Bergman and Fårö

The meeting with the barren island on Gotland’s northern point was overwhelming. “If one wished to be solemn, it could be said that I had found my landscape, my real home; if one wished to be funny, one could talk about love at first sight,” he wrote in his autobiography Laterna Magica. As well as Through a Glass Darkly, Bergman would make three feature films, a TV series, two documentary films and a short film on Fårö.

Noted even in February 1967 that I’m working on an idea of Fårö as the Kingdom of the Dead. Someone comes wandering in across the island longing for something that’s far away. Several stations along the road. Light, frightening, curiously exciting.

 From Ingmar Bergman’s workbook for The Passion of Anna

Petit bourgeois country idyll, refuge, war zone and Golgotha, Bergman has played with Farö as both heaven and hell, as the setting for matrimonial dis – cord, mental illness, death angst and reconciliation. The barren, stony landscape with the wild Baltic Sea backdrop has often been interpreted as a metaphor for the personal emotions of the role figures.

In the late 1960s, Bergman formed production company Cinematograph with its headquarters on Fårö. Cinematograph productions included Fårö Document 1969 and 1979, the Magic Flute, Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, and Cries and Whispers.

He had his house built not far from where Persona was filmed. He came to live and work there for almost 40 years. The Fårö people’s opinion of Bergman was far removed from the public image of the great demon producer. At Ingmar Bergman’s memorial ceremony in August 2007, the people of Fårö paid tribute to a neighbour, employer and builder. Ingmar Bergman died at the age of 89 at his home on Fårö and is buried in Fårö Church Cemetery.