0:00:09 > 0:00:15On a windy August the 10th 1628, the Vasa, the most advanced warship
0:00:15 > 0:00:19of its time, set sail from Stockholm harbour on its maiden voyage.
0:00:22 > 0:00:23It didn't last long.
0:00:26 > 0:00:31After only 1,400 yards, the ship suddenly keeled over and sank.
0:00:31 > 0:00:3230 lives were lost.
0:00:35 > 0:00:40Desperate attempts at salvage resulted in the recovery of 50 cannons.
0:00:40 > 0:00:41But that was all...
0:00:43 > 0:00:47..until 1961, when the whole ship was raised.
0:00:58 > 0:01:01Today, the Vasa has its own museum in Stockholm.
0:01:12 > 0:01:16This was the first ship of its size to have two gun decks.
0:01:17 > 0:01:20The fact that the gun portals were open
0:01:20 > 0:01:22played a part in its sinking,
0:01:22 > 0:01:26but the main culprit was its impractically high centre of gravity.
0:01:27 > 0:01:29The stern of the Vasa reminds me
0:01:29 > 0:01:34of some gigantic Spanish altarpiece, in keeping with Swedish ambitions
0:01:34 > 0:01:38to build an empire to rival those of Spain, France and Britain.
0:01:39 > 0:01:41But it was not to be.
0:01:44 > 0:01:48The Vasa is a mesmerising relic of the early 17th century,
0:01:48 > 0:01:53but here in the cavernous expanse of the modern museum,
0:01:53 > 0:01:57it's been made very much part of a 20th-century installation.
0:01:57 > 0:01:59The world's largest ship in a bottle.
0:02:00 > 0:02:05But while it might seem to hark back to the great age of Swedish
0:02:05 > 0:02:10royal military power, remember, this is a ship that sank.
0:02:10 > 0:02:13And in that sense, I think it's fascinating that the Swedes
0:02:13 > 0:02:18should have chosen to place it at the very centre of their national story.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21After all, it's a monument to failure,
0:02:21 > 0:02:25a great cautionary tale in object form.
0:02:25 > 0:02:28Overbearingly grandiose,
0:02:28 > 0:02:30lumberingly autocratic,
0:02:30 > 0:02:32encrusted with ornament.
0:02:32 > 0:02:36It represents everything that Sweden in the modern age has charted
0:02:36 > 0:02:38a course away from.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48The story of Sweden in the 20th century and beyond
0:02:48 > 0:02:51mirrors that of modern Scandinavia as a whole.
0:02:51 > 0:02:55And at the centre of that history, not just reflecting it,
0:02:55 > 0:02:58but helping to make it, was the art of Sweden.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03Although in the early 20th century its painters and writers
0:03:03 > 0:03:07expressed their anxiety, even dread,
0:03:07 > 0:03:09at the upheavals of the modern age...
0:03:10 > 0:03:13..throughout the rest of the century, Scandinavian
0:03:13 > 0:03:18designers and architects would positively embrace the modern.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23The result was to be one of the most extraordinary social
0:03:23 > 0:03:26and artistic experiments in modern history.
0:03:29 > 0:03:32While others dreamed of creating a perfect world,
0:03:32 > 0:03:38here in Sweden they showed the way and actually started building it.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01The Industrial Revolution came late to Sweden,
0:04:01 > 0:04:03but by the beginning of the 20th century,
0:04:03 > 0:04:07it was catching up with the rest of Europe and with America.
0:04:08 > 0:04:10Even the monarchy was keeping pace.
0:04:10 > 0:04:12It was progressive.
0:04:12 > 0:04:14For the people, not above the people.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24Welcome to the house that Prince Eugen built.
0:04:24 > 0:04:27A palace on Waldemarsudde Island in the centre of Stockholm,
0:04:27 > 0:04:29but a palace like no other.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32Just as he was a royal like no other -
0:04:32 > 0:04:35charismatic, artistic, bohemian.
0:04:35 > 0:04:39This is his mother, Queen Sophia.
0:04:39 > 0:04:43Her husband was King Oscar II of Sweden.
0:04:43 > 0:04:46He was the fourth son and perhaps for that reason,
0:04:46 > 0:04:50he was given a certain amount of latitude in his education.
0:04:50 > 0:04:53Queen Sophia was from Nassau in Germany.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56She'd been given a liberal, democratic education
0:04:56 > 0:04:59and she was herself quite left-leaning.
0:04:59 > 0:05:03She said she wanted all of her children to enter the 20th century
0:05:03 > 0:05:06with their eyes wide open, to be alive to
0:05:06 > 0:05:10the winds of democracy sweeping across the modern world.
0:05:10 > 0:05:13She sent Prince Eugen to an ordinary school,
0:05:13 > 0:05:18and then to Uppsala University where he studied history and politics
0:05:18 > 0:05:21and he was given the nickname "The Red Prince".
0:05:21 > 0:05:25He became an artist, a painter, he trained in Paris.
0:05:25 > 0:05:28He became a collector.
0:05:28 > 0:05:32He was, perhaps, The Pink Prince as well as The Red Prince.
0:05:32 > 0:05:34He may have preferred men to women.
0:05:34 > 0:05:37Some of the pictures in his collection certainly suggest that,
0:05:37 > 0:05:39but there's no hard evidence.
0:05:39 > 0:05:42His Swedish friends were always too discreet.
0:05:42 > 0:05:47The Swedes are very good at keeping silent about sensitive matters.
0:05:47 > 0:05:50So the jury remains open on his sexuality.
0:05:52 > 0:05:58Now, this palace was designed on symmetrical lines
0:05:58 > 0:06:03to let in the light from the Sound.
0:06:03 > 0:06:10And when it was inaugurated in 1905, a grand dinner was held
0:06:10 > 0:06:12and I think this dinner,
0:06:12 > 0:06:17this event, which is still perpetuated here in the display
0:06:17 > 0:06:21where they've preserved the name places,
0:06:21 > 0:06:23was a very symbolic event,
0:06:23 > 0:06:27because it was Prince Eugen's way of demonstrating his allegiance.
0:06:27 > 0:06:32Not to the crowned heads of Europe, not, so to speak, to the royal establishment,
0:06:32 > 0:06:36but to the intelligentsia,
0:06:36 > 0:06:42because those whom he invited were all artists, writers, composers.
0:06:42 > 0:06:44They were also all men.
0:06:45 > 0:06:50He may have looked like a prince, but he was a bohemian.
0:06:50 > 0:06:54This may look like a palace, but it was really a salon.
0:07:05 > 0:07:09The prince was a great patron, who saw it as his duty to gather
0:07:09 > 0:07:13a collection which didn't just reflect his own personal taste,
0:07:13 > 0:07:16but conveyed the range of the Scandinavian art of the time.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23The painter Anders Zorn was part of a strong Swedish
0:07:23 > 0:07:25tradition of naturism.
0:07:26 > 0:07:30Many of his paintings celebrate the naked human form,
0:07:30 > 0:07:33particularly women enjoying themselves among rivers and lakes.
0:07:37 > 0:07:40Such pictures weren't merely erotic, but idealistic.
0:07:42 > 0:07:46Imagining life in Sweden in the healthy outdoors as idyllic,
0:07:46 > 0:07:48almost a return to Eden.
0:07:52 > 0:07:55The prince painted nature too,
0:07:55 > 0:07:58but he was more interested in the naked landscape itself.
0:08:00 > 0:08:02His paintings veer away from realism
0:08:02 > 0:08:06and are far from straightforward depictions of the natural world.
0:08:11 > 0:08:17There's been a certain reluctance in Sweden to recognise Prince Eugen
0:08:17 > 0:08:19as a serious artist.
0:08:19 > 0:08:22How could you be a prince AND a painter?
0:08:22 > 0:08:26But I think he was much more than a dabbler and I think he's done
0:08:26 > 0:08:30enough to earn his place in the history of his nation's art.
0:08:30 > 0:08:31What was he?
0:08:31 > 0:08:35Post-Impressionist? A Symbolist?
0:08:35 > 0:08:40This is a landscape that he painted in 1896. It's called The Cloud
0:08:40 > 0:08:44and you can sense from the energies of the painting that it isn't
0:08:44 > 0:08:48just a representation of a piece of landscape.
0:08:48 > 0:08:50It's a depiction of a state of mind.
0:08:50 > 0:08:54The picture makes me feel distinctly uneasy.
0:08:55 > 0:09:00This path, leading to who knows where.
0:09:00 > 0:09:02To a stretch of sea?
0:09:02 > 0:09:04Is that sea or is it sky?
0:09:04 > 0:09:07A cloud looms above the scene.
0:09:07 > 0:09:10It might almost be a depiction of Prince Eugen's sense
0:09:10 > 0:09:15that his own path will be difficult, or could it be a depiction
0:09:15 > 0:09:18of Sweden itself as he sees it,
0:09:18 > 0:09:23embarked on a journey that may be circuitous, that may be difficult?
0:09:23 > 0:09:25It's an intriguing picture
0:09:25 > 0:09:29and one that seems to point towards an uncertain future.
0:09:42 > 0:09:44As the turn of the century loomed,
0:09:44 > 0:09:48the prince's sense of uncertainty and fears for the future
0:09:48 > 0:09:50were shared by many other artists.
0:09:51 > 0:09:54There was a pervasive anxiety that humanity was regressing,
0:09:54 > 0:09:59not progressing, towards the 20th century.
0:10:01 > 0:10:03It's the kind of fin de siecle dread to be found
0:10:03 > 0:10:06in the work of Richard Bergh.
0:10:06 > 0:10:12It's there in a low-key, between the lines, between the trees sort of way
0:10:12 > 0:10:16in this painting, Silence, the silence of death.
0:10:20 > 0:10:26Bergh is far more explicit and dramatic in Death And The Maiden,
0:10:26 > 0:10:31where the Grim Reaper goes after his prey in broad, eerie daylight.
0:10:39 > 0:10:43Richard Bergh was at the prince's inaugural dinner and during
0:10:43 > 0:10:46his life, he painted many of the leading literary cultural figures
0:10:46 > 0:10:50of the day, still in the same sinister light.
0:10:52 > 0:10:55This is Gustaf Froding,
0:10:55 > 0:10:59the poet and alcoholic, raising his eyes to heaven.
0:10:59 > 0:11:01Or is it to his demons?
0:11:05 > 0:11:10One of Bergh's most famous portraits is of the playwright August Strindberg.
0:11:11 > 0:11:14The prince was a great supporter of Strindberg
0:11:14 > 0:11:16and helped to fund his work in the theatre.
0:11:18 > 0:11:24In 1907, Strindberg embarked on his greatest experiment,
0:11:24 > 0:11:28one which would change the way people thought about theatre forever.
0:11:35 > 0:11:40This is what Strindberg called his "intimate theatre"
0:11:40 > 0:11:44and while the scale's remained the same, very intimate,
0:11:44 > 0:11:47pretty much everything else here has changed.
0:11:47 > 0:11:51In his time, the ceilings were covered with yellow silk
0:11:51 > 0:11:54to create daylight effects. The walls were deep green,
0:11:54 > 0:11:57the seats and the carpeting were green and brown,
0:11:57 > 0:12:01and the individual chairs were not arranged as here, in semicircles,
0:12:01 > 0:12:06but in rows, almost as if for a recital in a private home.
0:12:06 > 0:12:12This was a radical transformation of the conventional playhouse.
0:12:12 > 0:12:17No proscenium arch, it was Strindberg's ambition to do away
0:12:17 > 0:12:22with the barrier separating audience and performance.
0:12:22 > 0:12:27The audience really was to feel as though they were part of the action.
0:12:27 > 0:12:30You didn't come here to watch a play,
0:12:30 > 0:12:32you came here to be changed by it.
0:12:39 > 0:12:42To change an audience, you've got to challenge it.
0:12:42 > 0:12:46His plays broke the rules of time and place.
0:12:46 > 0:12:50Their narrative logic was more like that of dreams or nightmares.
0:12:52 > 0:12:56One of his most startlingly innovative works was written
0:12:56 > 0:12:58especially for this theatre.
0:12:58 > 0:13:00The Ghost Sonata.
0:13:03 > 0:13:07It's a dark piece, set in modern Scandinavia,
0:13:07 > 0:13:10full of snapshots of realism.
0:13:10 > 0:13:14Strindberg's view of Sweden as a place
0:13:14 > 0:13:17riven by greed, jealousy, adultery...
0:13:17 > 0:13:22Yet it also takes off into strange flights of fancy,
0:13:22 > 0:13:28merging realism with myth in a way that pushes forward
0:13:28 > 0:13:31into the avant-garde theatre of the later 20th century.
0:13:32 > 0:13:37It's full of awkwardness, unease, silences.
0:13:37 > 0:13:43In fact, one of the central passages in the play is about silence.
0:13:43 > 0:13:46Silence, the inability to communicate.
0:13:46 > 0:13:49One character says to another, "Shall we converse, then?"
0:13:50 > 0:13:56The old man, Strindberg's image of the devil, replies,
0:13:56 > 0:14:00"Talk of the weather, which we know all about?
0:14:00 > 0:14:05"Ask how we are, which we already know? I prefer silence.
0:14:05 > 0:14:09"Then you can hear thoughts and see the past.
0:14:09 > 0:14:12"Silence cannot conceal anything."
0:14:24 > 0:14:29Strindberg's dark energy couldn't be contained by writing alone.
0:14:29 > 0:14:32He just had to express himself in other forms
0:14:32 > 0:14:37and he was particularly drawn to painting, almost as a form of therapy.
0:14:38 > 0:14:42He returned again and again to the one subject that seemed
0:14:42 > 0:14:46as changeable and as volatile as himself.
0:14:46 > 0:14:47The ocean.
0:14:51 > 0:14:55Just like the characters of his plays, who don't really want
0:14:55 > 0:14:59to talk about the weather, Strindberg's elemental paintings
0:14:59 > 0:15:05are in fact revealing things far beyond actual storms and real sea.
0:15:12 > 0:15:15Strindberg lived a turbulent life
0:15:15 > 0:15:19and I think his seascapes were an attempt to capture his own
0:15:19 > 0:15:22inner meteorology,
0:15:22 > 0:15:25to paint the storms that buffeted him -
0:15:25 > 0:15:30three marriages, trials for obscenity and blasphemy,
0:15:30 > 0:15:32bouts of heavy drinking.
0:15:32 > 0:15:37But above all, I think he felt buffeted by the modern age.
0:15:37 > 0:15:42He wrote about how difficult it was to be a modern man in this
0:15:42 > 0:15:44time of steam and electricity.
0:15:44 > 0:15:47He said he felt he had to live too rapidly,
0:15:47 > 0:15:51he felt almost as if he were peeled and raw.
0:15:52 > 0:15:56"I'm like a silkworm in its metamorphosis," he said.
0:15:56 > 0:16:00"I'm like a crayfish shedding its shell."
0:16:02 > 0:16:06It's almost as if he felt as though he were flayed alive.
0:16:07 > 0:16:12And he painted these depictions of the Swedish coastline
0:16:12 > 0:16:15and the sky above it, using a palette knife.
0:16:21 > 0:16:23Strindberg was a modernist
0:16:23 > 0:16:26who was uncomfortable in the skin of modernity.
0:16:28 > 0:16:32Probably just as well he didn't live to see the First World War,
0:16:32 > 0:16:37which showed what industry, media and technology could do
0:16:37 > 0:16:40when harnessed to the forces of death and destruction.
0:16:41 > 0:16:44Sweden, like the rest of Scandinavia,
0:16:44 > 0:16:46did not participate in the conflict.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51There were to be no bloody 20th century battles
0:16:51 > 0:16:52for these latter-day Vikings.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56And I wonder if this is why,
0:16:56 > 0:16:59when modernist painters and sculptors emerged in Sweden,
0:16:59 > 0:17:04their work was softer and more benign than the often disturbed and violent
0:17:04 > 0:17:09visions of their counterparts in Italy, France and Germany.
0:17:09 > 0:17:13In Sweden, they experienced the shock of the new without
0:17:13 > 0:17:16the trauma, or not so much of it.
0:17:22 > 0:17:27Gosta Adrian-Nilsson, GAN, was Sweden's
0:17:27 > 0:17:31most notable Cubo-Futurist and he created these collages,
0:17:31 > 0:17:34montages, assemblages, call them what you will,
0:17:34 > 0:17:38in the 1920s and they're full of that modernist sense
0:17:38 > 0:17:41of man on the edge of a machine age.
0:17:41 > 0:17:44Here we've got a figure who has almost been
0:17:44 > 0:17:47created from a mechanism, he called it The Pump.
0:17:47 > 0:17:52But you can see the figure's got two little eyes, a breastplate
0:17:52 > 0:17:54and a pump phallus.
0:17:56 > 0:18:00He was interested in the theatre as well as machinery
0:18:00 > 0:18:04and he called this sculpture simply Stage.
0:18:04 > 0:18:06This one Scenery.
0:18:06 > 0:18:11It's almost as if he were setting out to create stage sets
0:18:11 > 0:18:13for the performance of modern life.
0:18:15 > 0:18:18Now, over here, in these racks,
0:18:18 > 0:18:22we've actually got some of GAN's paintings
0:18:22 > 0:18:25and they show his interest in the theatre quite literally.
0:18:25 > 0:18:31This picture of 1915, a portrait of Strindberg himself,
0:18:31 > 0:18:33three years after Strindberg's death,
0:18:33 > 0:18:37but GAN had known him, so it's a kind of memorial,
0:18:37 > 0:18:41a memory of Strindberg, a depiction of him as an inferno,
0:18:41 > 0:18:43as a kind of human volcano,
0:18:43 > 0:18:46seething with dangerous energy.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49Strindberg himself said that he felt at times
0:18:49 > 0:18:51as though he were about to explode!
0:18:51 > 0:18:55And I think GAN's really caught that and he's maybe also alluded
0:18:55 > 0:18:58to Strindberg's addiction to absinthe
0:18:58 > 0:19:02by painting the whole work in the colour of the liquor
0:19:02 > 0:19:04to which he was addicted.
0:19:04 > 0:19:07Over here, a very different style,
0:19:07 > 0:19:09more cubo-futuristic.
0:19:09 > 0:19:11This is Military Funeral.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22And up here we've got scenes of the city, construction,
0:19:22 > 0:19:27a kind of futuristic kaleidoscope of forms
0:19:27 > 0:19:30peopled by these Leger-like figures.
0:19:30 > 0:19:35A collage of a city geometry, street lights, trains.
0:19:35 > 0:19:37The future has arrived, not just in Sweden,
0:19:37 > 0:19:40but also in Scandinavian art.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43Up here, a painting of soldiers
0:19:43 > 0:19:46done just after the end of the First World War,
0:19:46 > 0:19:49but curiously bloodless.
0:19:49 > 0:19:53Imagine the same subject treated by George Grosz or Otto Dix,
0:19:53 > 0:19:56the great German modern artists of the time.
0:19:56 > 0:19:59They would have made you feel the suffering, the blood,
0:19:59 > 0:20:05but here, he's just a rather neat enigmatic arrangement of forms.
0:20:05 > 0:20:07Quite gentle.
0:20:07 > 0:20:10Down here, we've got...
0:20:10 > 0:20:16Yes, these are works by his contemporary Isaac Grunewald,
0:20:16 > 0:20:18who's bringing to Scandinavia
0:20:18 > 0:20:22a different brand of avant-garde painting.
0:20:22 > 0:20:24This time it's Fauvism,
0:20:24 > 0:20:29the bright colours and the flattened perspectives of Henri Matisse.
0:20:31 > 0:20:36Grunewald had a wife and her work is here.
0:20:36 > 0:20:39This is perhaps her masterpiece.
0:20:39 > 0:20:41Sigrid Hjerten.
0:20:41 > 0:20:43It's expressionism, it's Fauvism,
0:20:43 > 0:20:45but it's also Feminism.
0:20:45 > 0:20:50She's depicted herself in the difficult triple role of artist,
0:20:50 > 0:20:53wife and mother.
0:20:53 > 0:20:55There's her son, Ivan.
0:20:55 > 0:20:58Here's her husband, Grunewald himself.
0:20:58 > 0:21:03And here she is, on a sofa being talked over by two artists,
0:21:03 > 0:21:07one her husband, the other, a friend.
0:21:07 > 0:21:12But I think it's no accident that all of this work,
0:21:12 > 0:21:15fascinating though it is,
0:21:15 > 0:21:19should be here in the stores, rather than up in the main galleries
0:21:19 > 0:21:24with the Mondrians, the Duchamps, the Kandinskys, the Rodchenkos,
0:21:24 > 0:21:29because although there's a huge amount of energy in this work -
0:21:29 > 0:21:32there's futurism, there's cubism, there's avant-gardism,
0:21:32 > 0:21:35there's the art of the city, the art of the machine -
0:21:35 > 0:21:41still I think there is something lacking, a certain vital spark.
0:21:41 > 0:21:44This Scandinavian modernism
0:21:44 > 0:21:48doesn't quite have the energy of the modernisms of elsewhere.
0:21:55 > 0:21:59From the 1920s onwards, there was one branch of modernism in which
0:21:59 > 0:22:02Scandinavia would lead the world -
0:22:02 > 0:22:04architecture and design.
0:22:06 > 0:22:10In Sweden, this genius for design would inspire nothing less
0:22:10 > 0:22:14than a complete social revolution that would transform
0:22:14 > 0:22:16the life of every citizen.
0:22:17 > 0:22:22But it began quietly enough with an argument about what furniture
0:22:22 > 0:22:24should or should not look like.
0:22:32 > 0:22:39Now, this cabinet and two chairs by Carl Horvick
0:22:39 > 0:22:43were held to represent the very best of Scandinavian design,
0:22:43 > 0:22:46Swedish design in the mid-'20s.
0:22:46 > 0:22:47Quite literally so.
0:22:47 > 0:22:53They were sent to the Paris World Exhibition of 1925,
0:22:53 > 0:22:56where they represented Swedish design
0:22:56 > 0:22:59and were rewarded with a gold medal.
0:22:59 > 0:23:02They're very beautiful objects.
0:23:02 > 0:23:08There's a slight hint of Second Empire opulence about them.
0:23:08 > 0:23:14The simplicity of the shapes and the emphasis on the plain wood,
0:23:14 > 0:23:16the veneer,
0:23:16 > 0:23:20they clearly evoke French Second Empire style.
0:23:20 > 0:23:24There's a trace of Egyptian influence in their forms.
0:23:25 > 0:23:32The cabinet is a distinctly schizophrenic piece of design.
0:23:32 > 0:23:34It's the same height as a person,
0:23:34 > 0:23:38human scale, it looks sober on first inspection,
0:23:38 > 0:23:41but open it up
0:23:41 > 0:23:44and it reveals
0:23:44 > 0:23:48this gilded, golden, mysterious interior,
0:23:48 > 0:23:52perhaps reflecting the designer's interest in Sigmund Freud's
0:23:52 > 0:23:56ideas about human beings as cabinets,
0:23:56 > 0:24:00the interior of which was the most important,
0:24:00 > 0:24:02the most precious part.
0:24:02 > 0:24:08This furniture is clearly exemplary of Scandinavian craftsmanship -
0:24:08 > 0:24:10look at this beautiful mastery of wood -
0:24:10 > 0:24:13and yet to a younger generation,
0:24:13 > 0:24:17a generation with new and radical ideas inspired by the reading,
0:24:17 > 0:24:21not just of Freud, but also of Karl Marx,
0:24:21 > 0:24:28this furniture exemplified a form of decadence that was to be avoided.
0:24:28 > 0:24:31It was too rich, too splendid, too magnificent.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34It promoted the idea of status.
0:24:34 > 0:24:39It promoted all kinds of things that they disapproved of profoundly.
0:24:39 > 0:24:44So for them, the great challenge would be how to, so to speak,
0:24:44 > 0:24:48close this cabinet
0:24:48 > 0:24:51and open a new chapter in Swedish design.
0:24:57 > 0:25:02Marking the very first page was the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930,
0:25:02 > 0:25:05a showcase for Scandinavia's design and architecture.
0:25:07 > 0:25:11There were four million visitors to the exhibition,
0:25:11 > 0:25:14a remarkable figure, given that the total population of Sweden
0:25:14 > 0:25:15was just six million.
0:25:18 > 0:25:22What they encountered was not just a vast array of new designs,
0:25:22 > 0:25:26but a radical new concept of how society itself,
0:25:26 > 0:25:27their society,
0:25:27 > 0:25:28might be re-fashioned.
0:25:30 > 0:25:32The designers and architects of functionalism,
0:25:32 > 0:25:35as the movement became known,
0:25:35 > 0:25:38believed that if you streamlined everyday objects,
0:25:38 > 0:25:42this would change not just the way people thought of furniture
0:25:42 > 0:25:43but the world itself.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48By designing things purely to reflect their function
0:25:48 > 0:25:50and cutting out any ornament,
0:25:50 > 0:25:54you might arrive at a different notion of beauty
0:25:54 > 0:26:00and indeed a whole new value system on which a new world might be built.
0:26:08 > 0:26:12The manifesto of functionalism was called acceptera
0:26:12 > 0:26:14and in it the leading figures of the movement
0:26:14 > 0:26:17laid out their principles
0:26:17 > 0:26:19and their goals.
0:26:19 > 0:26:22Uno Ahren in particular had some very interesting theories
0:26:22 > 0:26:28about design, which he saw essentially as a field of morality.
0:26:28 > 0:26:30He talked about intellectual hygiene,
0:26:30 > 0:26:36a need for every consumer to sweep their mind clean,
0:26:36 > 0:26:38to purge it of desire
0:26:38 > 0:26:43and to purchase only objects that they actually needed.
0:26:43 > 0:26:48Out with luxury, frippery, elaboration -
0:26:48 > 0:26:52anything that might set one object, so to speak, above another.
0:26:52 > 0:26:57In with simplicity, necessity, function.
0:26:57 > 0:27:01He might only have been talking about cups and saucers,
0:27:01 > 0:27:05but he really did believe that if people could be re-educated
0:27:05 > 0:27:10to want and to buy simple, functional things,
0:27:10 > 0:27:12the world would become a better place.
0:27:16 > 0:27:19But what did this better place look like?
0:27:20 > 0:27:25In this 1930s block, there's a flat full of functionalist furniture
0:27:25 > 0:27:27and design objects,
0:27:27 > 0:27:30many of them first seen in the Stockholm Exhibition.
0:27:32 > 0:27:34I'm going to meet Jon Bonn,
0:27:34 > 0:27:37a huge fan and student of functionalism.
0:27:41 > 0:27:45- Jon.- Hello.- Very nice of you to meet me.- Thank you.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48And, er, I'll hang my coat up.
0:27:48 > 0:27:51It's a bit of a stretch, but this is beautiful.
0:27:52 > 0:27:54That's a functionalist coat hook?
0:27:54 > 0:27:57Yeah, 1932, and the first one
0:27:57 > 0:27:59was in the Stockholm Exhibition, 1930.
0:27:59 > 0:28:01Borge Mogensen, really good designer.
0:28:01 > 0:28:05This is fantastic! I feel like I'm in a time machine.
0:28:05 > 0:28:08I'm back in, well, 1932, 1934.
0:28:08 > 0:28:12Yeah, things, er, early things from the 1930s.
0:28:12 > 0:28:14We have a nice armchair by Bjorn Tragardh,
0:28:14 > 0:28:17who worked for Swedish...
0:28:17 > 0:28:20- The shapes are all very simple, aren't they?- Yeah.- I love this.
0:28:20 > 0:28:21Does it still work?
0:28:21 > 0:28:22Yeah, yeah, of course.
0:28:22 > 0:28:26This is a designer called Haram Nutini.
0:28:26 > 0:28:27It's adjustable as well.
0:28:27 > 0:28:30He's actually one of my favourite designers.
0:28:30 > 0:28:32He makes some incredible lamps for
0:28:32 > 0:28:34the Stockholm Exhibition 1930.
0:28:34 > 0:28:37Very simple but looks actually a little bit like the Bauhaus,
0:28:37 > 0:28:39the style.
0:28:39 > 0:28:43It seems to me that they were almost asking designers to create
0:28:43 > 0:28:46things so simple that they would...
0:28:47 > 0:28:51- ..create the consumer in a new model.- That was the idea.
0:28:51 > 0:28:56To make the new man, they said. A new sort of man.
0:28:56 > 0:28:59It's great. It's a very, very interesting idea.
0:28:59 > 0:29:03So it's almost that you don't sit in the chair or the sofa,
0:29:03 > 0:29:07- the simplicity of the sofa sits in you.- Absolutely.
0:29:07 > 0:29:11That's one of the things with the functionalism, especially in Sweden.
0:29:11 > 0:29:15They really want to make the life easy for the common man.
0:29:15 > 0:29:20Tell me about these ceramics. I was struck by this. That's beautiful.
0:29:20 > 0:29:23- Can I take it down? - Yeah, take it down.
0:29:23 > 0:29:27It's been drilled because it used to be a lamp inside it.
0:29:27 > 0:29:31It's called D9, like a David and 9.
0:29:31 > 0:29:33The designer, Daskal.
0:29:33 > 0:29:37He worked with classicism and made it a little bit modern with
0:29:37 > 0:29:43the glazes, black and red. Typical, typical here in Sweden in the 1930s.
0:29:43 > 0:29:48- Almost futuristic form. - And this was...exactly this model.
0:29:48 > 0:29:52It's called D54. Again, a D for his name.
0:29:52 > 0:29:55It was in the exhibition. This is in a photo from the exhibition.
0:29:55 > 0:29:59And would an object like this have been priced sufficiently low...?
0:29:59 > 0:30:03Yeah, yeah, that was the thing with those, they were very, very cheap.
0:30:03 > 0:30:05So it really is modernism for the common man,
0:30:05 > 0:30:08in the sense that if you put this on your table like that,
0:30:08 > 0:30:11you've got the beginnings of a little Picasso still life.
0:30:11 > 0:30:13You can say that.
0:30:13 > 0:30:15And what's this? Tell me about this.
0:30:15 > 0:30:18That's a set by Haga.
0:30:18 > 0:30:21He tried to do something really functionalistic.
0:30:21 > 0:30:24Things that you can put together, save space, etc, etc.
0:30:24 > 0:30:26- So that you can stack them. - Yeah, yeah.
0:30:26 > 0:30:28Because, of course, very much
0:30:28 > 0:30:31- part of the social housing was that it was small.- Yeah.
0:30:31 > 0:30:34Economising on space is really important. Can we go outside?
0:30:34 > 0:30:36Because I think you've got some...
0:30:36 > 0:30:38- It's not quite garden furniture, is it?- They were in
0:30:38 > 0:30:39the Stockholm Exhibition.
0:30:39 > 0:30:41These were in the Stockholm Exhibition?
0:30:41 > 0:30:43Yeah, all over the exhibition.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46It's a real treat to see all this stuff not in a museum
0:30:46 > 0:30:49but in a functionalist home. This is an estate, yes?
0:30:49 > 0:30:54- Yeah, 1939 it was constructed. - It's fantastic.
0:30:54 > 0:30:58It feels, to me, like we're sitting in a kind of capsule that really
0:30:58 > 0:31:02did change Sweden. This little home, this furniture,
0:31:02 > 0:31:06it really changed maybe not just Sweden, maybe Scandinavia.
0:31:12 > 0:31:15Scandinavia did change.
0:31:15 > 0:31:19It started in the 1930s, when most other countries were living
0:31:19 > 0:31:22through one of the world's worst ever economic recessions
0:31:22 > 0:31:25after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34But in Sweden, a latecomer to capitalism,
0:31:34 > 0:31:39industry flourished and social and economic strife was
0:31:39 > 0:31:42minimised by good labour relations between bosses and workers.
0:31:44 > 0:31:47But where was the working population to live?
0:31:48 > 0:31:51The question was answered when, in 1932,
0:31:51 > 0:31:53a new Social Democrat government
0:31:53 > 0:31:57embarked on a series of ambitious housing projects.
0:32:02 > 0:32:06It started here in Bromma, a suburb of Stockholm.
0:32:09 > 0:32:12Idealistic architects and designers weren't exactly
0:32:12 > 0:32:16thin on the ground in Western Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.
0:32:16 > 0:32:18Think of the Bauhaus.
0:32:18 > 0:32:23But nowhere were their ideas more fully embraced by the state,
0:32:23 > 0:32:27by government, than here in Sweden.
0:32:27 > 0:32:32The Social Democrats, who came to power in the early 1930s,
0:32:32 > 0:32:36believed fervently in collective housing.
0:32:36 > 0:32:39They had sympathy for the ideas of Karl Marx,
0:32:39 > 0:32:44but they didn't like the notion of violent class struggle.
0:32:44 > 0:32:49They believed in a more gradual, gentler transformation of society.
0:32:49 > 0:32:54Give each and every person, each and every family, a good, simple home
0:32:54 > 0:33:00to live in and class differences will disappear automatically.
0:33:00 > 0:33:04As the feminist author Elin Wagner put it,
0:33:04 > 0:33:10"Here revolution will happen when the working wife slams her
0:33:10 > 0:33:16"hand on the table and says, 'I want two rooms and a kitchen.'"
0:33:20 > 0:33:23The very first Social Democrat prime minister of Sweden,
0:33:23 > 0:33:27Per Albin Hansson, in a famous speech of 1932,
0:33:27 > 0:33:28the People's Home speech,
0:33:28 > 0:33:33he compared the Sweden that he and the rest of his party were
0:33:33 > 0:33:36trying to build to a simple home,
0:33:36 > 0:33:39one in which everyone's needs would be met.
0:33:39 > 0:33:41There would be no one-upmanship,
0:33:41 > 0:33:46no-one lording it over anyone else, only collaboration and helpfulness.
0:33:46 > 0:33:50And, as if to drive his own belief in those values home,
0:33:50 > 0:33:57he himself lived in one of the houses put up in the 1930s.
0:33:57 > 0:34:00Not on this street, but on a street very much like it.
0:34:00 > 0:34:03Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.
0:34:07 > 0:34:09With a prime minister like this,
0:34:09 > 0:34:13no wonder there was a growing sense of optimism in Swedish society.
0:34:17 > 0:34:20As well as the money, there was the will to build on an industrial
0:34:20 > 0:34:24scale, which went far beyond a few terraces in Stockholm.
0:34:26 > 0:34:31Before the mortar was dry, the architect Uno Ahren - designer,
0:34:31 > 0:34:35social theorist and leading voice of the acceptera manifesto -
0:34:35 > 0:34:39was appointed chief city planner for Gothenburg.
0:34:39 > 0:34:43His job, this time, to create entire new districts
0:34:43 > 0:34:46and transform a whole city.
0:34:51 > 0:34:56This is very much the aesthetic of the industrial age.
0:34:56 > 0:34:59Some of them look like factories or warehouses,
0:34:59 > 0:35:03but it's been adapted beautifully to the needs of daily life
0:35:03 > 0:35:06and these buildings have proved enduringly popular.
0:35:06 > 0:35:12This one even looks rather like an ocean liner. Perhaps that's apt.
0:35:12 > 0:35:15It is a symbol of the new Swedish ship of state.
0:35:15 > 0:35:17The Vasa that didn't sink.
0:35:23 > 0:35:25The dream of the Social Democrats
0:35:25 > 0:35:28and the functionalists didn't stop with housing.
0:35:29 > 0:35:32Their utopia could even be found in factories,
0:35:32 > 0:35:37like this one designed for Ford in Stockholm, again by Uno Ahren.
0:35:39 > 0:35:44Its big windows were very much part of the functionalist aesthetic,
0:35:44 > 0:35:47giving the workers as much light as possible,
0:35:47 > 0:35:51often a rare commodity in the short Scandinavian winter days.
0:35:55 > 0:35:59Factories had been regarded with suspicion by many left-wing
0:35:59 > 0:36:01thinkers in Europe.
0:36:01 > 0:36:04At the turn of the century, William Morris and the English
0:36:04 > 0:36:07Arts and Crafts movement had seen them as the work of the devil,
0:36:07 > 0:36:09oppressing the labouring classes.
0:36:12 > 0:36:15But democratically minded Swedish designers of the 1930s
0:36:15 > 0:36:18like Ahren disagreed.
0:36:18 > 0:36:22If factories were harmoniously designed and run, the forces
0:36:22 > 0:36:26of mass production could be harnessed for the good of everyone.
0:36:28 > 0:36:32Besides, in Sweden, with all its wood, mass production didn't
0:36:32 > 0:36:35have to mean heavy industry and concrete.
0:36:39 > 0:36:44This more sympathetic material made mass production feel more human,
0:36:44 > 0:36:47literally homely, like a form of DIY.
0:36:48 > 0:36:53In fact, what we call prefabs were, in Sweden in the 1930s,
0:36:53 > 0:36:55called pret-a-porter homes.
0:36:57 > 0:37:00And I think, in them, you can see the origins of what might be called
0:37:00 > 0:37:02the flat-pack aesthetic.
0:37:04 > 0:37:07This would emerge in all its glory 20 years later,
0:37:07 > 0:37:12in a one-man design movement which outstripped functionalism and
0:37:12 > 0:37:14outdid everything that had gone before,
0:37:14 > 0:37:16both in scale and global reach.
0:37:18 > 0:37:23It was the brainchild of Ingvar Kamprad, Mr IKEA.
0:37:27 > 0:37:29This is the largest IKEA store in Stockholm,
0:37:29 > 0:37:31the biggest IKEA in the world and
0:37:31 > 0:37:35if it reminds you of another famous building, well, that's intentional.
0:37:35 > 0:37:40Ingvar Kamprad had visited New York in 1961 and he'd seen
0:37:40 > 0:37:43Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum,
0:37:43 > 0:37:46that icon of modern art.
0:37:46 > 0:37:49And, I think, by making his own flagship store mirror
0:37:49 > 0:37:53the forms of that building, he was sending out a very clear message.
0:37:53 > 0:37:58He was saying that IKEA itself represents a form of modernism.
0:37:58 > 0:38:03Not modernism on the American model. This building isn't meant to
0:38:03 > 0:38:06enshrine the achievements of a heroic individual artist.
0:38:06 > 0:38:10No, it picks up on a different strand of the modernist project.
0:38:10 > 0:38:12What it says is that each
0:38:12 > 0:38:17and every individual's life can be made nobler and better
0:38:17 > 0:38:20if each and every individual should surround themselves with
0:38:20 > 0:38:23objects as beautiful as works of art.
0:38:23 > 0:38:28This isn't American modernism but Scandinavian modernism.
0:38:28 > 0:38:30It's modernism for the masses.
0:38:36 > 0:38:40Now, IKEA might seem a far cry from functionalist design,
0:38:40 > 0:38:42but they do have one thing in common -
0:38:42 > 0:38:47a respect for the simple design traditions of rural Scandinavia.
0:38:48 > 0:38:52The acceptera manifesto was about accepting
0:38:52 > 0:38:55and learning from the past to shape the future.
0:38:57 > 0:39:00Their innovative designs for modern living
0:39:00 > 0:39:03drew heavily on traditional peasant homes.
0:39:05 > 0:39:07And so did IKEA.
0:39:09 > 0:39:13But to understand that, you have to leave these showrooms
0:39:13 > 0:39:16and go to a rather different storage area.
0:39:19 > 0:39:22Now, IKEA might be a modern success story,
0:39:22 > 0:39:25but it has deep roots in the Swedish past.
0:39:25 > 0:39:29And there's strong evidence of that here in the storeroom
0:39:29 > 0:39:32of the National Museum of Stockholm.
0:39:32 > 0:39:33And here it is.
0:39:34 > 0:39:36Conveniently flat-packed.
0:39:40 > 0:39:45These are the watercolours of Carl Larsson
0:39:45 > 0:39:49and they were created at the start of the 20th century,
0:39:49 > 0:39:56and I don't think he could ever have dreamed of the success,
0:39:56 > 0:40:01the popularity that these pictures would achieve.
0:40:01 > 0:40:03What do they commemorate?
0:40:03 > 0:40:06A house with simple furniture,
0:40:06 > 0:40:11bright primary colours in much of the decoration,
0:40:11 > 0:40:12ordinary tables, ordinary chairs...
0:40:12 > 0:40:16And yet they are suffused with a kind of idealism.
0:40:16 > 0:40:19They have the strange ability to make you feel
0:40:19 > 0:40:22nostalgic for a world that you never knew.
0:40:22 > 0:40:26Perhaps it's partly because he peopled the scenes
0:40:26 > 0:40:30with his own children - he had eight of them.
0:40:30 > 0:40:33So it almost feels, when you're looking at these pictures,
0:40:33 > 0:40:37as if you're encountering some Swedish age of innocence,
0:40:37 > 0:40:43some childhood period to which the nation will always seek to return.
0:40:43 > 0:40:46The interesting thing about these images is that,
0:40:46 > 0:40:49while he created them, I think, to evoke a whole world,
0:40:49 > 0:40:54as time passed in Sweden and as they became more and more popular,
0:40:54 > 0:40:59people began looking at them for interior-design tips.
0:40:59 > 0:41:04This was the Sweden which gradually everyone wanted to inhabit.
0:41:04 > 0:41:07So what had begun as a series of watercolours,
0:41:07 > 0:41:12ended up as a kind of catalogue of interior-design ideas.
0:41:12 > 0:41:17And no-one would pick up on that more than Ingvar Kamprad
0:41:17 > 0:41:21and IKEA, whose whole brand is, in a sense,
0:41:21 > 0:41:25based on the simplicity of this type of furniture.
0:41:25 > 0:41:29And, as a mark of that connection,
0:41:29 > 0:41:34it seems extremely significant that, when a large exhibition of Larsson's
0:41:34 > 0:41:38work was staged recently in Paris, who should be the main sponsor
0:41:38 > 0:41:39but IKEA.
0:41:49 > 0:41:53The nation that embraced design for all also embraced sports for all.
0:41:55 > 0:41:59Because if your house is your home, your body is your temple.
0:42:02 > 0:42:05The cult of the healthy body had a long history in modern Sweden
0:42:05 > 0:42:09and it was vigorously promoted by the Social Democrats.
0:42:10 > 0:42:13The healthy body would be developed with a regime of good diet,
0:42:13 > 0:42:17regular exercise and plenty of sunshine -
0:42:17 > 0:42:19Scandinavian climate permitting.
0:42:23 > 0:42:26The clearest embodiment of this clean-living philosophy is
0:42:26 > 0:42:28most apparent in the sports hall.
0:42:29 > 0:42:34Built in 1965, it was a genuinely Scandinavian enterprise.
0:42:35 > 0:42:38It's in Landskrona, in south-west Sweden.
0:42:39 > 0:42:43The marble of the roof is from Norway
0:42:43 > 0:42:46and the man responsible for the building is from Denmark...
0:42:47 > 0:42:50..the designer and architect, Arne Jacobsen.
0:42:53 > 0:42:57He shared many of the ideas of Swedish functionalism -
0:42:57 > 0:43:01big windows, straight lines, flat roof.
0:43:04 > 0:43:07Inside, the original seating was straight
0:43:07 > 0:43:09out of the pages of the acceptera manifesto.
0:43:11 > 0:43:15The functionalists harked back beyond the Swedish past
0:43:15 > 0:43:17to the classical world.
0:43:17 > 0:43:22Not to Roman grandeur but to Spartan simplicity.
0:43:28 > 0:43:32From the outside, Arne Jacobsen's sports hall reminds me
0:43:32 > 0:43:35of a gigantic viewing box.
0:43:35 > 0:43:40On the inside, it's more of an arena, an amphitheatre,
0:43:40 > 0:43:42almost a theatre.
0:43:42 > 0:43:45And while it isn't a theatre in the same literal sense
0:43:45 > 0:43:47as Strindbergs Intima Teater,
0:43:47 > 0:43:51I do think it's a very good place to gauge the huge transformation
0:43:51 > 0:43:55that took place in Swedish and Scandinavian society
0:43:55 > 0:43:58over a half-century and more.
0:43:58 > 0:44:01Go back to 1907, Strindbergs Intima Teater,
0:44:01 > 0:44:05what are you looking at? The divided soul, angst.
0:44:05 > 0:44:10Here, what do you come to witness?
0:44:10 > 0:44:16Hygiene, the body beautiful, teamwork, people moving in harmony.
0:44:16 > 0:44:19It's all about health and a well-functioning society.
0:44:19 > 0:44:25You might say, 1965, this is the great symbol of
0:44:25 > 0:44:28the Social Democratic dream. It has come to pass.
0:44:28 > 0:44:33But in that very same year, a group of Swedish writers had begun
0:44:33 > 0:44:38to expose the cracks running beneath this apparently ideal world.
0:44:42 > 0:44:45Two of these writers were the married couple
0:44:45 > 0:44:47Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.
0:44:48 > 0:44:49They were both radicals,
0:44:49 > 0:44:53Marxists who thought that Swedish social democracy was more
0:44:53 > 0:44:58corrupt and far less cohesive than the image it liked to project.
0:45:05 > 0:45:09In 1965, they wrote the first of a series of ten novels featuring
0:45:09 > 0:45:11the detective Martin Beck.
0:45:14 > 0:45:16SHE SCREAMS
0:45:26 > 0:45:29Beck might read like a stereotype now,
0:45:29 > 0:45:33but at the time, his chain-smoking, bad diet, problematic marriage and
0:45:33 > 0:45:38slow, painstaking solutions to crime were like a breath of fresh air.
0:45:41 > 0:45:45The Beck novels were far from traditional murder mysteries.
0:45:45 > 0:45:47They were very realistic in detail.
0:45:47 > 0:45:51The literary equivalent of documentary cinema verite...
0:45:52 > 0:45:55..revealing the seedy underbelly of Swedish society.
0:46:07 > 0:46:10These books revolutionised the European crime genre
0:46:10 > 0:46:13and paved the way for what has been called Nordic Noir.
0:46:17 > 0:46:22TV series like The Killing and the novels of Henning Mankell,
0:46:22 > 0:46:24Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson.
0:46:31 > 0:46:35Lars Kepler is currently one of the bestselling crime writers in Sweden.
0:46:35 > 0:46:40It is, in fact, a husband-and-wife team for whom the Beck novels
0:46:40 > 0:46:41have long been an inspiration.
0:46:44 > 0:46:46For me, it was the first
0:46:46 > 0:46:50crime fiction book ever I read, it was one of them.
0:46:50 > 0:46:51Yeah, for grown-ups.
0:46:51 > 0:46:54- For grown-ups, of course. - That was the difference.
0:46:54 > 0:46:56I think Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall...
0:46:58 > 0:47:03..they started a tradition, absolutely, in Sweden
0:47:03 > 0:47:06and they also started something else.
0:47:06 > 0:47:12Maybe this public movement to read the same thing
0:47:12 > 0:47:14and talk about the same issues.
0:47:14 > 0:47:16And what was...
0:47:16 > 0:47:19What was new about their fiction?
0:47:19 > 0:47:23What were they adding to the lives of the Swedish readers?
0:47:23 > 0:47:30They were brutal. They were criticising power, in a way.
0:47:30 > 0:47:36They were criticising the society and the tools of society -
0:47:36 > 0:47:42the police, the government, the capitalism, the banks.
0:47:44 > 0:47:47And that was so exciting.
0:47:47 > 0:47:50Of course, by that time, Sweden was considered to be a very,
0:47:50 > 0:47:54very good society, almost perfect,
0:47:54 > 0:47:59a paradise. But they wanted to show what was beneath this surface.
0:47:59 > 0:48:06Crime fiction fulfils the need in Sweden for discussion about this,
0:48:06 > 0:48:10these kind of problems, but not as an answer in this country.
0:48:10 > 0:48:13Not as the voice of truth, I think, but more...
0:48:15 > 0:48:18..the voice of somebody telling...
0:48:19 > 0:48:25..you that you might think you are safe but things can go really wrong.
0:48:39 > 0:48:42The very first Beck novel, Roseanna, starts with a scene
0:48:42 > 0:48:46set by a canal lock next to a lake.
0:48:46 > 0:48:48It could be the setting for one of those
0:48:48 > 0:48:51Anders Zorn paintings of naked women bathing.
0:48:53 > 0:48:56But this lake is a long way from Scandinavian naturism.
0:48:59 > 0:49:02A young woman's body is dredged up.
0:49:02 > 0:49:07It's a beauty spot. Later on in the novel, some home-movie footage
0:49:07 > 0:49:12shot by a tourist proves crucial to the investigation.
0:49:12 > 0:49:16But that opening scene is, I think, a perfect metaphor for what
0:49:16 > 0:49:21Nordic Noir does - it dredges up ugly truths.
0:49:28 > 0:49:32"For the fact of the matter is that the so-called welfare state
0:49:32 > 0:49:36"abounds with sick, poor and lonely people living,
0:49:36 > 0:49:41"at best, on dog food, who are left uncared for until they waste away
0:49:41 > 0:49:44"and die in their rathole tenements."
0:49:50 > 0:49:56The Beck books were subtitled Story Of A Crime but what was the crime?
0:49:58 > 0:49:59According to the novelists,
0:49:59 > 0:50:02it was the failure of the Social Democrat dream.
0:50:03 > 0:50:08It's all very well building perfect homes, but if people are starving
0:50:08 > 0:50:12and alienated, then the socialist promise hasn't been kept.
0:50:16 > 0:50:20Within a year of the last Beck novel appearing in 1975,
0:50:20 > 0:50:23the Social Democrats lost power
0:50:23 > 0:50:26after half a century leading the country.
0:50:26 > 0:50:28To this day, they've never made a comeback
0:50:28 > 0:50:31unless as part of a coalition.
0:50:33 > 0:50:35Their legacy is still being debated
0:50:35 > 0:50:38and not just by the crime writers of today,
0:50:38 > 0:50:43who are mostly - as Beck's creators were - left-wing in their politics.
0:50:45 > 0:50:47Many in the intelligentsia see
0:50:47 > 0:50:50Sweden now as a grimly unequal society,
0:50:50 > 0:50:53where the gap between rich and poor has grown.
0:50:55 > 0:50:59A place where immigrants might have been welcomed, but have then been
0:50:59 > 0:51:03left to feel as though they're not really part of Swedish democracy.
0:51:13 > 0:51:15This picture of a disaffected
0:51:15 > 0:51:19and alienated Sweden has also been projected in the contemporary
0:51:19 > 0:51:24visual arts, most vividly in work which exists less as finished
0:51:24 > 0:51:28art object and more as a form of extreme,
0:51:28 > 0:51:31even masochistic performance.
0:51:33 > 0:51:37Nug, a graffiti artist as elusive as Banksy,
0:51:37 > 0:51:43but far more nihilistic. He sees a wall and wants to spray it black.
0:51:47 > 0:51:51Graffiti art was born in the subways of New York - a colourful,
0:51:51 > 0:51:54brash assertion of counter-cultural identity.
0:51:57 > 0:52:02But there's no such joy in these Swedish variations on the theme.
0:52:05 > 0:52:07This is Nordic Noir graffiti...
0:52:08 > 0:52:11..modern society seen as a hopeless labyrinth.
0:52:13 > 0:52:18Nug has visited his plague of vandalism upon all of Stockholm.
0:52:19 > 0:52:22From the suburban underground
0:52:22 > 0:52:25to the upmarket bars and restaurants of the city centre.
0:52:35 > 0:52:38Angst shades into hysteria in Anna Odell's work.
0:52:41 > 0:52:45The artist re-enacted a childhood psychosis in order to draw
0:52:45 > 0:52:49attention to the inadequacies of the psychiatric care system.
0:52:51 > 0:52:54The emergency services actually tried to rescue her
0:52:54 > 0:52:56during the performance,
0:52:56 > 0:52:59which, unsurprisingly, divided public opinion.
0:53:02 > 0:53:07Was this political commentary or an irresponsible game of cry wolf?
0:53:07 > 0:53:09SHE ROARS
0:53:09 > 0:53:10Or maybe both.
0:53:11 > 0:53:16These contemporary artists caught scandal and so art becomes news.
0:53:18 > 0:53:23Even noise, open to a babble of interpretation.
0:53:23 > 0:53:26THEY SPEAK SWEDISH
0:53:28 > 0:53:31Makode Linde's work explores issues about race,
0:53:31 > 0:53:37European perceptions and stereotypes of the African, immigration...
0:53:39 > 0:53:41..the Swedish involvement in the slave trade...
0:53:42 > 0:53:46..and even female genital mutilation.
0:53:49 > 0:53:52CAKE SCREAMS AND CRIES
0:53:52 > 0:53:55All this and more in the layers which make up
0:53:55 > 0:53:58the obscenely visceral Painful Cake.
0:54:00 > 0:54:03That's the Minister of Culture slicing away.
0:54:06 > 0:54:10I hear echoes, reverberations of The Scream,
0:54:10 > 0:54:15the work with which I began this journey through Scandinavia.
0:54:15 > 0:54:18That icon of anguish at all of the modern age was
0:54:18 > 0:54:21painted by the Norwegian Edvard Munch.
0:54:22 > 0:54:25He'd also painted a portrait of Strindberg and, although their
0:54:25 > 0:54:29friendship was troubled, they were certainly kindred spirits.
0:54:30 > 0:54:34They both shared a sense of profound alienation
0:54:34 > 0:54:37as well as a sense that there was something
0:54:37 > 0:54:39rotten at the heart of Scandinavia.
0:54:41 > 0:54:44Strindberg's idea that to be a modern artist,
0:54:44 > 0:54:49a modern writer, was to be uncomfortable in your own skin
0:54:49 > 0:54:53wasn't pursued by Swedish artists during the 20th century.
0:54:53 > 0:54:59Here, modernism is harnessed to a sense of optimism,
0:54:59 > 0:55:02of collective social idealism.
0:55:02 > 0:55:06Now, whether the Social Democratic dream is dead, who's to say?
0:55:06 > 0:55:11But the cracks that appeared in the 1960s haven't gone away
0:55:11 > 0:55:15and now a new generation of artists has emerged who
0:55:15 > 0:55:18seem very much in the Strindberg mould.
0:55:18 > 0:55:22They're agent provocateurs, pranksters.
0:55:22 > 0:55:26They act out the anxieties of their society.
0:55:32 > 0:55:35But how well founded are those anxieties and fears?
0:55:37 > 0:55:39I've been told that if you want to experience
0:55:39 > 0:55:44the failings of Swedish society, you have to go underground.
0:55:45 > 0:55:48Take the red line from the centre of Stockholm
0:55:48 > 0:55:50and travel towards the outer suburbs.
0:55:57 > 0:56:01True enough, there's a stark difference between the centre -
0:56:01 > 0:56:04home to government, banks and business -
0:56:04 > 0:56:06and what lies beyond.
0:56:10 > 0:56:13But I can't find the badlands described by the social critics
0:56:13 > 0:56:15of modern Sweden.
0:56:15 > 0:56:17Nothing truly noir, for sure.
0:56:19 > 0:56:23In fact, if I had to name a city that exemplifies failing
0:56:23 > 0:56:27social services, a crumbling transport infrastructure
0:56:27 > 0:56:29and yawning chasms of wealth,
0:56:29 > 0:56:32I'd pick London any day over Stockholm.
0:56:33 > 0:56:36And on even the most remote station,
0:56:36 > 0:56:40the Swedish underground still does really beautiful benches.
0:56:42 > 0:56:46Perfect seating for all, democratic by design.
0:56:49 > 0:56:52Maybe it's because the old Social Democrat dream of a perfectly
0:56:52 > 0:56:55equal society was so strong
0:56:55 > 0:56:59and radiant that any falling short becomes magnified.
0:57:05 > 0:57:07But while it might not be utopia,
0:57:07 > 0:57:10modern Sweden's got a lot going for it.
0:57:13 > 0:57:16Take the Citadellbadet in Landskrona,
0:57:16 > 0:57:20where I also visited Arne Jacobsen's sports hall.
0:57:20 > 0:57:24This swimming pool too was a civic project, recently remodelled
0:57:24 > 0:57:26and refurbished by architect Gert Wingardh.
0:57:32 > 0:57:35This might be quirkier than functionalist architecture,
0:57:35 > 0:57:38with its coloured-glass changing rooms
0:57:38 > 0:57:41and mushroom-shaped viewing platform,
0:57:41 > 0:57:45cleverly picking up the form of an older water tower nearby...
0:57:47 > 0:57:50..but this aquatic paradise for swimmers of all ages
0:57:50 > 0:57:54enshrines the core values that have created modern Sweden.
0:58:01 > 0:58:04Could that be Prince Eugen's cloud of uncertainty hovering
0:58:04 > 0:58:06over the horizon?
0:58:07 > 0:58:09Maybe.
0:58:09 > 0:58:13But, if so, I think this is the Sweden that has emerged from it -
0:58:13 > 0:58:17a place that promises everyone, no matter who they are or where
0:58:17 > 0:58:19they come from, a little bit of beauty
0:58:19 > 0:58:21and a little bit of happiness.
0:58:23 > 0:58:26It might not be a perfect world...
0:58:26 > 0:58:27but it's not a bad one.