Gullers Sweden [antikvár]

This picture-book of Sweden is a record of Karl Gullers' love-affair with his nativecountry. It is a love-affair that has lasted for a long time, and been constantly re-plenished or re-invigorated by the new aspects of Sweden that Mr. Gullers hasdiscovered in the passing years: aspects of its changing countryside, or quickly caughtrecognition of something new in the life and habits of the Swedish people. Withinrecent years he has been fascinated by the workaday drama of heavy industry, andby what appears, in some of his photographs, to be the deliberate imitation, or evencreation, of abstract art by the technicians of modern industry. The juxtapositionof incandescent steel or indescribable electronic instruments with a broad landscapeof woods and fertile soil is an effective summary of what Sweden is to-day: in a cursoryjudgment, that is, or to the traveller's eye.I write as a foreign traveller who has seen a good deal of Sweden, and to the nativeof Sweden much of what I have to say will be familiar; but not, I hope, tiresomelyfamiliar. What I have seen has given me vast pleasure, and inspired a lasting affec-tion. It has also inspired that sort of curiositythat probing interestwhich anythingthat has stirred affection must arouse. And so, while I look at Gullers' Sweden, Ithink also of the country I have seen, and try to re-capture, not only sensations ofimmediate pleasure, but some of the questions it has provoked. My knowledge ofits history is fragmentary, and I have a poor memory; but it is manifestly impossibleto look at Skokloster, for instance, or those stony copybooks that preserve the runic