Australian Karaoke plays the Nordic stars

Henry Lawson was son of the Norwegian sailor Niels (Peter)Herzberg Larsen. Despite his Nordic ancestry, the presence of Scandinavian themes in his writing is confined to occasional autobiographical references. In a poem to his own son, ‘To Jim’, Lawson writes ‘A strong Norwegian sailor’s blood/Runs red through every vein.’ While Larsen is not credited with directly influencing his son’s beliefs, his Norwegian upbringing was sympathetic to Henry’s republicanism. Scandinavian influence lurks behind many an Australian cultural icon. If we examine the various Nordic stars that have crossed southern skies, we find the principal coordinates for Australia’s course as an independent nation. Scandinavian influence appears at the defining moments in government, architecture, music and poetry. The Nordic ideal sets a course towards social justice, individualism and appetite for life—ideals that are destined never to be realised.

The divine order of Linnaeus

They say of Chicago that it was built by Swedes, governed by Irish and populated by Poles. Mid-western Swedes were part of a colony established by Christians fleeing the rigid Lutheran system of the time. By contrast, in Australia the most substantial enduring Scandinavian settlement in Australia is the tiny Gippsland town of East Poowong, where twelve Danish families set up diary farms in the 1870s. The Scandinavian contribution to Australia comes mainly through individuals. Retired Professor of Swedish, John Stanley Martin, uses an astronomical metaphor ‘They are like comets that flash past, create a bit of life while they’re there and then they’re gone.’ Despite their brief life, these comets enable us to take our bearings—to measure Australia’s course by how far it falls short of their trajectories.

One of those visitors stepped ashore with James Cook. The Endeavour’s discovery of Australia was a British-Swedish co-venture. Joseph Banks was informed by the ideas of Carolus Linnaeus, Professor of Botany, Dietetics, and Materia Medicain Uppsala. The Linnaean system of classification uncovered a divine order in nature, which provided a neat filing system for the classification of new worlds. English scientists called on Linnaeus to send his foremost pupil to spread the gospel of Systema naturae. Daniel Solander, Linnaeus’ anointed successor and adopted son, soon gained a position at the British Museum.

Through his friendship with Joseph Banks and his reputation as England’s best botanist, Solander joined the 1769 Royal Society expedition to the South Seas, along with the Finnish draughtsman Herrman Spöring, close family friend of Linnaeus. Together, they gathered samples of flora and fauna from Botany Bay. Solander’s name adheres to the stretch of land on which Cook disembarked, Cape Solander, and the device that he fabricated for packing botanical specimens—the Solander Box. Endeavour returned with roughly 30,000 plant specimens, which provided the scientific foundation for subsequent colonisation. The explorers were welcomed back to England as ‘Dr Solander and his company’ and King George III received Banks and Solander one week before Cook. Cook’s reputation grew only after his following journeys. Meanwhile, Solander remained with Banks to catalogue their botanical horde and to extend it with an expedition to Iceland.

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The Bjelke-Petersens find a Promised Land

By the late nineteenth-century, much was published in Scandinavian countries extolling the beauties and opportunities of Australia. These publications inspired a number of utopian thoughts of moral revival on the other side of the world—ideals that inevitably ran adrift.

In 1845, Christian Moller left Denmark to live in the small Tasmanian town of Bismarck. The book of his impressions, Tasmaniens egne(Tasmanian Regions, 1881), extolled the paradise that awaited fellow Danes on the other side of the world. Moller’s book caught the attention of an upwardly mobile Dane, George Petersen, of Bjelke Avenue Copenhagen. Encouraged by correspondence with Moller, who heralded a ‘promised land’ in Tasmania, Bjelke Petersen (who acquired the name of his street) took his family away from dank urban life in Europe to endure the invigorating challenges of building a new country.

Moller turned out to be a drunkard and his publication was a cruel hoax. Determined to meet life’s challenge, the Bjelke Petersens settled in the Hobart suburb of New Town in 1891. Though George was too ill to work, his children seized whatever opportunity they could find. The eldest son Christian began taking physical culture classes and introduced new sports such as basketball and squash, earning him the nickname ‘By Jerks Petersen’. Among his prize students was the future Prime Minister, Joe Lyons. Christian’s brother Harold continued this pursuit of physical culture line with publications such as How to Become Hardy (1918). The institutes then expanded to Sydney, which the Prince of Wales used as a refuge during his royal tour of the colony. Today, the Bjelke-Petersen Bros School of Physical Culture claims to have 260 clubs in eastern Australia. While it once serviced the physical education of Sydney’s top private schools, it now trains young girls in exercises for competition and performance at sporting functions such as football and concerts.

While the brothers developed regimens for the healthy body, their sister Marie aimed to encourage healthy minds. Her first novel, The Captive Singer (1916) contrasted the vigorous and devout life in the Tasmania with the decadent world of Europe. Her description of the woodchop demonstration gives honour to what has become a distinctive Tasmanian pastime.

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The Danish gateway to Australia

After the 1950s, the Scandinavian constellation moved back to where it first arrived, in Sydney. Here it struck root most deeply and for a short time Australia enjoyed its ‘dog days’ under the endless northern sun.

On the brow of the 1960s, Australia seemed a bleak wasteland of conformist suburbs and gaudy architecture. In The Australian Ugliness, Robyn Boyd argued that Australian design was ‘diametrically opposed to that of Sweden, where the average exhibited taste is cultivated and there are few who rise above or sink below.’ Boyd’s denunciation of Australian veneer heralded a broader cultural movement that attempted to reach beyond the superficial.

Individuals began to experiment with more ‘natural’ forms of existence. City cinemas screened continental films, where Swedish films were synonymous with moral openness and nudity. Igmar Bergman on the screen, and Strinberg and Ibsen on the stage confronted audiences with hard realities of life.

Out of this period emerged what is recognised as Australia’s most enduring architectural icon. The Finnish architect Eliel Gotlieb Saarinen received his program for the Canberra competition late, so had only six weeks to create and draw his designs. Despite the short time, he was awarded second prize—Walter Burley Griffin received first. However, he was able to make a dramatic effect on Australian architecture through his son, Eero. Eero Saarinen was an advocate of architecture that reflected the ‘beauty of the space between buildings’, as demonstrated in his acclaimed buildings the Great Arch in Missouri. His work evinced sculptural qualities that reflected organic forms.

In 1956, Eero was invited onto the panel of judges for the Sydney Opera House. Finnish architect was presented with the short-listed entries, but an exhibition of rejected drawings was displayed for his interest. Dissatisfied with those selected, Eero Saarinen found a drawing among the rejects that showed promise. To the dismay of the organisers, he refused to select a winner from the short-list and would not lend his name to the process unless his fancied reject was awarded the commission. Thanks to his intervention, the Danish architect Jørn Utzon was able to design an opera house that is now the most celebrated building in the country.

The result is a unique building that reflects the natural elements of the harbour—waves, sunlight, shells and sails. On the outside, it is a feat of imaginative construction. Utzon spent a year in Sweden working with Hoganas to prefabricate more than a million chevron-shaped ceramic tiles that would make up the shell.

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Neverland

WHAT AUSTRALIA COULD HAVE BEEN