Designed by Craig Jamieson, this limited edition print draws inspiration from both Göteborg’s industrial and maritime history and Sweden’s natural world

The importance of Göteborg as a port city cannot be overstated. Sweden’s gateway to the West, its shoreline sustained substantial employment, shaping the whole economic and cultural life of the city.  Evolving from an 18th-century trade hub to a global leader in shipbuilding during the 20th century, shipbuilding alone employed 15,000 in its major shipyards, Götaverken, Eriksberg, and Lindholmen, during its time of peak production in the post WWII era.

As well as bringing things in, the shoreline was also a space of things leaving - notably people. During the period of Sweden’s great migration during the 19th and early 20th centuries, it estimated that about 1.3 million Swedes left for the United States, 1 million of them waving goodbye from the shoreline of Göteborg.

But rather than being dominated by the familiar manmade structures of Göteborg’s skyline, this design is instead populated by Trana, or Cranes in English. Cranes/Trana breed in Sweden and then migrate in the winter to a number of isolated locations, including the Iberian Peninsula, northwestern Africa, in areas of Sudan and Ethiopia, the Middle East, Pakistan, India, China and in a few locations in Southeast Asia.

Its breeding grounds are a site of wonder, with lakes such as Hornborgasjön seeing 30,000 Cranes/Trana descending there every spring. A vision of unparalleled natural beauty, it has been described as the ‘Tranadansa‘ by those lucky enough to see it.

With the value placed on the natural world in both Göteborg and Sweden, it seems only fitting that that these birds take pride of place on this Göteborg shoreline. They were there first.

Dimension 50cm x 70cm