Krakel Spektakel to the silver screen
“Bagar Bengtsson här i stan, han har bakat en krokan.…” Who doesn’t love Lennart Hellsing’s quirky characters Krakel Spektakel, Opsis Kalopsis and Kusin Vitamin? And now they are coming to the big screen, in a musical adventure that will premiere next year. Annabell Olsson has to solve the mystery about the wizard who transformed himself into a glass of lemonade and drank himself up. She gets help from her friends Krakel, Opsis and Kusin Vitamin—all of whom we know from poems and songs but are now placed in the middle of a story. It is not yet clear what actors will carry the main parts in the film. “We will remain faithful to Lennart Hellsing’s fun, anarchistic and surrealistic tradition,” says producer Ulf Synnerholm. Director Elisabet Gustafsson has hitherto worked mostly in France and this project will be her feature film debut. She describes the film, which is based on a script by Torbjörn Jansson, as a musical adventure. “It will be reminiscent of ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” she says, “with a girl who goes off on a joyful adventure, which has a realistic beginning and a realistic ending.” The film has been allotted 9 million SEK ($1,418,800) from Svenska filminstitutet, and will be shot in Luleå this spring. A version is planned for television, too.

Foreign powers recruit spies in Sweden
Sweden needs stricter laws against espionage, says Säpo (Swedish Security Service). Hundreds of Swedes are reportedly committing crimes against the safety of their land. According to Säpo’s calculations, thousands of Swedes have been contacted by foreign intelligence services with the goal to enlist them. Together with the Office of the Public Prosecutor, Säpo has now presented the Swedish government with an analysis, which asks for stricter espionage laws. According to daily DN, there are two areas in particular that are in need of emergency work: One is to safeguard those international military efforts in which Sweden participates; the other is to prevent unlawful spying where information is being delivered to other countries. There might also be more severe punishment for negligence, for instance sending documents via email that are classified top secret.

More Swedes are millionaires
There’s a rush to the club of Swedish millionaires! From 2000 to 2011 the number of Swedes with an annual salary of at least one million SEK ($155,926), has increased from 17,000 to almost 54,000, according to Dagens Samhälle, where new information from Statistics Sweden has been analyzed. Only 0.7 percent of Sweden’s employees make over a million, a group that pays 7 percent of all income tax in Sweden (41 out of 580 billion). Eight Stockholm districts and two in Skåne accommodate more than half of all these millionaires.

Swedish flutist Gunilla von Bahr has died
Renowned Swedish flutist Gunilla von Bahr has passed away. Von Bahr, who was born Gunilla Palmkvist in Lund in 1941, was prominent in two musical fields. First and foremost she was an exceptional flutist, but she was also the experienced director of a number of musical institutions. Von Bahr was one of the first women to gain real power within the field of culture; for many years she was the headmaster at Kungliga Musikhögskolan (Royal College of Music), and before that she was director for the Malmösymfonikerna. As a flutist von Bahr often played newly composed music, many of her concerts were specifically composed for her. She also did a string of recordings, oftentimes for her ex-husband Robert von Bahr’s record company Bis.