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Björn Landström (1917-2002) |
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Swedish-speaking Finnish writer, illustrator, artist, naval specialist, traveler, and yachtsman, who gained fame with his publications about ships, sailing, and maritime history. During his career Björn Landström illustrated about 20 books and designed hundreds of book covers. His most famous works dealing with the history of ships include Ship: Illustrated History (1961), Ships of the Pharaohs: 4000 Years of Egyptian Shipbuilding (1970), and The Royal Warship Vasa (1980). "Today marine designers and shipbuilders can demonstrate that Vasa was an unsuccessful experiment, but despite this all of us who have worked on the ship, and all who have read about her or made long journeys to see her, must agree that this experiment had a successful conclusion. Thanks to her strongly built hull—and to the instability that sank her only a few cables' lengths from the quay she sailed from—we can now read her like an open if somewhat dog-eared book." (from The Royal Warship Vasa by Björn Landström, foreword by Anders Franzén; transl. by Jeremy Franks, Stockholm: Interpublishing, 1988, p. 153) Björn Landström was born in Kuopio, the son of Arthur Landström, a
building engineer, and Ester (Åberg) Landström. Most likely Landström
inherited his artistic talent from his father, who painted watercolors.
He had once planned
to become an architect, and wished that his son would embark on this
career. After the Civil War
(1917-18) the family moved to Helsinki. At school Landström wrote short plays, poems, and showed that he was good at drawing. His close friend at the Svenska normallyceum was Thomas Warburton. In 1936 Landström left school and worked as a decorative painter for some time. In 1937 he moved to Stockholm, where he studied at Reklamkonstskolan (commercial art school). Earlier in his youth Landström had sailed on the coast of Helsinki, but in Sweden he won his first yacht race. In 1939 he married Else Grönros, also a commercial art student. When the Winter War (1939-40) broke out, Landström
served at the Finnish Army as an orderly in the front. He had first
been rejected for military service for being underweight. During the
short
period of peace before the Continuation War (1941-44), Landström made
his first set design for the Swedish Theatre of Turku. In 1942, he debuted as a novelist with Ågatan, about an artist in conflict with his surroundings. The story ends optimistically, which the reviewer in the Hufvudstadsbladet
did not find quite convincing. "I all synnerhet den optimistiska
slutfasen ter sig mera som ett resultat av författarens goda vilja än
som en följd av de medspelandes inneboende möjligheter." ('En debut' by O. E. [Olof Enckell], Hufvudstadsbladet, No. 346, 23.12.1942, p. 8) From the late 1942 Landström served as a front-line correspondent and artist in Karelia. In 1943 he was wounded in his back. While recovering and eating well in Sweden – Landström's weight had dropped down to 57 kilos – he started to paint pictures inspired by John Bauer and Gustav Tenggren. In 1943 he had an exhibition at the Salon Strindberg. Landström's play, Vem är du?, was performed in Stockholm at Svenska Dramatikers Studio. He had sent the manuscript first to Ingmar Bergman,
who considered it immature, but had encouraged Landström to offer it to
Dramatikers Studio. The play was not a success but a new exhibition of
his fairy tale illustrations sold well. Under the pseudonym Karl-Stefan
Stenman he wrote in 1946 a collection of modernist poetry, entitled
justnuet (just now). Landström had made the poems in three
days – he had seen Stig Carlson's works and said that he can
produce in a week a similar collection. The joke was not reveled to
critics and among others Ralf Parland took it seriously. After this book, Landström directed for the Swedish Theatre of Turku Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull. For Jan Fridegård's book about the stone age, Fäderna
(1947), published by Wahlström
& Widstrand, he made illustrations. In 1949 he started to work for the advertising company
Mainos-Taucher, founded in 1940 by Per Henrik Taucher and Bertil
Svartström under the name Svartström & Taucher Oy-Ab. As was the
practice at the time, Landström usually did not sign his drawings for
the company, but it is known that he designed the famous Figarol cat
(not to be confused with Gepetto's pet kitten Figaro in Disney's
animated film Pinocchio from 1940). With other young designers Landström
founded in 1953 the graphic designers' association Mainosgraafikot, and
taught at its school. He also acted as the first chairman of the
Nordiska Tecknaren association. Between the years 1948 and 1959 he
designed several book covers for the publishing company WSOY; the
cooperation ended in 1959 when Landström moved to Sweden. Mika Waltari loved his cover for the Swedish edition of Sinuhe egyptiläinen (1945) and asked Landström to design the cover of Mikael Karvajalka (1948). The most famous cover design of the 1950s, Väinö Linna's Tuntematon sotilas, was not made by Landström, although he produced the first version just before going abroad. WSOY's Managing Director Lauri Jäntti considered his drawing of an infantry soldier too traditiona. Moreover, it had similarities with another book cover. Eventually Martti Mykkänen's design, made in a hurry, was accepted; it has became an icon of modernism. Much of his freetime Landström spent sailing in the Gulf of Finland
and the Baltic Sea. During his life he owned and designed several
windjammers. Regina och Gullkronan (1951) depicted a sailing tour in the Turku archipelago, which he made with Henrik Ramsay. Havet utan ände (1953) was a novel about the first sailing journey around the world by Magellan in the 16th century. The book was inspired by Stefan Zweig's biography on Magellan from 1938, which Landstöm found in many respects imperfect. Landström's most important sources were The Diary of Antonio Pifagetta, an account of the first circumnavigation, and Francisco Albo's logbook. Havet utan ände received the Swedish Society of Literature Award. After Vägen till Vinland (1954), a story about Leif Eriksson, Landström planned to write about St. Brendan, known also as Brendan the Voyager. Although he traveled to Ireland and collected material about the legendary Irish monk, the work was never realized. His international breakthrough Landström make with The Ship
(1961). He had started to work with it in 1959 in Saltsjöbaden near
Stockholm and contacted a number of experts and such institutions as
National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Museo Storico Navala in Venice,
Museo Naval in Madrid, and Museo Maritimo in Barcelona. The Ship, illustrated and written by Landström, was translated into 13 languages. It was followed by Vägen till Indien (1964), dealing with historic shipping routes to Indian and China, and Columbus (1966), about the famous explorer. V. S. Naipaul said in The Listener (28 December 1967): "The text itself is a retelling from the usual sources. The maps and illustrations are more important. The maps make medieval ideas of geography clear. The illustrations, a true labour of love, are numerous and exact: ships, the islands, the people, the weather, the vegetation, and even the Flemish hawk's bell which delighted the natives until it became a measure of gold dust the discoverer required them to collect." (in 'Columbus and Crusoe,' The Overcrowded Barracoon, by V. S. Naipaul, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973, p. 203; originally published in Great Britain by André Deutsch Limited, London) Ships of the Pharaohs; 4000 Years of Egyptian Shipbuilding (1970) appeared on the same year the Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl constructed two boats of papyrus reeds, Ra I and Ra II,
to cross the South Atlantic. Before his journey, Heyerdahl had contacted Landströn, and mentions his contribution to the desing Ra I in his book on the Ra expeditions. He met Landström in Egypt, where Landström drew a sketch for his papyrus boat. "Landström knew nothing of papyrus reeds, nor of the technique involved in the chains of ropes which we were to lash the bundles together into a boat, but he knew what the final shape of the ship was to be". (The Ra Expeditions by Thor Heyerdahl, translated by Patricia Crampton, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971, p. 137) Landström was very critical about Heyerdahl's theories and knowledge of ancient ships. After returning to Finland in the early 1970s, Landström designed
book covers for the publishing company Otava. His illustrated
collection of classical fairy tales, Olipa kerran, came out in 1974 When his contract ended with Otava, he designed the stage setting for the play Herra Puntila ja hänen renkinsä Matti,
written by Bertolt Brecht and Hella Wuolijoki and performed at the
National Theatre. This production was directed by Lasse Svedberg. In the late 1970s, he worked as a researcher and artist for The Wasavarvet in Sweden, which was built around the warship Vasa. She had sunk in 1628. The well-preserved ship was found again 333 years later, from the bottom of the harbour in Stockholm. After she was salvaged, a temporary Vasa Museum was opened in 1962. Landström's book, The Royal Warship Vasa, appeared in 1980. Against all great expectations, it sold in the first year only 2,000 copies. Landström did not try to convey the feeling of the original, great size of ships, but presents objects like toys, miniature models. This was a conscious artistic choice, which he explained in his book of memoir, Sälvporträtt (1987). "My secret was, " he wrote, "that I never thought my ships as real boats, but models." Landström suffered for a long time from painful backache and
heart symptoms. The problems continued while he was making
illustrations for the Kalevala, published in 1985. Hs plans were
more ambitious than the finished work. To find the
key to the world of the national epic, Landström listened Sibelius's
music, especially his tone poem 'En Saga.' His illustrations
differed much from the national romanticism of Akseli Gallen-Kallela, which had dominated the popular visual image of the Kalevala.
Väinämöinen, the leader of Kalevala's heroes, is portrayed as an angry,
old man, whose beard and dark cloak make him look like a Nordic gnome.
This Väinämöinen is far from the heroic figure of Gallen-Kallela's
paintings. Moreover, Landström's female characters look more like
dolls. In the story of Kullervo, with its picture of a starving child,
Landström's interpretation places Kullervo's fate within a larger
global context of suffering and injustice. Landström never managed to produce all the drawings and paintings he
had planned to do. The Kalevala, the artist's last major work,
was received with mixed reviews. "Lapsilleko tämä Kalevala on
kuvitettu! Ja pitääkö lapsillekaan tarjota näin suurta psykologista
jähmeyttä. Kalevalan ihmiskuvahan on viiltävän monikerroksinen, mutta
siitä me emme kuvina saa nähdä häivääkään." ('Ei saanut veno vesille' by Markku Valkonen, Helsingin Sanomat, No. 75, 17.03.1985, p. 21) In 1994-95 Landström's illustrations, posters, magazine covers and magazine advertisements, were presented in large retropective exhibitions at the art museums of Lahti and Mikkeli. Björn Landström died in Helsinki on January 7, 2002. Using the term of the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin,
Landstöm's style was linear, not painterly. He worked meticulously,
details were well-scrutinized although simplified, and solidly formed.
Akseli Gallen-Kallela's painting Lemminkäinen's Mother (1897)
had influnced him deeply; he had seen it at the age of ten and decided
that some day he will paint in a similar way. Repeatedly Landström
described rocks, dead and decayed trees, changing seasons, and strange
animals. For his work Landström received several awards, among them Pro Finlandia Medal, Albert Gebhard Medal, Rudolf Koivu Award, Mikael Agricola Medal, and Henrik Steffens Award. He was also an honorary member of the Cap Horn Association and honorary doctor of the University of Uppsala. Björn Landström award was established by Graafiset muotoilija in 1986. As an artist Landström had private exhibitions in Helsinki, Stockholm, Gävle, Lisbon, and in the United States and Canada. References: 'Landström, Björn,' in Suomen kirjailijat: 1917-1944, ed. by Hannu Launonen (1981); 'Kalevala förtingligad' by Sixten Ringbom, in Finsk tidskrift (4:1985); 'Landströmin Kalevala kuin sarjakuvakirja' by Timo Jokela, Kaltio (41:1985); Självporträtt by Björn Landström (1987); Björn Landström by Ulla Aartomaa & Pirjo Julkunen (1994); 'Renessanssi-ihminen rakasti laivoja ja merta' by Leena Pallari, in Helsigin Sanomat (17.01.2002); Tavaton kiire: Deadline: 125 vuotta suomalaista kirjan kuvitusta by Maria Laukka (2003); "Yksi kuva kertoo enemmän kuin tuhat sanaa" : Björn Landströmin kirjankuvitukset by Pirjo Julkunen (2005); Ljusets byggare: bildkonst i Finland på 1940-1950-talen by Erik Kruskopf (2010); 'Merellinen tietokirjailija: Björn Landström,' in Syntymälahjana Suomi: itsenäisyyden lapsia by Arto Teronen, Jouko Vuolle (2016) Selected works:
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