Elin Wägner

Elin Wägner was a Swedish journalist and writer as well as a suffragette, a feminist, an advocator for peace, and an early eco-critic. She was also one of the few screenwriters who managed to make the transition from silent to sound film. While she is a canonized figure in Swedish literary history, her name remains largely absent from film history, even though she worked in the Swedish film industry for decades. Her film work is glossed over by her biographers although she collaborated with prominent filmmakers, including Anna Hofman-Uddgren who was long regarded as Sweden’s first female director before Ebba Lindkvist got that credit. Just like Selma Lagerlöf, Wägner showed an early interest in the new medium of film, and her work in the film industry provided her with additional income.

Wägner gained her first practical experience in the film industry in 1911 when she wrote the screenplay for Hon fick platsen eller Exkonung Manuel i Stockholm/She Got the Position or Ex-King Manuel in Stockholm (1911) in which she also acted. By that time, she had already made a name for herself as a journalist and as the author of the novels Norrtullsligan/The Norrtull Gang (1908) and Pennskaftet/Penwoman (1910). Reflecting Wägner’s activism for female suffrage and women’s rights, the plot of the film centers on a group of female journalists, played by real-life Stockholm journalists, some of them well-known public figures. Among them were Wägner’s fellow colleagues of the so-called “Ligan,” an association of female journalists fighting for gender equality and better working conditions (Bremmer). Their goal with the film was to establish a travel scholarship fund for female members of the press, which they managed to achieve thanks to its successful run. According to the daily Dagens Nyheter:

Elin Wägner’s little journalist drama ‘Hon fick platsen,’ which contributed so greatly to the success of Pennskaften’s soiree at the Grand Hôtel, is now performed daily to full houses at the Apollo Theater. The images appear here far more vividly than was possible with the provisional arrangements when the play was performed at the Grand Hôtel, and they have also been received with the liveliest interest. A well-known Stockholm editor’s jovial picture on the screen has aroused much joy in the salon. Of the Apollo Theatre’s gross income, 10 percent will go to the women journalists’ scholarship fund while this picture is on the program. (qtd. in “Hon fick platsen”)

Hon fick platsen was co-produced and distributed by the vertically integrated Swedish company Apollo, which screened the film at its own cinema chain. The other co-producer, “Publicistklubbens kvinnor,” was the women’s branch within the Swedish publicist club, a Swedish journalists’ association founded in 1874. According to the Swedish Film Database, it was the only time the group acted as a film producer (“Hon fick platsen”). The film premiered in February, a few months before the congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in June 1911 from which Wägner reported for the women’s weekly Idun.

Neither the film nor its screenplay are preserved today, but Ellen Rydelius, one of the journalists associated with the Ligan, recalls the plot in her memoir: A Stockholm newspaper is hiring a female reporter. Five or six women show up, most of them experienced, except one shy newcomer. The editor gives them a challenge, as Rydelius writes: “Rumor has it that ex-king Manuel of Portugal is secretly in town, [and the women should] find him and bring back a report by tomorrow. As you might guess, the shy newcomer succeeds. While the others search in vain at the Grand Hôtel, she guesses he might be at Pinet’s popular dance hall. She flirts her way through the crowd and finally spots him. Discreetly, she snaps a photo with a hidden camera. The next day, she gets the job” (Rydelius 88).

Due to the success of her first film, Wägner was commissioned to write a screenplay for Systrarna/The Sisters (1912). Directed by Anna Hofman-Uddgren, the film had been commissioned by cinema owner N.P. Nilsson, nicknamed “Häst-Nisse” (Horse Nisse), who was eager to screen domestic Swedish film productions. Hofman-Uddgren’s husband Gustaf Uddgren contacted Wägner who wrote the short story upon which the screenplay is based (“Systrarna”). Sisters Ruth and Fanny work as waitresses but choose different paths: Ruth joins the Salvation Army, while the frivolous Fanny seeks security with a rich lover. When both are betrayed by men—Ruth by the deceitful notary and Fanny by her abandoning friend—their fates cross again. Ruth tries to save Fanny, who is being hunted by detectives, and through a change of clothes, Fanny finds protection in the Salvation Army uniform. Mistakes and complications arise, but in the end, the sisters are reunited. Critics praised the film’s “lively depiction of the setting and the cinematic rhythm of the narrative” (“Systrarna”).

Systrarna was given an age rating of 15 by the state’s Film Censorship Board (Statens biografbyrå). Reviews highlighting the film’s lack of “distasteful elements” were intended as praise, especially considering Sweden’s introduction of film censorship in 1911. Ingrid Stigsdotter notes that the film was successful, with multiple screenings and regional distribution. The film was advertised as “Elin Wägner’s magnificent cinema drama Systrarna” (Stigsdotter 63). According to Stigsdotter, such a marketing strategy set out “to capitalize on Wägner’s association with ‘Stockholm girls’ from the successful newspaper serial turned novel Norrtullsligan, presenting the film as ‘The moving life story of two Stockholm girls’” (Stigsdotter 63). Although the film itself is presumed lost, a handwritten version of the screenplay (probably recorded by Hofman-Uddgren’s husband) survives in a small notebook preserved in the screenplay archives of the Swedish Film Institute.

In the following decade, Wägner’s political and literary activities took up most of her time: she published several novels and worked as a journalist and editor. Engaged in peace activism during World War I, she co-founded the organization Rädda Barnen in 1919, which is the Swedish chapter of the International Save the Children Alliance. In 1924, she was the co-founder of a women’s adult education college at Fogelstad. The previous year she co-founded the political magazine Tidevarvet and became its editor-in-chief until 1927.

In 1927, Wägner went back to film and wrote the screenplay for Ungdom/Youth, which revolved around the tumultuous relationship between three artists. Wägner based her script on an idea by the film’s director Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius (“Ungdom”). The film received largely positive reviews upon its premiere that year. Fortunately, the analog film copy and the screenplay are preserved. However, the film has not been digitized by the Swedish Film Institute. Ungdom was Wägner’s last original silent-era screenplay. She also co-scripted, with Oscar Hemberg, the 1939 sound film Efterlyst: En modern Stockholms-historia/Wanted: A Modern Stockholm Story, directed by Schamyl Baumann. It was conceived as a newly written sequel to her novel Norrtullsligan, set in the 1930s. The film received positive reviews in the press, particularly for its topicality around working women, relationship trouble, and economic constraints (“Efterlyst”).

Alongside her original screenplays, several of Wägner’s novels were adapted for film, both in the silent era and in later decades. The most popular adaptation of Wägner’s work is the silent film Norrtullsligan/The Norrtull Gang from 1923, which captures the dry humor of the 1908 novel, particularly through its intertitles. Relaunched at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna in 2014, Norrtullsligan was digitally restored by the Swedish Film Institute in 2016. It is the only film work by Wägner that is currently available to watch via streaming.

Following four female office workers who navigate friendship, hardship, love, and solidarity, the film explores, in the words of Annette Brauerhoch, “the microeconomics of power and intimacy in the relationship between bodies and spaces” (Brauerhoch 81). The film’s scenes of women defying gender norms and organizing for labor rights have lost none of their relevance. Its portrayal of workplace inequality and everyday sexism resonates with current Western feminism in the #MeToo era. Recognized as a queer-feminist classic, the story was successfully adapted for the stage by Stockholm’s Stadsteatern in 2017, with references to today’s feminist culture.

Norrtullsligan was produced by Karin Swanström, a pioneering female Swedish director and producer at Bonnierfilm and later artistic director and producer at Svensk Filmindustri. Significantly, however, the film version is based on a screenplay by Swedish novelist and playwright Hjalmar Bergman who changed the ending to make it more conventional. In the film, the main protagonist Pegg ultimately accepts her boss’s marriage proposal; in the book, she keeps her independence by leaving Stockholm and starting a new life elsewhere.

Other adaptations of Wägner’s novels followed in the sound era. In the 1940s, film producer John Lindlöf proposed a remake of Norrtullsligan, but the project was never realized (Brunow, “Filmen som inte blev av”). In 1944, Wägner’s novel Vändkorset/The Turnstile (1935) was the first fiction film to be produced by Filmo, the workers’ movement’s own production company, which set out to counter the dominance of Hollywood cinema. The screenplay for her novel Åsa-Hanna (1918) was developed in 1946 by Wägner’s friend, journalist Barbro Alving, who collaborated closely with the author throughout the writing process (Brunow, “Towards an Archival Study of Screenplay Versions”). Decades later, another female journalist, Margareta Strömstedt, wrote the screenplay for the five-part television adaptation of Wägner’s novel Kvarteret Oron/Stormy Corner (1919), which aired on Swedish Television in 1974.

In the Elin Wägner archival paper collection at KvinnSam traces of unrealized projects can be found, most likely from the 1920s. These include: a synopsis for a film adaptation of the successful novel Patron Ann-Mari (1919), written by Wägner’s long-term friend, and fellow member of Ligan, Ester Blenda Nordström; and two other synopses that require further research. All three of these are co-authored with Ragnar Hyltén Cavallius.

Wägner’s contributions to the Swedish film industry, particularly during the silent era, are closely connected to her journalism, literary production, and political activism. They form part of her cross-media publishing, where different media intersect in advancing her feminist activism. This makes her an unusual and rewarding figure of study today.

See also: Anna Hofman-Uddgren