustri.

film also includes an addition that does not correspond with any part of Ibsen’s text, when, later in the film, Terje is hiding from his pursuers beneath a heap of spruce twigs. This introduction of narrative suspense between pursuer and pursued is a highly cinematic strategy, a clear motivation for which is its visual efficiency. Another interesting example in the film concerns its use of flashbacks, which Sjöström employs to add a cinematic dimension to the poem. The first occurrence is the intertitle quoting stanza 23 of the poem, in which the imprisoned Terje thinks about his home:

[…] his shoulders rounded, his hair it turned grey From dreaming about his home. (Ibsen 1986, 68)5

The intertitle is followed by an image of the graying Terje, which then fades out and is succeeded by an image of Terje with his child, an image which has already appeared earlier in the film. After another fade-out, an image of his wife before a window with the child on her lap fades in. This image, however, does not appear earlier in the film. Thus, whereas

5 “Hans Nakke bøjed sig, graat blev hans Haar/ Af Drømmene om hans Hjem” (Ibsen 2009, 390).

the first flashback is a clear image of a past story event, the second presents an image from Terje’s imagination, of his wife and child waiting for him at home (Fig. 1) (see also Hanssen and Rossholm 2012, 152). In the 1955 article “The Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: An Essay in the Iconography of Romanticism”, art historian Lorenz Eitner discusses these two central iconographic commonplaces. He notes that the motif of the window, where one looks from inside dark rooms through open windows at the landscape outside, is frequent in both French and German art, particularly in the circles around Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) in Dresden, which also had a great influence on Nordic art and artists. The window was frequently used as a metaphor in contemporary poetry as well. Eitner analysed the window as a symbol of the human longing for infinity, with the window frame as an element both opening up and closing in. By linking the open window and the storm-tossed boat, Eitner offers a useful framework for the imagery of Sjöström’s film:

In contrast to the image of the open window, which is easily mistaken for simple genre, the symbolism of the storm-tossed boat is ancient and familiar. Used to dramatize man’s struggle against fate or against nature, or to point up the need for salvation, it occurs in poetry and painting with the frequency of a popular figure of speech. (1955, 287)

The film adaptation thus adds an imagined window image to the frequent images of the storm-tossed boat, which stands out in both the poem itself and its later illustrations. According to Eitner’s definition, this additional flashback indeed places Sjöström’s Terje Vigen at the very heart of Romantic iconography, exemplifying how media transposition may be turned into media combination, as the film medium is used to add another dimension to the poem by way of a subjective flashback. The aesthetic of the view, however, is not exclusively a Romanticist endeavour. It was also frequently used in early photography, where such Romantic motifs were turned into a template, and practically a cliché, in the realm of artistic photography and cinematography, as described by Tom Gunning (1997, 9–24), among others. Sjöström’s film is thus based both on tropes from art history and devices from

early cinema. Below, the relationship between moving images and illustrations will be explored in more detail. A second example of the use of flashbacks in Terje Vigen occurs in the intertitle quoting stanza 27, when Terje has come to rescue the wrecked English ship:

The pilot let go of the craft. (Ibsen 1986, 69)6

Here, Sjöström includes a flashback to an earlier scene in the film where Terje is shown on deck as a prisoner of the English. Following this flashback, there is a fade-in back to the present. Thus, the connection to the past is presented as Terje’s memory. In Ibsen’s poem, however, the memory is ascribed to the English lord, as much later – in stanza 32 – in “a lightning” he remembers “a deed half-lost in the memory” (Ibsen 1986, 71)7:

[…] he knew, now, the sailor that on his knees had crouched on his deck and wept. (Ibsen 1986, 71)8

By appropriating the memory for Terje, Sjöström accentuates his focus on the main character, placing his memories and his imagination at the centre of the narrative by highlighting them visually. These examples in particular stand out in sharp relief against the background of the generally striking redundancy of the film, where a course of events is often rendered twice, in text as well as in imagery. This is also true of dramatically important events, as when the Norwegian flag is raised at the end, after already having been announced in an intertitle. But just as often, it is true of less important passages as well, as in the scene described earlier when Terje refuses to leave his wife and child as his fellow sailors try to convince him to join them. The fact that it is not

6 “Men Lodsen slap Roer og Rat” (Ibsen 2009, 392). 7 “(…) et Minde om halvglemt Daad” (Ibsen 2009, 393). 8 “Han kjendte Matrosen, som laa med Graad/ Iknæ paa Korvettens Dæk!” (Ibsen 2009, 393).

possible to trace a consistent structuring principle in the adaptation seems to indicate that Sjöström, while striving for a new cinematic mode of narration to render the poem, remained faithful to the literary source to such an extent that he hesitated to express the literary content by visual means only. This, however, would change in his later work (Florin 1997, 160–84). Finally, of the three inversions, one deserves particular attention. While Terje is on his way home, with the boat filled with food that he is bringing back to the village, the English have their sights on him, as he is trying to escape. After “the shoal with the hidden top just east of the Hombor sound” (Ibsen 1986, 67)9 is established in an intertitle, Terje is seen rowing. Then, after a short interlude, a new intertitle is introduced:

the English officer shouted ‘stop’! He hoisted an oar butt and let it drop and stove in the dory’s shell. (Ibsen 1986, 67)10

A visualisation of the event follows, with a duplication of the dramatically profitable stroke with the oar. Immediately afterwards, there is a dialogue in which Terje appeals to the Englishman:

‘there on the most innermost beach-a-shore watches my wife at our pitiful door and waits with our baby for bread!’ (Ibsen 1986, 67)11

In the poem, this part of the text is situated earlier, where it has a quite different function, being a prayer to God. In the film, Sjöström instead makes use of this prayer on a later occasion as a dialogue intertitle, thus transforming Ibsen’s literary idealism into a more realist and direct cinematic mode – yet another example of media combination. In his poem, Ibsen employs a grandiose style, but aptly describes Terje’s feelings and gestures. If that kind of pathos is understandable

9 “de blinde Skjær/ Lidt østenfor Homborgsund” (Ibsen 2009, 388). 10 “Fra Stavnen bød Officeren «Stop!»/ Han hæved en Aare med Bladet op/ Og hug den i Skjægtens Bund” (Ibsen 2009, 389). 11 “Inderst derinde paa Strandens Grus/ Sidder min Viv ved det fattige Hus,/ Og venter med Barnet paa Brød!” (Ibsen 2009, 389).

in the historical context that spawned the poem, it appealed even more to the era in which the work enjoyed its greatest popularity. First published in 1862, the poem was widely read during the period leading up to the 1905 dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian Union (Forslund 1980, 85). Similarly, nationalistic sentiment during World War I no doubt contributed to the film’s success. According to a rather revealing notation in the script (signed by screenwriter Gustaf Molander), the original intention was not to directly convey the tenor of Ibsen’s poem on the screen without comment but rather to frame it as a literary work.12 The script opens with a scene that appears neither in the poem nor in the final version of the film:

Scene 1: Ibsen’s study. Ibsen sits at his desk, looks straight ahead, writes – the screen darkens: intertitle ‘There lived a remarkably grizzled man…’.13

The idea was that Ibsen’s study would reappear in Scene 4, before the main plot began, with the beginning of the third stanza:

And now, all I’ve heard about Terje I’ll try to tell from the first to the last (Ibsen 1986, 63)14

In other words, Terje Vigen was intended to have a kind of metaframework. If the film had started with such a prologue, its emphasis would have been more on Ibsen as creator of the work – the “I” of the poem – and the conveyor of its feelings. By eliminating this idea, Sjöström instead situates himself as the originator of the film. While still clearly attributing literary authorship to Ibsen and faithfully rendering the essence of his poem, Sjöström in fact appropriates both work and feelings for cinema (Florin 1993, 19; Hanssen and Rossholm 2012, 150). But there is more to the picture. In 1892, the Danish publishing house Gyldendal published Terje Vigen with drawings by Christian

12 Sjöström’s annotated script, Swedish Film Institute library collections. 13 Ibid. “There lived a remarkably grizzled man” is Northam’s translation (Ibsen 1986, 63) of the opening of Ibsen’s poem “Der bo’de en underlig graasprængt En” (Ibsen 2009, 381). 14 “Nu skal jeg fortælle, hvad jeg har hørt/ om Terje fra først til sidst” (Ibsen 2009, 384).

Krohg for the first time; this was also the first time the poem had been published as a separate book. This illustrated edition, the first visualisation of the text, came to be the “blueprint” for almost every new edition. As previously noted, others have observed that Sjöström drew inspiration from Krohg’s illustrations for his image composition. Elsewhere, I have shown that both book illustrations and paintings inspired not only Sjöström but also his contemporaries. For instance, Albert Edelfelt’s illustrations for the 1904 edition of Selma Lagerlöf’s Herr

Fig. 2. Book illustration by Christian Krohg. From the collection of the National Library of Norway.

Fig. 3. Scene from Terje Vigen (1917). Courtesy of the Swedish Film Institute, © AB Svensk Filmindustri.

Arnes penningar clearly inspired Mauritz Stiller’s screen version of the story (1919), and Adolph Tidemand’s paintings, which have a clear link to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s novel, have similarly been adapted for John W. Brunius’ film Synnöve Solbakken (1919) (Florin 1997, 100–ff; Florin 2017). Circulation, repetition, and the variation of motifs in different media were already being made frequent use of in the visual culture around 1910 to enhance and establish the new medium of film (Uricchio and Pearson 1993). The Swedish film industry at the time sought cultural acceptance by relying on famous literary sources, but it achieved this just as much by integrating its imagery into a common cultural iconography (Florin 1997, 185ff). This complex web of relations all exemplifies the extent to which intermedial references – the third subcategory introduced by Rajewsky – are at play here. How, then, was this put into practice? A few examples may illustrate the different methods used.15 An obvious example is the illustration accompanying stanza eight, where Terje is back from the sea and standing outside his house, peering “through the curtain of white” (Ibsen 1986, 65).16 In the film, the same scene is almost a copy of the composition made by Krohg (Figs. 2–3). The stanza goes on to describe what he sees:

indoors there were two bestowed,–his wife sat and span in the peaceful light, but the crib held a rosy, healthy mite, a baby girl, and it crowed. (Ibsen 1986, 65)17

The scene after Terje peers through the window is a staging of this description, in which we can see Terje through the window in the background (Fig. 4). Interestingly, this scene is an inverted staging of the next illustration in the poem (Fig. 5). Stanza ten introduces the theme

15 Some of Christian Krohg's drawings used as illustrations in this chapter have been slightly cropped. 16 “Han glytted ind bag det hvide Gardin” (Ibsen 2009, 385). 17 “Da saa han i Stuen To, –/ Hans Kone sad stille og hespled Liin,/ Men i Vuggen laa, frisk og rød og fin,/ En liden Pige og lo” (Ibsen 2009, 385–386).

Figs. 4 and 7. Scenes from Terje Vigen (1917). Courtesy of the Swedish Film Institute, © AB Svensk Filmindustri. Figs. 5–6. Book illustrations by Christian Krohg. From the collection of the National Library of Norway. Fig. 8. Book illustration by Christian Krohg. From the collection of the National Library of Norway. Fig. 9. Scene from Terje Vigen (1917). Courtesy of the Swedish Film Institute, © AB Svensk Filmindustri.

of the war year of 1809 and describes its miseries for the people as a whole. Here, in both the illustration and the film scene, we see Terje in the pose of a worried father (Figs. 6 and 7). In the book illustration, he is sitting beside his daughter’s bed, whereas in the film, his wife has just carried their child to her bed and he is sitting alone by the fire. A further example demonstrates that the likeness may not always be that obvious. Here, Terje is in prison, and the illustration shows an almost empty room with Terje in the front right, looking to the left (Fig. 8). The composition of the room in the film differs, however, in terms of Terje’s placement as well as his stare, clearly recalling Krohg’s composition. Ibsen’s line “his hair it turned grey” (Ibsen 1986, 68)18 (stanza 23) receives even more emphasis in the film; in Krohg’s illustration his grey hair remains a metaphorical expression, whereas it becomes literal in the film (Fig. 9). Even more obvious are the similarities between illustration and film image in the highly dramatic scene where Terje raises his oar butt, only to drop it again (stanza 29), as well as in the harmonious composition of the scene with “milord and lady” (stanza 40), when they come by to thank Terje for his heroic deeds (Figs. 10–13).

18 “graat blev hans Haar” (Ibsen 2009, 390). Fig. 10. Book illustration by Christian Krohg. From the collection of the National Library of Norway. Fig. 11. Scene from Terje Vigen (1917). Courtesy of the Swedish Film Institute, © AB Svensk Filmindustri.

Fig. 12. Book illustration by Christian Krohg. From the collection of the National Library of Norway. Fig. 13. Scene from Terje Vigen (1917). Courtesy of the Swedish Film Institute, © AB Svensk Filmindustri.

Whether the visual material compared is dramatic or harmonious, reproduced or inverted, almost identical or only loosely inspired, whatever the methods used, these comparisons across media are quite illustrative. The similarities between the illustrations and the film, as well as the recurring motifs across text, drawing, and film, clearly show that the intertext of the film is not only literary but also intermedial in the sense defined earlier, using medial transpositions, media combinations, and intermedial references. Sjöström’s fidelity to Ibsen’s text in his transformation of the text into film is just as obvious in his transformation of Krohg’s drawings into moving images. Intermediality here could be regarded as a relationship between three different media – literature, drawing and film – with different transpositions, combinations, and intermedial references at play in a constant and ongoing dynamic. Another way to describe the intermediality in Terje Vigen, however, would be to view it as a relationship between two interrelated intermedial texts, both operating through a dynamic between text and image – on the one hand the illustrated poem and on the other the silent film with its intertitles – but still containing the same three subcategories: transpositions, combinations, and intermedial references. In this way, Sjöström’s Terje Vigen appears as an intermedial node, both based on and extending into different media through a complex web of cross-references. As I have argued, however, Terje Vigen is not an isolated case. Owing to the widespread enthusiasm that the film aroused, particu-

larly in Bo Bergman’s review, it has come to be regarded as the starting point of a new epoch in the history of Swedish film. While Mauritz Stiller’s Gösta Berlings Saga of 1924 normally marks the end of the era, Sjöström’s Körkarlen of 1921 indisputably represents its climax (Furhammar 1991, 81). Dominated by the works of Sjöström and Stiller and serving as the crucible for the distillation of a national style, this period is often referred to as the Golden Age of Swedish film. Although the concept of a golden age has been questioned (Florin 1997, 10ff), it is an apt expression, particularly with regard to the aspirations that the industry harboured at the time, which were described in newspaper and magazine articles of the period, often celebrating the success of Swedish film as well as its distinctive character. At the request of Filmjournalen, Nils Bouveng, a big shot at the newly formed Svensk Filmindustri (a merger of Svenska Bio and several other studios), wrote a highly polemical article in 1919 provocatively entitled “Swedish Film as National Advertising: How the Industry Plans to Conquer the World”. Bouveng may have been a businessman more than anything else, but his tone is typical of the age and by no means at odds with that adopted by many contemporary critics:

Why has our country’s film industry been able to carve out a leading position in the international market? Quite simply because it’s a Swedish product in the best sense of the word – a mark of quality […]. Our cinematography is firmly rooted in time-honoured culture and unfailing taste. We can make films from literary masterpieces – we have already begun to specialise in quality when it comes to that very field. […] Our movies are already circling the world alongside their American counterparts. They don’t grab the public with the power and suggestiveness of smash hits, but they are what they are – little gems of art. (1919, 30)19

19 “Varför har vårt lands filmindustri kunnat skapa sig en rangplats på världsmarknaden? Helt enkelt därför att den är en svensk produkt, svensk i ordets bästa betydelse: en kvalitetsprodukt. […] Vår filmkonst har alla förutsättningar att kunna bygga på gammal kultur och säker smak. Vi kunna skapa filmer av litteraturens mästerverk, det har redan blivit vår specialitet att just på det området göra kvalitativ insats. […] Våra filmer gå redan över världen vid sidan av de amerikanska. De ta publiken inte med schlagerns kraft och suggestion, utan därför att de äro vad de äro – små konstverk.”

The author’s aspirations for Swedish cinema are crystal clear here, and he unashamedly appropriates anything that the transnational film culture of the late 1910s might add to the international success of Swedish cinema. Interestingly, and despite Bouveng’s claims of a national cinema, these “Swedish products” made from “literary masterpieces” (apart from those by the hand of Selma Lagerlöf) came from Ibsen, Bjørnson, and Hamsun, and from Gjellerup and Pontoppidan, from Sigurjónsson and Linnankoski. For that matter, the “little gems of art” came in part from such artists as Christian Krohg, Albert Edelfelt, and Adolph Tidemand. “The best Swedish film ever made”, as well as many other films from the period, were thus neither uniquely Swedish nor exclusively cinematic but, rather, international and intermedial. The unique quality of Terje Vigen and its equivalents in the Swedish cinema of the “golden years” is precisely their active embrace of many different sources and medial expressions, national as well as international, which were turned into something completely new and hitherto unseen in the melting pot of cinema.

Bibliography

Aftonbladet. 1917. Review of Terje Vigen. 30 January: n.p.

Bergman, Bo. 1917. Review of Terje Vigen. Dagens Nyheter. 30 January: n.p.

Bouveng, Nils. 1919. “Svensk film som nationell reklam. Hur den svenska filmtrusten tänker erövra världen.” Filmjournalen 2:30.

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