The Norwegian tobacco company Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrik (short form, Tiedemanns) commissioned a series of nature films or travelogues about Norway, each presenting a specific part of the country, portraying the district’s particular sights: mountains, fjords, waterfalls, glaciers, and the like. More than 20 Tiedemanns nature films have survived in the collections at Norway’s National Library. They were produced by different film companies and with different photographers, between 1929 and 1937. In the later part of that period the silent film was abandoned in favour of sound. We have selected one film to represent the series.
Expedition films were popular at Norwegian movie theatres in the 1920s, as well as films celebrating romantic national features. Both themes were featured in the Tiedemann travelogues. Most follow the same format, a short trip through a beautiful landscape. We travel in rural surroundings by car, horse and cart, or train, and sometimes by boat, or even airplane or motorcycle. We visit hotels and resorts in the mountains, to admire panoramic views. Sometimes there are short glimpses of traditional handicrafts, like a woman spinning wool, but the camera doesn’t dwell upon these sequences; we see them only in passing. At some point, often in the latter part of the film, someone is smoking, but the focus remains on the wonders of nature. Only in the final scene is our attention concentrated fully on Tiedemanns tobacco products. Long before the law restricting smoking in Norway (Røykelagen, introduced in 2004), Tiedemanns clearly wanted to be associated with a healthy, close-to-nature lifestyle.
The format is similar to modern sponsored presentations, common at any broadcast sports event. The films appear to introduce and portray a Norwegian region – here the magnificent lakes, fjords, mountains, and glaciers of Loen-Kjendalen – playing on patriotism and love for the motherland, all hosted by Tiedemanns, rather than selling cigarettes.
Tiedemanns tobacco was one of Norway’s biggest tobacco companies, active between 1730 and 2008. In the late 1920s the number of film commercials produced per year increased drastically. Many were tobacco commercials; growing competition from international companies is considered to be one of the reasons for this big increase. This is clearly reflected in the collections at the National Library of Norway; no other group of products is so well represented among our holdings of commercial films from the silent era.
The source for this DCP is an original black & white nitrate print. It was digitized in 2019.

Tina Anckarman, Magnus Rosborn