Sunday, July 21, 2013

Swedish Machine Seen As Prop In A Småland Shop

Småland is very much Sweden, so not all that surprising really that a typewriter used as a prop in a bookstore is a Halda. The machine looked cosmetically fine but disturbingly many keytops were missing. Weird - would customers to the shop surrepticiously pry off a keytop? They are plastic, not chrome-rimmed. Or maybe the machine was like this when it was put in the shop as a prop, perhaps the mounting of keytops on the machine just wasn't that solid.


Didn't look at the machine closer, keeping track of 3 kids in a busy bookshop makes for a lot of distraction :)


This was a bit of a special bookshop, having books of only one author. Located  on a picture-perfect little shopping street inside a themepark around the books by that one author.

When holidaying in Sweden, we visited the Astrid Lindgren World. An astonishingly large and surprisingly busy park. Not cheap and not cheaply done either. Was great for the kids (and parents) to see the settings for many of the stories. Stories are being acted on the different stages during the day. Between the plays the stages are children's playgrounds, with the actors hanging around still. Good food there too! A recommended park should you ever find yourself in the area with kids in the age-bracket for Pippi and the others.

But back to the sighting. Doubt that this is the machine Astrid Lindgren herself used, but didn't stop to ask about that. Thought it unlikely that the staff would know; if it was it would most likely have had a sign next to it stating so of course.

4 comments:

  1. Nice looking machine. I have a non-functional Halda of this type and would love to be able to use one.

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  2. AH! The striking curves of the Halda. Nice. I see these come up on ebay every so often, and they are striking machines. Good to see it is at least mostly intact.

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  3. I have a couple of them, must fish them out and restore them. I have an idea that there was a machine called the British Oliver and it was just a re-badged Halda. Anybody know if this is so. Another curious fact that there were many Haldas in Vietnam, I was told why but have forgotten

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    1. Not sure, but I spotted a "British Oliver No 21" desktop model that looks a lot like a Halda.

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