Sweden´s representation in Utvandrarna and its adaptations : The image of Sweden in the Utvandrar-series

Sammanfattning: This study is an adaptation analysis focusing on the portrayal of Sweden in Jan Troell´s film The Emigrants (1971) and Eric Poppe´s film The Emigrants (2021), which is based on the book by the same name, written by Vilhelm Moberg. Both the films and book are discussed and analyzed to find similarities and differences between them. The purpose of this paper is to identify the changes and similarities that have been made due to the different contexts of the adaptations and how they reflect the Swedish society in which they were released with the fallacies in contemporary adaptation theory that points out wrong assumptions about the similarities of this classic story.   All through this study I have shown the context specific attributes that have contributed to the differences between the contexts of the adaptations but also reported the similarities in the overall story. The context in the representation of Sweden has changed a lot between the different adaptations, many of them appear more clearly when you look closer at the time in Swedish society in which they were released. Context specific differences are behind much of this, through the adapter's interpretation of the source text. The representation of Sweden as a nation can be based on this, but also through Vilhelm Moberg´s, Jan Troell´s and Erik Poppe´s choice to emphasize specific societal problems as a central part of their interpretation. The fallacies in contemporary adaptation theory have shown that the assumptions about how The Emigrants have been adapted are in some cases incorrect. This paper can shed light on the changes and similarities that take place when a work is adapted into different time periods in a nation's history.