It seems like a uniquely Nordic thing that you can enter a county museum and step into a fairytale-like, children’s play space that also displays rare and valuable, original artwork. But that’s exactly what the Följa John exhibit at Jönköpings länsmuseum in Jönköping, Sweden is. The title of the exhibit literally means “Follow John” but is written as “In John Bauer’s Footsteps” in the museum’s signage.
Based on the folkloric stories and fairytale creatures found in John Bauer’s unique artwork, Följa John embeds a number of the artist’s original illustrations and paintings at strategic points throughout the exhibit area, much of which takes the form of an indoor playground designed to directly reflect and engage with the imaginative themes found in the displayed pieces of artwork themselves.
John Bauer is well loved by those who know his work, and those who don’t are still likely to be familiar with some aspect of his now-global influence. As the first illustrator for Bland tomtar och troll (“Among Gnomes and Trolls”), an annual Swedish folklore and fairytale anthology dating to 1907, Bauer’s illustrations have made a serious impact on the imagery of gnomes, elves, trolls, and other mystical inhabitants of magical places as we know them today. He wasn’t, of course, the only prominent Scandinavian illustrator to work with folkloric themes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, though. In addition to Bauer, Gustaf Tenggren, Jenny Nyström, Theodor Kittelsen, and Erik Werenskiold were a few others who also helped shape our collective notion of what a troll or a gnome should look like. But Bauer’s contributions remain uniquely significant.
Perhaps his most significant legacy is an indirect one—after a tragic death in a boating accident at the early age of 36, his successor to Bland tomtar and troll, the aforementioned Gustaf Tenggren, eventually moved to California and became the art director for Disney’s earliest animated feature films, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, and Fantasia. Despite Tenggren’s bigger advances in American media and pop culture, Bauer remains the better known illustrator in both his home country and the rest of the world. Books have been written about him and his art in both Swedish and English, his original artworks sell for tens of thousands of dollars in the rare instances when they come up for auction, and his unique artistic style has been acknowledged as a direct inspiration for both Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.
It’s standard practice in Sweden for each county to have its own museum, known as a läns museum in Swedish. These museums exist throughout the country and contain items of historic and artistic interest to the local region in addition to providing event space for conferences and public talks. Jönköpings läns museum is located in central Jönköping—the administrative seat for Jönköping County in the broader Swedish region historically known as Småland. The museum is housed in a distinct red building one block from the city’s main pedestrian shopping street and is free to enter.
The museum, of course, contains other exhibits beyond the one dedicated to John Bauer’s art. Visitors may also peruse the ongoing Kampen i tiden which is all about shifts in power among different groups of people throughout the course of Jönköping’s history, or any of the temporary, rotating exhibits. During my visit in late August 2024, these included installations dedicated to the photography of Swedish artist, Mattias Käll, and diary entries and photographs relating to John Bauer’s own family life. The spaces for these exhibits are all to be found on the museum’s second level, whereas the Följa John exhibit is located at ground level.
Upon entering the museum, the first space one passes through is the museum gift shop, which includes a wide selection of John Bauer related memorabilia. Near the back wall is the check-out counter, and just beyond it towards the right is a spacious lobby and the entrances to the Följa John exhibit. The exhibit is denoted by a large mottled, rosy peach-colored wall featuring the exhibit’s title in stylistic script on its right-hand side. To the left of the wall, one may enter into an informational room that provides an introduction to John Bauer’s life and artwork while to the right of the wall, one may enter directly into the children’s play space.
The exhibit’s introductory room is an open, minimalistic sort of space—very Scandinavian. A glass curtain wall provides separation from the museum’s lobby, and a cozy fireplace rests in one of the two far corners. Above it, an original John Bauer painting of the Norse goddess, Freyja, hangs on the wall. On the same wall hangs his famous Vill-Vallareman, depicting a fairy shepherd that appeared in Bland tomtar och troll in 1909. The other walls display some of Bauer’s lesser known original artworks, which include Biblical scenes and an oil painting inspired by the nymphs of Greek mythology.
Smaller original works are found in the two horizontal display cases in the middle of the room. These contain studies of nature—relating in particular to plants and clouds—as well as a variety of sketches. Some of these depict costumes and scenography that Bauer proposed for for a ballet production that he had been hired to write for the Royal Opera in Stockholm. Appropriate to Bauer’s interests, Bergakungen (“The Mountain King”) focuses on a mountain troll who kidnaps a young girl, but the Royal Opera ghosted Bauer 100 years before such bad behavior had become so commonplace that a new term was coined to describe it. When the Royal Opera then neglected to even credit Bauer at Bergakungen’s premier five years after his death, his friends and brothers pursued the matter in court and won on his behalf.
While the information found in the display cases exists only in Swedish, the museum provides loose-leaf, durable informative handouts (essentially thick, oversized notecards) with basic information about the displayed artworks in both Swedish and English.
The next room begins the transition to the children’s play space. A low, child’s-height table covered in books, game pieces, and other interactive items sits in the middle of the room. Several John Bauer originals are found hanging on the walls here, too, including his iconic Ett gammalt bergtroll (“An Old Mountain-Troll,” yes, Bauer had a thing for mountain trolls in particular) and a portrait of his wife, Ester. Beside the open threshold to the next room—where the play space really takes off—is the front half of a nearly life-size plastic moose who appears to be breaking through the wall. The moose is an iconic figure in Bauer’s illustrations and appears most famously in the Bland tomtar och troll story about Princess Tuvstarr (also known as Princess Cottongrass).
In addition the bifurcated fairytale moose, the threshold to the next room is also demarcated by a change in flooring materials—from hardwood to carpet. That means your shoes must come off!
With your shoes removed (and left under Skutt the Moose’s watchful eye), you step into John Bauer’s winter wonderland, and the true beginning of the play space. The play space is comprised of four rooms in total, all connected in a relatively open rather than sequential manner. Three are decorated to represent the iconic landscapes found in the illustrations of John Bauer—essentially seasonal variations on mystical woodlands. These three rooms provide open space with cushions and pillows as well as undulations in the flooring for children to actively move around and across, as well as some step-like seating for calmer moments such as storytelling time; when I visited a couple of parents were telling their young daughter a Swedish fairytale. The remaining room is more reminiscent of the interior of a quaint, historic Swedish cottage and provides fairytale-inspired clothes and mirrors for children to play dress-up.
Throughout the entire children’s play space, John Bauer quotes are painted on the walls and John Bauer original artworks are displayed in recesses behind protective glass panels—often at a young child’s eye level. Three of the better known original artworks to be found in this part of the exhibit are are those shown above in this article. The museum also provides a brief audioguide that explains the background of several of the artworks as well as the seasonal themes depicted in the play space that may be accessed via one’s phone.
The far end of the play space connects back to the museum’s lobby, but if you entered from the other side, then you’ll probably want to double-back to reclaim your shoes—assuming Skutt the Moose didn’t run off with them; according to the old tale, he is known to travel very long distances when the mood suits him.
Finally, just outside of the introductory room (directly behind the large, rosy peach-colored wall) is a small theater that plays a short, informational film about John Bauer and the importance of imagination and creativity in general. This film is, however, only available in Swedish.
While I highly recommend visiting Följa John if at all possible for anyone who is interested in folklore and Nordic art inspired by it, I also realize that Jönköping is not an easy location to reach for most people outside of Sweden (and some inside Sweden, too). However, it is possible to get a taste of the John Bauer’s work at home as well as some of the stories that accompany his illustrations relatively easily. The following are a few suggestions worth checking out for anyone interested in the subject.
Jönköpings läns museum hosts an extensive collection of articles about John Bauer on its website, which are available in English: https://jonkopingslansmuseum.se/bloggportal/john-bauer/
The blog, Pagefiddler, hosts a nice gallery of many John Bauer illustrations in one place, as well as a lot of information about other Nordic artists: https://pagefiddler.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/john-bauer-grandfather-of-scandinavian-trolls/
An Illustrated Treasury of Swedish Folk and Fairy Tales is nice hardcover book containing many of Bauer’s illustrations and the stories that accompany them translated into English. And at a cover price of $25, the book is available at a much more affordable rate than a plane ticket across the Atlantic.
Lastly, if you’re curious to learn a little more about Bauer’s Bland tomtar och troll successor and original Disney art-master, Gustaf Tenggren, you can find some basic information about him on my own website which includes links to more detailed resources: https://www.scandinavianaggression.com/2019/11/gustaf-tenggrens-tomtar-and-troll.html
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Rowdy Geirsson attempts to promote Leif Eriksson awareness but generally fails, and barely maintains Scandinavian Aggression, a mediocre blog about Vikings past and present. He is the editor of Norse Mythology for Bostonians, a humorous retelling of the trials and tribulations of Odin, Thor, and the other Norse gods as conveyed in the charmingly quaint dialect of a foul-mouthed Bostonian, and is a regular contributor of humor articles to McSweeney’s, Metal Sucks, Points in Case, and Slackjaw. He lived in Norrköping as a guest researcher of the local university in 2015. Follow him on Twitter @RGeirsson, or don’t.