Carl Michael Bellman

So there was Bellman, a French guy and a German... No! This isn't that kind of a Bellman story. This is about the real Bellman. The songwriter Carl Michael Bellman.

Bellman is important in Swedish culture. You hear or sing his songs for example, in school graduations: Fjäril vingad... Or graduation parties: Ta dig sen dito en dito två, dito tre - så dör du nöjdare. Bellman lived in Stockholm in the 18th century. It was a poverty stricken time.

People drank a lot of alcohol to forget their misery. Bellman's lyrics reveal this. Something not shown in other, more refined literature. Bellman wrote about the environments he visited: pubs and parties. Many of these parties took place in membership-only clubs you had to be invited into: Orden societies.

Here Bellman performed his songs and plays. He sang rhyming verses to well-known, popular melodies. He played his cittern and sang about people he knew, but exaggerated their stories. He also sang about his own made-up orden society: The Bacchi Orden. To get in there you must have been seen lying drunk in the gutter - at least twice.

Bacchi Orden means the order of the god Bacchus - the wine god of the Romans. Bellman's songs often include ancient gods, and also Norse gods and characters from the Bible. Maybe you have heard the song about "Gubben Noah"? Gubben Noa, Gubben Noa... Noah is known from the Bible for building a big boat, an ark in which he escapes from the Flood.

But Noah was also the first in the Bible to drink wine. And that is what Bellman's song is about. This is Ulla Winblad. She was a prostitute, but Bellman sang her praises as Venus or Fröja - the love goddesses of Roman and Norse mythology. It was common during the Enlightenment to use characters from the Bible or mythology.

But what was unique in Bellman's songs was that he let drunks and prostitutes represent the divine. These are some of the main characters of Bellman's songs. They are mentioned, for example, in Fredmans epistlar and Fredmans sånger. Ulla Winblad's real name was Maja Stina Kiellström and she might not have been a prostitute at all. But although Bellman changed her name, everyone understood who she was.

It probably became sort of awkward for her when people followed her around singing Bellman songs. In real life, Jean Fredman was a court watchmaker, and responsible for the finest church-towers' bells in Stockholm. But he drank himself into poverty and ended up homeless in the gutter. Fredrik Movitz worked as a musician just like Bellman. When he died, Bellman used him as a symbol for himself.

He even called himself Movitz in his love letters. Bellman borrowed money to support his lifestyle in the pubs. So he ended up penniless in a jail for people in debt. That was called a... Gäldstuga.

In 1772 the king, Gustav III, staged a coup. And now Bellman was raised out of poverty. The coup meant that the king had much more power than before. This obviously wasn't very popular; but Bellman supported the king by writing songs about him. To show his gratitude toward Bellman the king appointed him as Secretary of Gustav the third's Royal Lottery.

But in 1792, Gustav the third was murdered. So Bellman became destitute and in debt again. During the Enlightenment, one of the typical traits was -- just as Bellman did -- to criticise society by using humour... satire. But Bellman was even more ahead of his time.

In the Romanticist era - which followed after the age of Enlightenment - love of nature was a common subject... just as it is in Bellman's songs. And describing the living conditions of the poor didn't become common until after that: during the Realist period. But why do we tell Bellman jokes? Bellman was known to be witty, and say funny things.

That is why they -- in the nineteenth century -- started telling jokes about him. Simply put: he was a funny guy... and that has lived on until today.