Podcast Episode 4 - Speed, Court, Repeat
The Swedes Subculture hoarding Over 1,950 American cars than the United States.
I started this article because I was looking for a Scandinavian subculture Oilers said to be responsible for Sweden having raised more cars restored 1950 American than the United States have now Raggare The movement, which emerged from an against-culture of postwar youth primarily in Sweden and parts of Norway, is known for his undying love hot rod American vintage cars and 1950s pop culture.
We will consider this unlikely Swedish subculture in more detail in a moment, but while searching the Raggare, digging through forums and old albums implemented by members, I got a little confused when it m has led to a phenomenal amount of abandoned automobile junkyards scattered in the Swedish countryside, filled with American cars, crumbling and rusting away from home.
One of the most interesting sources that I have found the Flickr page of a mechanic named Mike MadMike64 passing on the platform online photography Gothenburg, Sweden.
Albums Mike are filled with memories and old photos of the car to meet Raggare 1950, he is a car enthusiast album online US Buicks, Cadillacs, Chevrolets, lovingly restored by the Swedish greasers.
But perhaps more interesting are his Junkyard albums.
One after another, Mike's collection of albums Junkyard open up ghostly graveyards corpses metal decomposition, once the kings of the American road, thank you to nature.
With less than 10 different albums, labeled Local Junkyard, Scrap Eda, Osby Scrap, Scrap Töksfors behind the old station, the dedicated member of the movement Raggare his father was also a raggare has clearly found an abundance of them over time, tracked at the end of unmarked dirt roads in the forests or on the outskirts of the city, almost as if they were as common to find in Sweden as a Ford dealer in America.
One of the most famous junkyards, which has almost become a tourist attraction of sorts for urban explorers and lovers of vintage cars is the cemetery Bastnäs car.
Deep in the Swedish woods, there is an army of more than a thousand cars abandoned, decaying since the 1950s The land was once owned by two brothers who opened a scrap company for cars left by military American in Sweden and in Europe after WW2 disassembling cars and sell them in Norway for portions was big business in Sweden when Norway had been left a poor country after the parties of war and cars were nearly impossible to get junkyards popped up all along the Swedish border and the Norwegians were their best customers.
The brothers who owned Bastnäs lived on earth and continued to sell American cars abandoned until the late 1980s Today you can still see the forgotten cars litter the ground, filling the fields around the two brothers dilapidated houses.
If you are still interested in visiting, the GPS coordinates are 59 21 43 14 N11 50 20 29 E You can virtually visit on Google, and you can actually see Google Earth cars.
You can see much more of this amazing cemetery on the site photographer Svein Nordrum here.
While many Swedes require junkyards be uninstalled country and forests cleaned, ironically, environmentalists argue for them to stay, arguing that wildlife have made nests in the automobile remains and if they get their way, cars will remain until they're dust.
Another notable scrap and still active Swedish I came across stashing old American cars in the Scandinavian wood is Bloms Bilskrot about 400 km north of Stockholm is so huge, you have alleged several days to explore properly.
Here is another Swedish car dealer who claims to have the largest inventory of old American cars this side of the Atlantic sitting in a forest So you're probably starting to get the idea.
If I was looking for an answer to why or how a subculture as obsessed vintage car Raggare emerged in Sweden, I think I found my answer When you have more than 1,950 towers lying around in your backyard that even the America, greaser pop culture and dress like James Dean begins to make more sense.
Mike Raggare albums, over 1962 and 1961 Impala and Buick LeSabre for the Big Meet central Sweden 1984 below 1959 built in the 60 s Galaxy, wrecked in the 70s and restored in the 80s.
Then s finally turn our attention to the faces of against-Raggare When they appeared in the 1950s, they were mostly stereotyped as bored gangs and rebels young men causing moral panic in Sweden, speeding in small towns drunk on moonshine and generally creating havoc wherever they went.
Ragga roughly means to pick up girls in Swedish and they were known to do this; pick the impressionable young women in a city and find new ones in the next, having their way with them bad boy in the back seat of the car along the way.
Today, the Raggare have quite a different reputation, met with amusement or only mild disapproval by modern mainstream society There has been some controversy about the raggare seen waving Confederate flags in their old driving muscle cars, but to quote an article published last year by Jalopnik on the culture of the car, like most cultural icons, the Confederate flag doesn t completely transform when he took overseas and Sweden, it is both a symbol of America and rebellion, not anything with frightening shades.
I found some vibrant pictures on Flickr Sascha Pöltl full album here, perfectly capturing the raggare today in their element.
The face of a raggare be nowadays is usually that of a middle-aged Swedes who just likes to meet boast restored vintage American hot rods.
Although raggare are still sometimes portrayed by local media as white trash, blue collar, small strip town car fanatics, they're also the subculture behind the most famous and the largest car show in the world power Big Meet.
Held every summer since 1978 for lovers of old American cars, in 2014, a record 17,000 cars participated and 200,000 visitors attended.
Between 4000 and 5000 classic American cars are now imported to Sweden each year, and in recent years there has also been a resurgence of young raggare and archaic attitudes towards women of culture seem to have been left in the past.
So if you have a thing for subcultures American Graffiti and vintage rides, especially those who are rotting in the woods, it seems that you might have a new reason to book a ticket in Sweden.
The Swedes Subculture hoarding Over 1,950 American cars than the United States, Swedish subculture, hoarding.