Billgren versus Edelfelt: The Illustrations for J. L. Runeberg's Fanrik Stals sagner

Albert Edelfelt's Illustrations for Runeberg's Fanrik Stals sagner from 1900 are without doubt the best known of all made for this epic narrative. Nevertheless, in 2004, Swedish artist Ernst Billgren took up the challenge of creating a new image of the Tales of Ensign Stal. Edelfelt works in a narrative, realistic, black-and-white idiom and represents the stories in a historic setting, while Billgren moves away from the narrative by suggesting a more symbolic interpretation. Billgren predominantly uses (coloured) oil painting, as well as line-drawings and silhouettes. By framing the oil paintings in an emphatic way, Billgren stresses the artificiality of his pictures. Edelfelt, on the other hand, works in a much more transparent manner: his illustrations also functioned ideologically in the national project of the day. Although there seems to be a straightforward relation between the text and Edelfelt's representations of it, he made use of the illustrations of his predecessors Staaff and Malmstrom, placing himself in an iconological tradition. Billgren, in turn, quotes his own earlier work as well as playing with the example set by Edelfelt: in his silhouettes he plays upon Edelfelt's images, occasionally ironically. With their illustrations, both Edelfelt and Billgren confirm the status of Runeberg's epic narration within the canon of Finnish literature.