VALTER

– Bergman’s first local film star

Fårö Document 1979 presents quite a number af Fåröese, but the leading character is Valter Broman, a farmer at Dämba and Ingmar Bergman’s neighbour. Valter was born at Dämba in 1912. His family ran a medium-sized farm by Fårö standards. They had three to four dairy cows, a couple of work horses, some ten hens and about seventy winter sheep. Valter’s sisters got married in the 1930s and left home, leaving Valter and his parents with the farm. Since the custom at the time was for the eldest son to take over a farm. Valter was the indisputable heir to a farm that had been passed down in the family for many generations.

AN ADEPT FARMER

In the film, Ingmar Bergman says that Valter lives in total and ”self-willed solitude” at his farm. He lived alone there, true enough, after the death of his mother in 1971, but to what degree it was of his own free will is hard to judge. He was plainly fully capable of taking care of most of the farm work himself. He was a skilled worker, very adept.  In Fårö Document 1979 we follow his work, season by season over the course of one year: mowing, haymaking, forest felling, running logs home and sawing them in the farm’s own sawmill. On top of that, sheep needed feeding, fish had to be caught and food cooked. Valter did all of this himself.

SELF SUFFICIENCY

Although Valter bought some tools to ease the burden, he lived very much in keeping with the customs of the former times of self sufficiency. Basically, this meant procuring your own needs from your own farm. Valter produced most food himself. The byre housed cows, pigs and hens which provided meat, milk, cream, butter and eggs. He grew potatoes and root vegetables, and kept a kitchen garden with fruit treees and berry bushes. His diet included fish – mainly flounder and Baltic herring, but also cod.

Sheep grazed freely in the enclosed pastures all year round. Sheep provided food, such as roast lamb, smoked lamb, lamb skulls and black sausage. Their fleece was also used for warm winter clothing and sheepskin rugs. When home produce did not suffice, Valter set off on his tractor with a carton of eggs to nearby Rosa’s store and bartered them for salt, sugar, coffee, grain, paraffin and working clothes, perhaps even the odd treat. This was the normal way of life in the days of self sufficiency, an era that probably lasted longer on Fårö than elsewhere in the country. Rosa’s store was closed down in the mid 1960s.

BERGMAN’S FILM STAR

Fårö Document 1979 was first aired on television Christmas Eve in 1979. It is said that when Valter entered Fårö Parish Church the following Christmas Day morning to take part in the Christmas Service, he arrived just as the bells tolled, summoning the congregation to the early morning service, Valter strode up the centre aisle like a celebrated film star and took his place in one of the front pews in the crowded and lit up church.

– Well, I guess I’ve now become a Bergman movie star, he proudly proclaimed to his neighbours at Dämba.

From time to time, a very proud Valter took his tractor and took the ferry to Fårösund. The TV and radio dealer there had made a video recording of the film, and he let Valter watch it whenever he wished.

FAN MAIL

Public response to the broadcasting of Fårö Document 1979 was overwhelming. Valter recieved about two hundred letters and parcels with spatulas and fish slices from total strangers from every corner of the country. In the film, he had used a cheese slice when frying his Baltic herring! It worked perfectly well, but countless women wanted to give a helping hand to the bachelor who had his meals and led his life all alone in his large house.

SELLING THE FARM

Valter died at Däma in late summer of 1990. The farmland was sold to a couple of farmers with abutting land. The movable property was sold off at a public summer auction, finding new owners among tourists and local islanders, as was the genuine old Fårö house from 19th century.