The literary works from diverse cultural backgrounds disseminated worldwide through English-speaking film adaptations are numerous and well-known. Adaptations ranging from canonized classics like George Cukor’s Camille (1936) or David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (1965) to contemporary productions like the BBC television series War and Peace (2016) have popularized, and perhaps Anglicized, foreign literary works. But while adapting foreign literary works is a well-known practice in the Anglo-American sphere, in smaller European film industries, transcultural adaptations seem to be overshadowed by works that draw from a national literary heritage. Swedish adaptations of foreign literature, such as Hampe Faustman’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (Brott och straff, 1945) or John W. Brunius’s adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s play Marius (Längtan till havet, 1931), have fallen into oblivion. The reputation of Swedish film has primarily been built on adaptations of its national literature, spanning everything from silent film adaptations of Selma Lagerlöf’s works to contemporary rewritings of “Nordic noir” literature into film and television series.

With the objective to shed light on the lesser-known side of the narrative of adaptation linked to transculturalism, this article explores transcultural adaptations within the Swedish film industry, aiming to illuminate how a small European film industry adapts foreign material, how these adaptation practices change over time, and how they relate to adaptations of national literature. The study explores the quantity of transcultural adaptations compared to adaptations based on domestic originals, and reflects on the reasons behind choices of originals in the adaptation process, what kinds of foreign literary originals were more likely to be adapted in Swedish film, and to what extent the original stories were adapted into a Swedish cultural environment. It also examines whether there were consistent patterns, or if significant changes occurred over time. To address these issues and present a broad perspective on the adaptation practices of a specific film industry, the study moves beyond individual cases and close readings, concentrating instead on contextual and industrial aspects of adaptation practices. The focus is on the classical period from the 1930s to the 1960s, a particularly interesting time when transcultural adaptations were relatively common yet undergoing significant transformations. The arrival of sound film in the early 1930s posed new challenges for the cultural transference of films, which were negotiated and evolved in different ways during the classical era.

Research on transcultural adaptations has predominantly consisted of case studies that illustrate either how the European literary canon is adapted in Hollywood (e.g., Burry and White; Rothwell; Troost and Greenfield), or the dynamics between Anglo-Saxon literature and Asian cinema, often emphasizing British works like those of Shakespeare in Asian adaptations from postcolonial perspectives (e.g., Dionne and Kapadia; Trivedi and Bartholomeusz; Trivedi, Chakravarti, and Motohashi). Studies on Swedish film adaptations include American remakes of Swedish literary adaptations (Westerståhl Stenport), while the reverse – Swedish films based on foreign literature – have received little attention, apart from a few studies of trans-Scandinavian adaptations during the silent film era (Bachmann; Hanssen and Rossholm). This study aims to bring new perspectives to transcultural adaptations by moving beyond the textual in favor of the contextual and by focusing on films from a minor European film industry that has been under-researched in this context.

Concepts, Methods, and Materials

Although transcultural adaptations have been a part of cultural production for as long as stories have been reimagined in new contexts, interest in them has surged in recent decades. This rise in attention may partly be due to adaptation theory taking an intertextual and digital turn in recent decades (Leitch), but also stems from broader cultural shifts, which Linda Hutcheon, drawing on Cuddy-Kean, refers to as “cultural globalization” (Hutcheon 145) increasing in media industries. In theoretical frameworks, examples of transferring stories into new cultural contexts are given various names: Hutcheon refers to them as “transcultural adaptations” (A Theory 145-147), Susan Sanders uses the term “cultural appropriation[s]” (Adaptation 26), and Robert Stam speaks of “cross-cultural adaptations” (“Revisionist Adaptation” 140). In this study, I use the term transcultural adaptation because the prefix “trans,” meaning “across” or “beyond,” emphasizes the movement away from the original without making a judgment on whether the content is appropriated in the new context or results in a cross-cultural hybrid. My definition slightly refines broader interpretations found in adaptation theory—referring to “change of time and place” (Hutcheon 145) and shifts in “cultural and social meaning” (Hutcheon 149) or an understanding of “appropriation (…) to be part of adaptation” (Nicklas and Lindner 6) – to focus on cases where the original work is produced in another cultural context than the adaptation, and thus perceived by its domestic audience as “foreign.” This excludes, for instance, transhistorical adaptations created within the same cultural sphere or the recontextualization of stories from one social setting to another.

This definition places more emphasis on the origin of the source material rather than the degree to which it has been adapted to a domestic context. To distinguish between different types or levels of adaptation, I also employ Hutcheon’s concept of “indigenization,” inspired by anthropologist Jonathan Friedman which refers to “local particularities being transplanted to new ground, resulting in something new and hybrid” (150). While Hutcheon uses the term to describe adaptations that strongly integrate the original into a new cultural context, I use it as a more neutral term to describe varying degrees of adaptation. Examples range from low indigenization, where the foreign cultural context is largely preserved, to high indigenization, where the original work is fully reimagined within a Swedish cultural framework. Since all works are to some degree adapted to their production context, and all adaptations retain elements of the original works they draw from, the distinction between different forms is one of degree rather than essence. Another distinction lies between culturally generic and culturally specific original stories. Culturally generic stories might be set “in a small town” or “in the countryside,” with plots centered on social relationships that could unfold in various cultural settings. In contrast, culturally specific stories are deeply rooted in particular cultural environments and take place in clearly defined locations.

As mentioned, studies of adaptations of British literature into Asian cinema often adopt postcolonial perspectives. Stam, for instance, views adaptations in “minor cinemas” or “world literature” as critiques of Eurocentrism and the power imbalances between the Global North and the Global South (Indigeneity, 7). Aligning with the tradition of national film studies of more recent decades, this study also considers European cinema in terms of “minor” cinema, where smaller film industries outside the Anglo-American sphere are perceived as cultural “others” on the global market (e.g., Hjort; Elsaesser, “European Cinema”; Blankenship and Nagl). Scandinavian cinema, in particular, remains linguistically and geographically on the periphery relative to both Central European and Anglo-American cultural spheres.

The primary material for this study consists of an analysis of the Swedish Film Institute’s production data for feature films from the 1920s to the late 1960s. Through a manually generated mapping of different types of adaptation, the analysis categorizes films as either adaptations or original screenplays, and examines information about the origins and publication years of the original works used for adaptations during this period. In this context, “adaptation” is understood broadly to mean that the film is based on one or more sources, as indicated in the metadata labeled “original” (or “förlaga” in Swedish). The originals may include novels, plays, poetry, or other films, but in most cases, they involve some form of fictional prose. The term “original” is employed in this study specifically because it is the terminology used in the database’s metadata, while acknowledging that the term may be seen as outdated, reflecting a hierarchical relationship between the adapted and adapting texts, where the former is considered the source of the latter.

The total feature film production from the 1920s to the 1960s encompasses approximately 1,500 titles, with nearly half of these being adaptations. The study focuses primarily on the classic sound film era, as the silent film medium offers a different kind of transcultural mobility due to the absence of spoken dialogue. The broader analysis, which also includes silent films, aims to contextualize the examined period. This mapping is discussed in relation to industrial practices and contextual factors. In addition to the data analysis, a limited amount of critical reception review is included to highlight aspects raised in the data examination.

A closer examination is conducted of the adaptations based on foreign sources, aiming to identify the cultural spheres in which they were produced, the extent to which they have been indigenized, and how much cultural specificity they retain. This mapping is not intended to be a detailed textual analysis but rather aims to provide an overview of prevailing trends across different periods.

Transcultural Adaptation Practices

Swedish cinema has historically been closely tied to a national literary heritage, ranging from silent film adaptations during the so-called golden age of Swedish cinema of 19th and early 20th century literature to the crime and horror fiction adaptations of the 21st century. Films that connect with this national literary legacy have also had the greatest impact, while adaptations based on international sources have largely been overlooked or forgotten, or alternatively remembered but without recognition that they are transnational adaptations. For instance, two of Ingmar Bergman’s early films (1946 and 1950) are based on Norwegian originals, yet they are primarily remembered in relation to Bergman’s authorship rather than as examples of transcultural adaptations.

The overview of adaptation practices from the 1920s to the 1960s that this study analyzes confirms that a significant portion of the productions consists of adaptations (see Figure 1), with most sources being domestic Swedish literature (see Figure 3). Nearly half of the total production during this period consists of adaptations, though there is a slight shift toward original screenplays in the later years when the total production decreases, particularly during the 1960s (see Figure 1). Throughout both the silent film era and the period from the 1940s to the 1960s, most adaptations were based on Swedish originals. The only period that deviates from this pattern, in terms of the source language of the adaptations, is the 1930s. During the first decade of sound film, most original works were foreign, primarily written in either Norwegian or Danish, or one of the major European languages: English, French, or German (see Figure 3). This period also reveals an anomaly in the general trend observed in the study, as most sources were drawn from the performing arts, specifically plays, stage musicals, operettas, or similar forms. In all other periods, most originals for adaptations were literary prose, primarily novels but also short stories (see Figure 2). This suggests a correlation between the type of original – whether from the performing arts or literary prose – and the prevalence of foreign original works. Many of the films based on plays and other theatrical works were also staged in a Swedish context, often in close connection with the film’s production. Through these theatrical performances, the narrative was already familiar to at least part of the intended audience – and frequently to film critics as well. As I have discussed elsewhere, the Swedish version of Marcel Pagnol’s play Marius, for instance, was staged at the Swedish Royal Theatre (Linden) a year before the film’s production, thereby anchoring the film in a Swedish cultural context. Although the film was produced in three language versions back to back at Paramount’s multilingual production studios in Paris that were all set in a French context and featuring similar footage from Marseille’s harbor district, the Swedish version was localized in Swedish critical reception through the casting of well-known Swedish actors, all of whom belonged to the same theatre ensemble (Rossholm, Reproducing 157–158; and Rossholm, “Ein schwedisches”). One critic even described the film screening locations as duplicates of the theatre in Stockholm of the ensemble – Oscarsteatern – rather than a duplication of the original play: “We have Oscarsteatern on Kungsgatan and Sveavägen. Why isn´t that enough? Why do we need one at Birger Jarlsgatan (Olympia), Berzelii park (China), and at Regeringsgatan (Imperial) [The three locations where the film was screened.] Why have filmed theatre when you can have it live?” (qtd. in Rossholm, Reproducing, 157).

During the 1940s, adaptation practices in Swedish cinema shifted away from the international and stage-based model toward a film culture increasingly grounded in original Swedish prose. This decade is often regarded as a literary era in Swedish film history – a time when prestigious literary works were adapted for the screen, and a close collaboration between film and literature was established. Prominent authors were frequently engaged as screenwriters, often to adapt their own works for film (Liljenberg, 93–112). Notably, the focus during this period was not on adapting older literary classics, but rather on contemporary works by authors active at the time. In this context, authors retained the rights to their own literary works and since they rarely had literary agents and typically handled negotiations for adaptations themselves, they were almost automatically involved with producers in discussions about turning their literary works into films. This means that even in projects where the literary authors were not credited as screenwriters, they often contributed to the development of synopses or early drafts and engaged in discussions with producers about the terms and execution of the adaptation. As I have developed elsewhere, production records for literary adaptations often contain traces of letters in which the adaptation is discussed or drafts and synopses written by the literary author (Rossholm, “Women’s Literary Writing”). Such complex collaborations were, of course, much easier to facilitate with individuals nearby who spoke and wrote the same language. It is significant that Swedish cinema’s international successes have occurred more frequently during periods when the films are based on domestic sources, while the film culture of the 1930s, characterized by the internationalization of story origins, was primarily distributed and exhibited solely within Sweden. Swedish cinema’s first and second golden ages in terms of international success, during the 1920s and the 1940s to 1950s, were marked by national self-images that, in Thomas Elsaesser’s phrasing on European cinema, can be seen as “a form of branding, a marketing tool, signifying the local” (“ImpersoNations,” 71). During the silent film era, adaptations of Selma Lagerlöf’s works – such as Victor Sjöström’s Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage 1922) and Mauritz Stiller’s Gösta Berling saga (The Saga of Gösta Berling 1924) –clearly marketed the local through grand Scandinavian landscapes and well-known literary narratives to an international audience. Also in later periods, several internationally successful sound films were also based on domestic literature and local imagery. Ingmar Bergman’s Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika 1952), for example, based on a newly written novel by author Per Anders Fogelström, features urban scenes from Stockholm as well as picturesque touristic images of the archipelago.

However, there are also notable exceptions to this tendency of including local images for sale to an international audience. En kvinnas ansikte (A Woman’s Face 1938), for instance, based on a French play, was one of the most internationally successful productions of the late 1930s: the film was awarded a Special Recommendation at the Venice Film Festival, and the rights to the script were sold for the eventual 1941 Hollywood remake by George Cukor. With the transition to national sources in the 1940s, there was also a shift toward a more open film culture, allowing more challenging stories with higher artistic ambitions to be adapted for the screen. Literary adaptations that depicted society’s double standards or darker sides – such as Fallet Ingegerd Bremssen (The Case of Ingegerd Bremssen 1942) about rape and honor morality, Tänk om jag gifter mig med prästen (What If I Marry the Priest 1941) about childbirth and forming a family outside of marriage, and Kungsgatan (1943) about prostitution – became more common during the 1940s. Simply put, adaptations during the 1930s largely involved reworkings of English, French, German, and Scandinavian musical comedies, revues, and musicals that circulated on European stages, whereas adaptations in the 1940s were based on more prestigious newly written Swedish literature.

Many transcultural adaptations that dominated the film culture of the 1930s – and which continued to influence subsequent decades – were not culturally specific. Instead, they typically unfolded in generic urban settings, characterized by social structures that could be easily transferred across different cultural contexts. When these narratives were adapted for Swedish audiences, they were anchored in a Swedish context using minimal adjustments, such as changing character names to Swedish equivalents. In some cases, the local adaptation was more pronounced, which could lead to a more complex process of indigenization. In these cases, screenwriters and producers had to choose between adapting the story to a distinctly Swedish context or preserving key elements of the original story’s cultural specificity. Both strategies were employed during the 1930s and 1940s, though the former approach was more common. A typical instance of the latter is the adaptation of the English musical Me and My Girl (1937) into the Swedish film Greven från gränden (The Count from the Alleys, 1949), where the London setting is relocated to Gamla Stan in Stockholm, a neighborhood distinguished by its unique working-class atmosphere and historic urban environment. Another example is the aforementioned En kvinnas ansikte, where the original French play (de Croisset 1932) set in London is reimagined in Sweden, featuring scenes in Stockholm and typical Swedish winter landscapes with coniferous forests and mountainous vistas (see Figure 4).

While less common, there were instances in which adaptations retained the original’s cultural specificity, i.e., adaptations with less strong indigenization based on originals that were culturally specific. For example, the aforementioned adaptations Brott och straff, which, like Dostoevsky’s novel, is set in St. Petersburg and the Swedish version of Pagnol’s Marius, which, like the French play, is set in Marseille fall into this category. Other similar examples are not based on well-known literary originals: Supé för två (Supper for Two 1947), for instance, a Swedish adaptation of a French play (Antoine) set on the French Riviera, where the setting significantly contributed to its appeal. In both of these latter examples set in France, on-location filming in the southern French environments enhanced the films’ attraction. While these three original stories vary in terms of their status as classics and their cultural renown, they all share a distinction from the many culturally generic narratives circulating at the time: they are geographically and culturally specific, carrying intrinsic value tied to their identities as such.

Over time, the prevalence of un-indigenized stories that maintain the original cultural context decreases in Swedish cinema. Such narratives were relatively common during the 1930s but became exceptions by the 1940s, growing increasingly rare in the 1950s, and ultimately disappearing altogether from film production in the 1960s. The relatively high proportion of such adaptations that maintain the original cultural context in the 1930s is not surprising, given that many of the sources during this period were plays that were often translated into Swedish without transferring their cultural contexts. As mentioned, many of these original plays were staged in close proximity to their film adaptations, allowing both to follow similar revision processes. By the 1940s, the cultural transfer was already being questioned in Swedish reception. In the criticism of Brott och straff, for instance, critics commented on the relationship between Swedish film art and Russian culture: “The Swedish exteriors are so skillfully photographed that they give a convincing Russian flavor” (Möller). Another critic remarked that the narrative was “so distant from Swedish temperament and artistic spirit,” labeling the film’s shortcomings as “typically Swedish,” while questioning its merits by asking, “Is there a Swedish film that can accomplish this?” (Olsson).

In their study of adaptations of Russian literature, Burry and White note that the international dissemination of Russian literature in film is partly due to the universal and existential themes that permeate many classical Russian novels (Border, 1). Critical reception of the Swedish version also emphasizes Crime and Punishment’s status as a piece of “world literature,” drawing comparisons not only to the original text but also to other international film adaptations; As one critic observed: “This version of Raskolnikov, at any rate, is more gripping than the one created about a decade ago by Hollywood’s great visual artist, Sternberg” (Olsson). A notable aspect of this particular adaptation is that Sven Stolpe – one of the prominent literary figures who began working in film during the 1940s – wrote the screenplay. While his adaptation was at times criticized as overly theatrical (Lilliedahl), it was also praised as “a solidly constructed and competent piece of work” (Almquist). The meeting of a great author of “world literature” with a literary screenwriter of the 1940s makes this adaptation, despite its idiosyncrasies, a telling example of the literary film style characteristic of that decade.

The few examples of this type of adaptation that appeared in the 1950s often included a metanarrative or a defamiliarizing element that made the adaptation process visible. For example, the film Den underbara lögnen (The Wonderful Lie 1955), based on short stories by Honoré de Balzac and Guy de Maupassant, features a frame story in which a girl reads the stories at bedtime and then dreams of the narratives set in Paris and New York. This metanarrative thus highlights the transition to another cultural context. Such defamiliarizing elements can also appear in adaptations of well-known classics when the story is translated into a Swedish context. For instance, Fly mej en greve (Fly Me a Count 1959), based on Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, begins with the characters watching a production of the play and deciding to conduct a similar experiment as that depicted in the play. As transferring foreign literature into Swedish film became somewhat unusual – and perhaps even a little odd – irony or playfulness render such a transfer acceptable.

Trans-Scandinavian Adaptations Intersecting Foreign and Domestic

There are notable exceptions to the decrease and disappearance of adaptation practices that do not indigenize stories to the Swedish context. These exceptions are Scandinavian co-productions, where various Scandinavian languages are intertwined, and actors from diverse linguistic backgrounds share the screen. One of the most interesting adaptations of the 1960s is the film adaptation of Norwegian author Knut Hamsun’s Sult (Svält [Hunger], 1966), a Scandinavian co-production set in early 20th-century Kristiania—today’s Oslo—where the main character speaks Swedish without being portrayed as a Swedish character within the film’s narrative. The many secondary characters populating the urban landscape through which the protagonist wanders are cast from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, each speaking in their mother tongue. In a description of the leading actor Per Oscarsson’s performance, a critic stated that the deviations from linguistic naturalism do not detract from the experience: “A curious aspect of the environmental depiction is that the artificial multilingualism in Oslo does not disturb: the main characters speak Swedish, while those around them alternate between Danish and Norwegian” (Furhammar). This comment implies that such an unnatural linguistic landscape could or perhaps should be expected to be disruptive or odd. This film exemplifies how Swedish elements in a Norwegian setting can fit particularly well, as it illustrates the protagonist’s alienation and sense of estrangement in both existential and social terms in relation to the world he interacts with.

Examining film history reveals that Swedish adaptations of Norwegian and Danish literature occupy a unique position among Swedish transcultural adaptations. The linguistic proximity among Scandinavian languages allows them to be comprehensible to audiences across the borders between Norway, Sweden and Denmark, enabling adaptations between these cultural spheres to exist on the boundary between the foreign and the domestic. Consequently, the inter-Scandinavian adaptation practices that were established during the 1910s – when classic Scandinavian works circulated on the international market (Bachmann) – were able to persist, to some extent, throughout the entire classical sound film era. In the 1930s, when most adaptations were based on popular stage performances, film adaptations of predominantly Norwegian literature continued to draw from more highbrow literary works. There was continuity from the silent film era into the classical sound film era, resulting in several remakes of previously produced adaptations. For instance, Jens Anders Fris’s novel Laila was adapted into Swedish-speaking sound films in 1937 and in 1958, and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s well-known novel Synnöve Solbakken was adapted in both 1934 and 1957. The multiple adaptations of Laila are particularly noteworthy as they are set in the transnational Arctic regions and depict Sámi culture that transcends national borders in northern Sweden. Both sound film versions, like Svält, feature a mixed Scandinavian cast, and particularly the latter uses Norwegian and Swedish as two distinct languages within this transnational region.

Moreover, modern and more popular originals that do not fall into the category of canonized literature and originals that can be described as culturally generic also often make the transcultural relation noticeable. The popular comedy Vi som går köksvägen (Servant’s Entrance 1938), for instance, is based on Norwegian author Sigfrid Boos’s novel of the same name and was filmed in two versions – Norwegian and Swedish – with the Norwegian-born actress Tutta Rolf playing the lead in the Swedish version. She speaks in the film with a slight Norwegian accent, serving as a subtle nod to the Norwegian original, which had also been read by many Swedish cinemagoers and served as a natural reference point for critics. This concept was echoed in the subsequent adaptation of another novel by the same author, Ung dam med tur (Young Lady with Luck 1941), where the Norwegian-born actress Sonja Wigert played the lead role, similarly lending a Norwegian touch to the drama beyond the film’s fictional narrative through her light accent.

Norwegian and Danish works are notably overrepresented among the foreign languages that serve as the basis for original works in Swedish adaptations, and this overrepresentation increased as the proportion of original works declined overall. During the 1930s – when the number of adaptations based on foreign sources was high – Scandinavian originals comprised only a small portion of this material. In later decades, however, original works in Danish or Norwegian were more or nearly as numerous as those based on other foreign languages, encompassing all non-Scandinavian languages combined. At the same time, these Danish and Norwegian literary originals were conspicuously few compared to the Swedish ones, implying that the cultural and linguistic proximity did not make the literature of these neighboring linguistic areas an easy extension of the national sphere, but rather a foreign cultural sphere bordering the domestic (see Figure 3).

The Scandinavian production that combines the foreign and the domestic is not merely indicative of a cultural closeness that allows the Scandinavian to portray both the foreign and the local simultaneously, but can also be attributed to more practical production-related reasons. It is, for instance, noteworthy that Scandinavian co-productions are relatively common among films based on Norwegian or Danish sources.

Since the late 1930s, a significant proportion of adaptations based on Scandinavian original works have been co-productions with Norwegian and/or Danish production companies. This trend highlights the necessity of maintaining close contact with the authors during both the adaptation processes and the negotiations concerning adaptation terms. For example, production materials from Vi som går köksvägen and Ung dam med tur reveal how Boo was actively involved in discussions regarding the adaptation (Hanssen). Such dialogues with Norwegian or Danish authors are naturally facilitated when Norwegian or Danish producers are part of the process. It is noteworthy that several Norwegian authors whose works have been adapted into Swedish film have either lived or worked in Sweden. Ingmar Bergman’s Sånt händer inte här (This Can’t Happen Here 1950), for instance, is based on a novel published in Sweden by a Norwegian author who was in exile in Sweden during the war while the comedy En stilla flirt (A Quiet Flirt 1934) was adapted from a novel by the Swedish-born author Edit Øberg.

Concluding Reflections

This study discusses the historical trends of transcultural adaptations in Swedish film during the early classical sound film era. These adaptations initially recurred rather frequently but gradually declined from the late 1930s onwards. The most significant shift occurred during the late 1930s and early 1940s, when the source material for film adaptations transitioned from stage plays to contemporary prose and from predominantly foreign works to mostly Swedish sources. While transcultural adaptations did not completely vanish in the 1940s, they became increasingly rare and had nearly disappeared by the 1960s. This change was connected, among other things, to closer collaborations between literary authors and filmmakers, as film rights for novels were often negotiated between authors and producers, leading to varying degrees of author involvement in the adaptation process. It is evident that foreign sources often originated from culturally similar regions, with Norwegian and Danish works being particularly overrepresented. These Scandinavian originals occupied a unique position, straddling the line between local and foreign originals, and continued to be adapted even during periods when transcultural adaptations were otherwise rare.

Many of the adaptations from the 1930s were generic social comedies lacking a strong cultural context, but there were also culturally specific stories that maintained the cultural environment of the original work in their Swedish adaptations. The culturally generic stories that were often adapted during the 1930s were typically localized to a Swedish context through low indigenization, such as changing first names and place names to Swedish ones. However, there were also key works that were culturally specific, in which the cultural particularities were preserved in the adaptation. In such cases, the film was instead anchored in a Swedish context through production-related factors, typically the interplay between Swedish film and theater.

Culturally rooted adaptations became less common in the 1940s and the 1950s and nearly disappeared by the 1960s. An exception to the otherwise culturally generic narratives of the 1940s was Faustman’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment – a notable example that can be understood in light of the novel’s status as “world literature” in combination with the usage of a well-known Swedish literary author as screenwriter, which gave the film cultural recognition as a literary film in a context of closer the connections between film and literature that developed in the 1940s. The various examples show that even if the story is not “Swedified” in the obvious sense of the plot being moved to a Swedish or Swedish-like context, there is a form of cultural anchoring of the foreign in the production. A story that is adapted into a film may perhaps have been staged in Sweden recently, or the film’s cast may be recognized as a troupe that has performed together on stage, or, as in the case of Crime and Punishment, the high literary quality is reinforced by the participation of a well-known Swedish author in the production.

Film is often perceived as a medium that crosses national borders and fosters global culture, perhaps more so than theater and literature. While this holds true in many cases, for a film industry in a smaller language area, the transfer from the culturally foreign to domestic production is not always so straightforward. Different, culturally specific film practices and intermedial relationships – between film and theater, and between film and literature – create varying conditions for the adaptation of foreign material. Notably, most transcultural adaptations in Swedish cinema occurred during its least internationally successful period –  the 1930s – while later periods of greater international acclaim relied more heavily on Swedish literary sources.