ABSTRACT
In the late 1980s and the early 1990s the issue of Swedish national identity was increasingly coming to the fore in debates about immigration, multiculturalism, and globalization, specifi cally the question whether Sweden should become a member of the EEC or not. These debates were evidence of a cultural crisis of transition. The epoch of the Swedish twentieth century model of welfare society-often referred to as the Folkhem (the home of the people)—seemed to have come to an end. The Swedish fi lm scholar Tytti Soila has noted, in her exposé of Swedish fi lm history in Nordic National Cinemas, a growing interest in children’s culture and tales of childhood from the mid 1970s and onwards. In the 1980s and 1990s there follows a wave of children’s fi lms that are looking back nostalgically at earlier parts of the twentieth century, especially the period of ca. 1920-1965, and with a special emphasis on the post-World War II decades. Soila productively suggests that these fi lms could be considered as a kind of heritage cinema in a Swedish Folkhem that had lost its momentum and become nostalgically retrospective:
The extraordinary thing was that the metaphor of the folkhem could not be discarded, but was rather projected into the past. Both the childhood fi lms and the Lindgren fi lms create the concept of a utopian past and is a Swedish version of heritage cinema whose occurrence became a panEuropean phenomenon in the 1980s. (231)
The aim of this chapter is to examine how adaptations of Astrid Lindgren’s work during this period invite the spectators to immerse themselves in a profound sense of nostalgia, by showcasing artifacts, styles, and values that have come to be associated with the Folkhem. I will primarily discuss Lasse Hallström’s two fi lms about the children of Noisy Village and Johanna Hald’s two fi lms about Lotta on Troublemaker Street. In conclusion, I will also take a look at the temporal aspects of the narrative in Göran Carmback’s fi lms about Kalle Blomkvist, master detective. I will argue that these fi lms contribute to the shaping and dissemination of a collective memory-an imaginary Folkhem, as it were-pertaining to conceptions of national identity and origin.
