Black-eyed Swedes

Here’s a strange parallel to the ‘Black-Eyed Kids’ feature [ FT322:26-32]. These graphics show a rather forgettable Swedish crime novel from 1956, Döden skriver svenska. This literally means ‘Death writes Swedish’, but a more meaningful translation would be ‘Death sits an exam’. The cover illustration is equally undistinguished – except for the four black-eyed girls, who might just as well be interpreted as aliens. There is nothing spooky or alien about the story, which is a totally straightforward crime yarn involving a 19-year-old getting killed as she sits an exam. (Spoiler alert: She is pregnant by a teacher. This doesn’t explain why he should choose to kill her in the most public way imaginable, but there’s crime fiction for you.)

The cover is by one Rolf Lagerson, who seems to have been a prolific illustrator. A Google Image search will throw up dozens of his book covers in typical Sixties style, which are all rather better than this one – I would guess this is one of his earlier efforts. Unfortunately he has no Wikipedia entry. This was long before the familiar meme of ‘Greys’ had been established – if it had been, he couldn’t have drawn the girls like this, or everyone would have thought it was SF. He was probably experimenting with different ways of stylising human figures; maybe Swedish girls at the time went in for heavy black eyeshade. On the other hand, I wouldn’t think that became popular until the Sixties, so he would be some 10 years ahead of his time. All in all, I’ve never seen ‘normal’ human faces depicted quite like this. Nils Erik Grande Oslo, Norway