A Journey Through Swedish Expedition Film

Expedition film was a popular phenomenon even in the early days of film. These early documentaries allowed Swedish audiences to visit exotic destinations in Africa and Asia – as well as the Swedish fells – without leaving their homes. We asked Kim Khavar Fahlstedt to tell us more about the genre.

The khaki-clad prince waits patiently, rifle in hand. There’s frantic activity under way in the bushes beyond the sun-baked field. Smoke rises in the sky, and we sense excited voices. We can’t hear there, only see here. And wait with the prince.

Suddenly, a dark shape rushes out of the bushes. It’s so fast that the shape draws a diagonal line across our field of vision. Then the prince shoots, and the shape falls. In the next moment, we see a pile of dead lions. The tall white prince walks around, inspecting and pointing, while black men, a head shorter, rummage and flay. Then they dance around the carcasses and the prince in the middle, somewhat incongruous in his safari helmet.

The year is 1922. But we’re not in the savannah. We’re squeezed in between double-breasted suits and tiaras at the grand Stockholm cinema Röda Kvarn, in the middle of a cold March. The prince in the film is called Wilhelm, and he’s sitting among us in the audience, recently back from his royal expedition to East Africa.

The expedition film The Cradle of the World from 1922 was a success in Sweden among audiences and critics alike. The next day, the Stockholm newspaper Stockholms-Tidningen described the film as “such a unique cultural product, that several decades from now it will maintain a very high position among the written and visual documents looking at inaccessible, for most Europeans unachievable and as we see it uncivilized countries, whose people and lives, like everything unknown and hidden, so appeal to our imagination.” As well as the lion hunt, the paper was fascinated by the film’s depiction of an utterly foreign culture. Particular emphasis was placed on the dance. “The audience seemed especially interested by the dances organized here and there in [the villages] in honour of the expedition”, wrote Arbetaren newspaper adding a tongue-in-cheek reference to one of Stockholm’s latest dance crazes at the time: “The shimmy appears to be quite popular down there.” Stockholms-Tidningen emphasized how all this exoticism was contrasted with the presence of the prince, “ballroom dances and war dances, everyday toil and Sunday suits. And in the middle of it all our white prince, who represented his people by enduring some magnificent adventures.”

Film had been invented just over 20 years earlier, and it immediately began being used as a scientific tool. From the early filmmaking nations, cameramen were sent abroad to capture the world in motion. Language confusion and other differences were no longer an obstacle, as film seemed to communicate in its own language – the familiar idiom of motion. They came back with moving pictures showing the sheer diversity of humankind and nature. Audiences were fascinated by how close all that foreignness suddenly felt. But they were soon to tire of sneezing old men, rustling leaves and laughing children. The realization came that film was also an amazing tool for telling stories. Why stop at depicting the world as it is, when you can create your own?

Narrative film soon became an industry, which in turn came to redefine the very existence of the medium. No other medium could be used to fantasize with such convincing immediacy. Even so, the scientific dimension and the adherence to truth remained. After all, there was so much still to discover. All that “unknown” and “hidden” that so appealed to our imagination. Film cameras were not only set up in fields and gardens where people could pretend convincingly, they were also packed into shipping trunks, rucksacks and sleds. For the serious adventurer, a film camera was a must.

The early 20th century was a time of nation building for Sweden, and it carried with it an introspective tendency. With Linnaeus as a role model, Sweden wanted to study and investigate its own tribe. Who are we and who are they? were the questions when bone structures and skull sizes were examined. This was something else any self-respecting adventure traveller had to consider. They didn’t only show the world’s multiplicity; the differences also needed to be contextualized based on Swedish people and Swedish culture.

The understanding of the nation and its people visualized through the ‘other’ became a recurring theme. Expedition films were often released alongside popular media forms, and combined visual popular culture with a scientific rhetoric firmly based on perceptions of masculinity, imperialism and hero worship. There was an affinity here with a macho-scented outdoor culture, in which Theodore Roosevelt was a leading figure. The former US president had himself starred in the expedition film Roosevelt in Africa (Cherry Kearton, 1910). The fact that the films were often screened in erudite settings, such as museums and lecture halls, narrated by a scientist or expedition member, added to the genre’s academic legitimacy.

Given the wild environments, expedition film was often very similar to nature film. (Why not read Malin Wahlberg’s article on Swedish nature film? Link at bottom of page.) Sometimes, they were the same thing. A natural depiction such as Bengt Berg’s Sagan om de sista örnarna (‘The Story of the Last Eagles,’ 1923), about eagles, was structured as an expedition, if only in Stockholm’s southern archipelago. But unlike nature film, in which animals could be the stars, as in the same director’s Den duktiga ejderhonan (‘The Clever Eider Hen,’ 1922), the narrative of expedition film was usually taken forward by an envoy on a trip, a voyage of discovery. There was always a departure and a return. This made a person from the home culture an escort and reference point as they went into the unknown. Like Prince Wilhelm with his rifle, in front of invisible beaters. Or clad in white among dancing Africans.

Svensk Filmindustri, which had achieved great international success with films that exoticized Nordic nature, invested in expedition film. If the 1920s were characterized by an extroverted gaze with colonial signs, as in Abu Markùb och de hundrade elefanter (‘Abu Markùb and the Hundred Elephants,’ Bengt Berg, 1925) and Med Sven Hedin i Österled (‘With Sven Hedin on the Eastern Trail,’ 1928), the 1930s and 1940s were more about the Swedish mountain world. In films like Ardnas – Nordfjällens konung (‘Ardnas: King of the Northern Fells,’ 1932) and I lapplandsbjörnens rike (‘In the Realm of the Lapland Bear,’ 1940), ‘camera hunter’ Stig Wesslén explored flora, fauna and Sámi culture in the most remote areas of Sweden. Other titles include some of Arne Sucksdorff’s early nature films. They cannot all be classified as expedition films, but some, such as the ethnographic drama documentary Vinden från väster (‘The Wind from the West,’ 1940), were taken forward by a ‘local lad’ going into the springtime Sápmi to ‘shake the anxiety out of his body’.

In many ways, expedition film reflected the ideology of the times. The films that have survived and been preserved are often pervaded by distasteful judgements and categorizations. The bitter taste is stronger still for those of us alive today: some of the most prominent names in Swedish expedition film, such as Bengt Berg and Sven Hedin, later cooperated with Germany’s Nazi regime.

Since the end of World War II, expedition film has evolved and branched out in different directions. In some cases, the curious gaze was turned back on the observer. New forms emerged, such as the self-conscious narrator and the contradictory montage. More about this another time.

Meanwhile, many of the original narrative devices of expedition film live on in modern filmmaking. The travel film narrative, whereby a representative of the home culture goes on a trip to translate the wider world, can be seen in everything from dated episodes of Swedish travel shows När och fjärran (‘Near and Far,’ TV4, 1997–2007) and Guillou på jakt (‘Jan Guillou on the Prowl,’ TV4, 2000–2002, 2012), to Kristian Petri’s travel films such as The Atlantic, (1995), Tokyo Noise (2002) and The Hotel (2016).

(published in Swedish in March 2022 and in English in December 2022, translation by Matt Bibby)