A Ballad and a Movie: Scandinavian TSB B21 and Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring

Abstract

Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) is unusual among his films in that it does not derive from the auteur director’s own, original screenplay but rather from a medieval source text (a Swedish ballad), which was then adapted for the screen by Ulla Isaksson. In a radio interview conducted just before the premiere of Jungfrukällan in 1960, Bergman says that he first read the source ballad while in university, from Sverker Ek’s 1924 anthology Den svenska folkvisan (The Swedish Ballad), where its title is “Töres dotter i Vänge” (The Daughter of Töre in Vänge).1 Bergman first considered producing a version for the ballet, but then, while on the set of Smultronstället (1957; Wild Strawberries), he decided instead to make a film adaptation (Billquist 1960, 206). He sent the ballad to Isaksson, with whom he worked on his next film, Nära livet (1958; Brink of Life or Close to Life), about three women in a maternity ward. Ulla Isaksson wrote the screenplay for Brink of Life based on two short stories she had published in 1954.2 In 1957, Bergman had scripted and directed another now classic film based on a medieval subject, Det sjunda inseglet (The Seventh Seal), so film critics have sought to explain why he turned to Isaksson for the equally medieval-themed Virgin Spring. Bergman himself said that sometimes (in those days) he just