Fröken Frimans krig

Fröken Frimans krig (The War of Miss Friman) is a Swedish TV series written by Pernilla Oljelund and it has been sort of a christmas tradition. It tells the story of Dagmar Friman at the beginning of the 20th century. Together with her friends Kinna, Alma, Emmy and her sister-in-law Lottie she starts up the female cooperation Svenska hem (Swedish homes) selling groceries. They want to teach women about food and in the long run propagate for their right to vote.The third season has just been broadcasted and dwells a into the problem of prostitution and that prostituted women got to take all the blame for the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases.

Vad är det som är så skrämmande med tanken på att en kvinna kan ha ett värde och rättigheter precis som en man? (What is so scary about the thought of a woman having value and rights just like a man?)

~ Lottie

The plot is a fictional version of the real suffragette movement in Sweden and Svenska hem was a real all-female cooperation founded in 1905 and connected to this. Dagmar is a fictive version of one of its founder Anna Whitlock and among the stock owners was famous Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf. A lot of wholesalers during this period cheated, selling bad meat, milk and such to a better price which led to diseases being spread among the people in town.

This year, there was also a documentary made about the real Swedish suffragette women. Signe Bergman, Karolina Widerström, Ann Margret Holmgren, Frigga Carlberg and of course Anna Whitlock and broadcasted in connection to the show. All these women deserve blog entries in their own right, because they have such interesting stories and were all so very important. Therefore I cannot not recommend anyone understanding Swedish not to see it (The same goes for the TV series too.). However, how the production team have treated the scholars is appaling! They have not been mentioned at all and the production team does not really seem to understand the big problem with this. There is a Swedish proverb saying äras den som äras bör (honour the one who should be honoured) that seems fitting due to the situation.

Swedish land-owning women did actually have the right to vote between 1718 and 1772, but then we had to wait longer than any of our Nordic neighbours. The decision was made in the parliament on the 24th of May 1919. The first election where they could vote was therefore the one in 1921. So we might have been the last Nordic country to give women the right to vote, but we were the first one to get a professorial chair in Women's history and the first one to get it was fittingly enough Gunhild Kyle, the mother of the actress Sissela Kyle who plays Dagmar Friman.




Pictures were borrowed from here.