What do you mean, industrialised? That's snow, not soot!

As I've just converted a whole bunch of old films from DVD for work, we're getting ready to publish them everywhere. It's all public domain material as it's more than 50 years old. Footage from the 30s, especially overlooking Stockholm as it once was, can be really interesting. In the snippet below, Swedish painter Bruno Liljefors is shown parading his penthouse suite and overlooking more than 180 degrees of Stockholm from near Sankt Eriksbron.

Here's a couple of quotes from the clip to set the tone:

He has acquired a warm and airy patriarch's beard.

[...]

"It is beautiful," says Bruno Liljefors, "and that is why I like it here."

Do note the reporter's tone, high-pitched and very articulate; the high pitch is due to speed issues with audio back in the day, and the articulation...that's just how things were. The speakers had to talk in a very clear, articulate Stockholm accent. I believe Swedish speakers with other accents weren't allowed to speak on radio and TV until the 70s, which caused a ruckus.

I miss talking with my grandmother about the olden days, from before the matchstick was invented, before cars, before cinema, TV and fire the Internet. When I was little, I used to spend a lot of time with my grandma and listen to her tales, and also with a neighbour named Stig, who was in his 70s. He told me about when he was a kid, how he'd saved money forever to afford to go into town and see his first film, by The Marx Brothers, and what that felt like. He told me little details, like the texture of the carpet in the lobby of the cinema, how much he'd spent on candy and what it felt like before the film started. I sat nailed to my seat as he spoke.