Stockholm 1913
An evening pause: The footage is gently colorized but with little else changed. Like previous such pauses showing film footage from the past, it gives us a glimpse into a different world that appears more dignified and civilized.
Hat tip Björn “Local Fluff” Larsson, who notes, “All men wear suits and hats. All ladies are dressed up. All buildings are beautiful. Then socialism happened.”
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Local Fluff–
can you fill me in on Karl Albert Staaff?
down the rabbit hole…..
1930: Swedish Bathing Beauties at Saltsjöbaden, Stockholm
“Stockholm Flappers Show Snappy Beach Costumes”
https://youtu.be/HgzqWEg2I2k
1:49
Also note how nobody is obese or even overweight.
V-Man:
no time to search for 1913 data, but this is enlightening….
Daily Calorie Intake Per Capita
http://chartsbin.com/view/1150
I see dead people :-(
At about 4:30 into the video there are a few working people that don’t have the suits and hats. A lot of the good old days, weren’t. 12 hours a day and 6 day weeks were common back then for regular working people. Much of the past is seen through nostalgic filters. The reality is that on the average, people today live much better lives than a century ago. Obesity is mostly a symptom of a wealthy society in which people don’t have to physically work 70-100 hours a week just to stay afloat.
Noah–
“Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star. But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And many–perhaps most–of those alien suns have planets circling them. So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven–or hell.
How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million times farther away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of the next generation. But the barriers of distance are crumbling; one day we shall meet our equals, or our masters, among the stars.
Men have been slow to face this prospect; some still hope that it may never become reality. Increasing numbers, however are asking; ‘Why have such meetings not occurred already, since we ourselves are about to venture into space?’
Why not, indeed?
Here is one possible answer to that very reasonable question. But please remember: this is only a work of fiction.
The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”
Arthur C. Clarke
2001: A Space Odyssey
Memory!
Another thing to notice is that practically everyone is Swedish. Today there are about 6½ million ethnic Swedes in Sweden which is decreasing because of the age structure and worsening poverty of young couples, and 4 million immigrants or children of immigrants. In the 2030s Swedes will become a minority in Sweden at current immigration rates (2 million since year 2000, plus their children). The largest source countries are Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. And 99½% are voting to increase the highest immigration that any country ever has had in the history of the world. There’s no opposition whatsoever against that in spite of Swedish households now being the poorest in the Western world and Sweden having the highest and most rapidly increasing crime rates in the Western world. Truly a suicidal people, ALL Swedish parents hate their own children and wish that they be tortured to death as starving slaves.
I recommend the “history colorized” effort now being made using machine learning. I think one can join the effort oneself, like SETI at Home (perhaps less accessibly, but if you have old photos you want to colorize, it has suddenly become quite feasible to get it done). Old black and white movies and photos are colorized using numerical methods to statistically choose the most likely true colors. A higher frame rate is extrapolated. Damages are repaired, all by machine learning and I suppose some human guidance here and there. The funny thing is that some historians object to this! Although it is showing the world back then truer than the black and white images. If anything, it is in recent years that the world has become “black and white” by the policies of political correctness.
Here are a couple of YT channels with a number of clips. Traffic in big cities looked a bit hazardous as cars got more common while zebra crossings and stop lights were not yet implemented. People were still used to horses avoiding collisions instinctively.
https://www.youtube.com/c/HistoryColorized/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/DenisShiryaev/videos
@wayne
Hmm, it seems like the ladies get more applause the less they wear.
@john hare
Those men are loading perhaps coal for heating and engine power. There’s no extractable (mineral) coal in Sweden, it had to be imported. And domestically charcoal was produced. It is dusty stuff so they dressed accordingly. The sailors of Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet on their circumnavigation of the globe 1907-1909 had to scrub and even repaint their white hulls after loading coal. Socially society was more equal and very much more safe, it was culturally evolved to a much higher level than today. And as you see everything was much more beautiful, the architecture, the dresses. Everyone held moral values highly. The economy improved at record pace, compared to the last decade in Sweden without any economic growth at all.
@LocalFluff , Was it not around 15 years ago that it was agreed that immigration was desperately required because Swedes had stopped making babies? ( Sweden remains one of the countries with the highest single person households in the world, certainly the highest in Europe). Immigration always causes problems during the first generation, wherever it occurs, the second generation can be worse, disenfranchised children of immigrants, the third generation are fully integrated. I’ve seen this first hand in the UK, trust me, the UK took in many more immigrants than Sweden post WW2. It’s only a question of time. I understand that you have it rough down there… That is more a failure of government policy than anything else…. If you throw all the immigrants into the same neighborhood, you create a ghetto… It would be the same if a huge population of Swedes fled to Somalia because of war, persecution or famine, and all lived in the same town… Rotten fish would be on the menu, and no one would speak to their neighbours! It will pass! To quote Billy Joel…” The good ol’ day weren’t all that good, and the future ain’t as bad as it seems”!
Oh, and just as an aside…. Quote “ALL Swedish parents hate their own children and wish that they be tortured to death as starving slaves.”…… I’m not really sure what you meant by that…. Ironic or literal, it makes no sense… Admittedly I am not Swedish, but I can assure you that neither my children’s mother, nor of any of my children’s friends parents ( who share reasuringly diverse backgrounds, from Kiruna thru to Bali) think that way also. It would be wrong for you to be the only “boots on the ground” reporter from Sweden. I am one also, I live in a mostly immigrant, but diverse area, and thoroughly enjoy it. The freedom of Sweden can be a shock, especially to Muslim immigrants, but it doesn’t take too long for the following generations to embrace freedom
( as American theory predicts! ;-)
@wayne
I can’t elaborate much on Karl Albert Staaff, Swedish PM 1905-06 and 1911-14 February, half a year before the outbreak of WWI and a month before Swedish elections, where his liberal party fell from 40% to 32%, and in the new election in September 1914 after the continental war broke out they fell to 26%. Historiography of the Swedish 1900s is sparse and extremely politicized domestically since the 1940s. Non-Swedish historians are understandably not so interested in Sweden since we weren’t important in international politics in the 20th century. There’s probably some acceptably objective book written about him some decades ago, but if so I haven’t read it. He is today a “right wing extremist” according to all politicians and all media because the Verdandi student organization he founded at a Swedish university is still something so very rare as a pretty classically liberal Swedish organization.
Since the military history of even Sweden has gotten more international attention, I can say that the foreign policy ambitions of PM Staaff were disastrous, opposing military spending just before the outbreak of the first world war. Luckily the Swedish people of the time reacted and privately funded HMS Sverige in 1912, a coastal capital ship (which sacrificed range and speed to have the armour and guns to be able to duel with a capital ship of a great power). The British naval warfare expert and engineer Drachinifel holds it to be one of the world’s 5 best designed warships during 1850-1950. I note that the English, but not the Swedish, Wikipedia article on Staaff mentions this as a great setback for him. And when the King publicly opposed his demilitarization plans, he had to resign because of public opinion, and his party still took a beating in the two elections that year 1914. “One could even buy ash-trays shaped as his head!” as the English Wiki writes.
Staaff also actively promoted the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, a few months before his election to the first term as PM. It was seen as a success because it was done peacefully and the strive for which had already before his death in 1896 motivated Alfred Nobel to testament his fortune to also include a Nobel peace prize with winners nominated by the Norwegian parliament. Although the dissolution later would prove to instead invite an invasion. Without the dissolution of the royal, and hence the foreign policy, union (Norway already had full domestic independence with their own elected parliament, much more independent than today’s Scotland in the UK), Germany would not have been able to occupy Norway in 1940. It would’ve been logistically impossible for them to win a war on all of Scandinavia across the sea. At least they couldn’t have won fast enough to prevent the British and French to join the fray in force. As it were, the Norwegian King, a Danish Prince, who still was Norway’s first King since 1905 and therefor not so popular among all Swedes, fled to Sweden. Here the then PM Hansson (social democrat, the most reasonable one they ever had in Sweden, reigning with 15% total tax burden and not making many crazy “reforms”) ordered him arrested as he would be a nice bargaining chip in order to keep Sweden out of the war. The local chief of police at the border however refused to follow that arrest order(!) and let the Norwegian King fly to exile in Britain. From where he spoke bravely in radio about continuing the resistance. While he himself had peed his pants and fled cowardly, and had not, as the Swedish Kings, opposed the demilitarization of his country before both world wars. Thus losing his country to the enemy during four years.
The domestic policy of PM Staaff however was successful. I can’t quickly find any specific economic reforms of his, but he certainly promoted further liberalizations of the economy, that had been forthcoming since the early half of the 1800s. Sweden started its broader industrialization in the mid 1850s, at the same time as Japan, mostly with forestry related industries, exporting first timber and charcoal, then sawed woods then stuff like matches and paper and packaging. At the time of Staaff, mechanical tools and machinery and metal works and chemistry were leading the boom. Including perhaps most famously Nobel’s dynamite.
His domestic policy is more known for his promotion of voting rights reforms. Although the results of the reforms he had managed to get through in opposition before being elected in 1911 seem modest in hindsight, they were the first significant since 1866 (well, in 1870 Jews were allowed to become representatives but there were about 100 of them in Sweden back then, and at some later time even Catholics could become elected representatives). Income requirement was reduced by 25%, real estate ownership value by 38%, no longer required to be a member of the Swedish (state monopoly) Church but instead the younger age groups were required to having fulfilled the military enrollment that was introduced in 1901. One still had to be 35 years of age. The next step came after Staaff in 1921 when women got voting rights. In 1933 the requirements of income and owning real estate were abolished. I don’t know about the debates at the time, but given Staaff’s reputation today he helped get the more liberal voting rights rolling even after his final term. Btw he died from pneumonia at the age of 55 in 1915, it was the most common cause of death back then, also an ordinary year before the Spanish flu.
I have certainly missed quite important things about Karl Staaff, but this is what I’ve learned and easily can update details on.
This is an unenhanced movie claimed to be the first original color film officially made in Sweden. The day of the Swedish flag (the closest thing to a national day) in 1953. An event completely unthinkable today! And look at the enthusiasm of the people, on the streets of Stockholm and in the stadium of the 1912 Olympic games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyyFykxJJN4
The first flag, at 7 minutes, is handed to Americans who somehow have a certain honor representing Sweden in the state of Maine, the speaker says. By the King who already degenerate still had a kind of royalty in him with his nonchalance. But he is mostly famous for his gardening in Switzerland. You should see the monkey in the royal cage today…
1952 was a time when Sweden still had more jet fighter aircrafts than the entire Soviet Union, and a navy that safely controlled the Baltic Sea. To give another military reference. The uncomfortable ambassador of Soviet, whose Stalin had died three months earlier, is in view a couple of times.
@Lee Stevenson
Swedes of course have no inherent problem reproducing. 1913 marks the end of the emigration of one quarter of the population since the mid 1800s. Because the amounts of young born saw better opportunities, and could afford to, emigrate to the workers’ paradise in America. A quarter! Most ethnic Swedes today have relatives who emigrated to the USA last 150 years. 100 years ago the emigration ebbed out, thanks to the rapid economic growth at home, in turn thanks to libertarian reforms. Reforms that were actually enthusiastically encouraged by the Kings of Sweden (formally powerless in domestic politics, but popular as public advisers to those with voting rights). In 1809 Bernadotte, a field marshal of Napoleon became King of Sweden, because Napoleon wanted to get rid of him after a military disappointment and the Swedish throne was empty after a coup d’etat by the previously powerless parliament that still didn’t dare to create a republic, just choose a new King with much less power. And he was a French (classically) liberal revolutionary after all, a tradition his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren followed. He became royal by merit and by chance. It took 150 years for his descendants to become degenerate and worthless parasites by inheritance.
Socialism with the world’s highest taxes as a punishment for working crushes family life. And negative and 0% interest rates make housing unpurchable for young couples. The average apartment costs 10 times the average yearly salary after income tax. Then we have 25% VAT and excise taxes on electricity and gasoline and clothes and shoes and plastic bags and whathaveyou that you’d have nightmares about on top of that. How are you supposed to responsibly put children to the world under such circumstances? Not to talk about the smallest health care capacity of all OECD countries and a very poor quality school with quickly deteriorating quality. And the escalating very high crime rate. And not the slightest sign of any beginning of an improvement in sight. Swedes are depressed and poor. That’s not the mood for forming a family. Unless you are an analphabet who comes from Somalia and suddenly can suddenly eat every day without working and still can live in your islamic paradise without caring about any laws or even having to come in contact with any of those dirty Swedes. Then you’ll have a baby a year for decades. The more babies you have, the more monies do you get from the Swedish government. That’s why your inbred cousin sent you here, in exchange for some percentage of your income. And for protecting some child robbers and child rapists. Besides, all media and all politicians and all school “teachers” constantly say, in Swedish to all the Swedes, that if you give birth to a child then YOU will personally kill all life on Earth in 10 years.
Believe me, Stevenson, Sweden is quickly quickly becoming the worst Hell hole that ever was dug on the surface of Earth. Within ONE lifetime from having been the richest country in the world, the safest country in the world, the most equal country in the world. It only takes the neglect of ONE link in the 5,000 years long chain of generations to suddenly and forever murder an entire people in the most horrible way.
Muslims are not concentrated to ghettos. They have been distributed to even the smallest village and dominate all of Sweden now. They form the majority of pupils in elementary schools. So now what’s your plan for “integration”? Where have ever muslims been “integrated”? Or otherwise ever embraced freedom? I hope that you have at least historical examples. Or else, what the Heck are you talking about??? You might be wise about space, but perhaps you are a suicidal zombie in your most own close neighborhood on Earth.
And DO give me some statistics of any country in the world ever that imported 13% of its population in one single decade, as Sweden did in the 2010s! Do prove me wrong. Please give me hope. I am waiting for your good news.
I can’t elaborate much on Karl Albert Staaff …”
It would appear that you’ve done reasonably well. ;)