Ingegärd Waaranperä remembers actor Sven Wollter

There are actors who play roles, they make them their own. Sven Wollter embodied much more, he is one of those who embodied the man himself. Huge presence, physically very warm and with his voice, which became more and more hoarse and persistent over the years. Although he was faithful to the art of acting and theater, he was faithful to his convictions: the political, humanistic and solidarity convictions of deep recognition of the equality of values ​​and rights of all human beings.

Now it’s gone and for us who has followed him throughout his long acting career is much more than a character who has disappeared, they are debates, dreams, songs and loves. And not least his kind-hearted and left-wing political stubbornness.

He has filled and embodied so many different periods of our lives, from the first times he appeared on television to the last few years as the gray-haired old man of the Swedish theater.

What had started in the Robin Hood games of childhood in Gothenburg became, without the lasso, a lifelong theme: wanting to take from the rich and give to the poor.

When we miss him now, and many of us do, it may be because he brings with him the latest from the heretical 20th century with its spirit of solidarity and cohesion still remaining. With his still tangible memories of poor Sweden, the building of the people’s house, the strike movements, the revolutionaries, the conflicts, the dreams and the defeats.

In that century was born the child Sven on January 11, 1934, as one of four children of publisher Kjell Wollter and his wife Elsa, in a real but not wealthy home. As he saw it himself, he became an actor from the beginning, already as a little cornflower seller. When little Sven narrowed his eyes and pretended to have difficulty calculating equipment, the aunts quickly took pity and steadied themselves. It was a good income and, finally, a whole career.

This began in earnest around 1953 with the Gothenburg City Theater student school, continued at the Riksteatern, Norrköping City Theater, Vasateatern, and the television theater. Sven Wollter became known to the general public as Gusten, the jealously glamorous son of Madam Flod on the television series “Hemsöborna”, where he played against Sif Ruud and Allan Edwall.

Ten years later, the breakthrough came in Per Sjöstrand’s “Raskens” after Vilhelm Moberg’s novel. The television series about the divided soldier Rask, his poor job and his great loves, where Gurie Nordwall was his wife and Viveca Seldahl the maid he falls in love with, was watched by five million people. It was a role and a context that characterized the image of Sven Wollter, mainly because he clearly enjoyed it himself.

But the theater was his most important stage, not only as an actor, but also because of his willingness to discuss and influence the role of theater in society.

The same year began one long criminal career with the role of the police inspector who enjoys life Kollberg in Bo Widerberg’s film “The Man on the Roof” in a beautiful interaction with Eva Remaeus. In 1984, the police role was called Jarnebring, in Widerberg’s “The Man from Mallorca” and Wollter received a gold beetle. After which he came to give life to the depressive van Veeteren after Håkan Nesser’s novels in I don’t know how many series and movies.

Film actor Wollter did well, who even during a lively political debate with the director appeared in Andrei Tarkovsky’s last film “The Victim”, 1986. He played a prominent supporting role as the sad-eyed adulterer Enekrona in the series. Lars Molin’s television series “Three loves” 1989, and another in the funny short series “The tattooed widow” also by Molin.

But the theater was his most important arena, not only as an actor, but also because of his willingness to discuss and influence the role of theater in society. During the 1967-83 Gothenburg City Theater years, he played major roles under directors such as Ralf Långbacka and Lennart Hjulström, but was also involved in laying the foundations for the collective theater of the 1970s, with performances by Bengt Bratt and Kent Andersson. “Flotten”, “Hemmet” and “Sandlådan.”.

Then 100,000 people saw Wollter and his 80 companions at the Tent Project when they toured Sweden in 1977 with their gigantic musical “We Are a Thousand” about working-class history. The oldest of the company and experienced in theater in the city, he assumed a sort of tidy role, which probably suited him and was necessary.

Because as an actor, Sven Wollter was never as good as when he played Viveka Seldahl.

A little later, it was time for the great battle of the Manifesto at the Gothenburg City Theater, when a group in the theater wanted to bring the community participation of free group theater and the strong idea of ​​folk creation to the house, create an artistic repertoire theater for Gothenburgers.

Although it was fine that way became at least one lively experimental scene in the suburb of Angered, where Wollter soon starred in Peter Oskarson’s acclaimed Brecht rendition of the life of Galileo Galilei.

When Oskarson moved to the Folkteatern in Gävleborg, the Wollter / Seldahl couple followed her, played Chekhov in Gävle, and enjoyed artistic freedom. However, it seems that the cabin became small for them, or if Sven Wollter perhaps discovered that he was more of a freethinker than he himself thought. It happened anyway between the temperaments of the artists.

It was a new step, to the Stockholm city theater, which he received with “Cyrano de Bergerac” where Sven and Viveka faced each other as the couple in love. What the two were, from time to time, until Viveca’s death in 2001, in an artist relationship where they spurred each other on.

Because as an actor, Sven Wollter was never as good as when he played Viveka Seldahl, as he did in “Raskens” and got to do it many more times, especially in the big bully of the Swedish movie kiosk “Änglagård” and its two sequels. . Their interaction later deepened in Bille August’s film “A Song for Martin,” where he went dark about the pair. In the book “Boy with a bow,” Sven Wollter’s equally candid and impulsively structured 2014 autobiography, he writes that Viveca was responsible for the art, the direct obsession with acting.

He often felt himself more cheerful. Unnecessarily modest but with a grain of truth. Because instead of a floor actor adept of the Stanislavski method he was a violent fighter at heart, a singer on the barricades of the class struggle who did not shy away from the reddest bombardments or the craziest hopes.

Or as he put it himself:

“… And then there are others who think that we are only at the first beginning of the very beginning of civilization. That we continue to crawl in the vestiges of the age of barbarism and that, after all, we have a better future if we give a opportunity to reason and human love.

I myself am optimistic. Until the last breath “.