Focus on this artwork and explore the Style.
Realist only in intentions and pictorial technique, the painting is actually the result of a highly fictionalised interpretation of the events. In fact, the king was not repatriated in broad daylight on an open stretcher but at night to the camp in Tistedalen and from there in a pine coffin to Uddevalla, where he was embalmed. The most likely route would have been either the one that corresponds to today's state road 220 in Norway (which from the Swedish border is called state road 165) or the state road 884 (which later becomes state road 166 in Sweden). Since both routes are rather flat, the mountains in the background are a very loose reinterpretation of the landscape. This choice was inspired by the Catastrophe on Øyfjellet (also known as the Carolean Death March), in which 3000 soldiers of the contingent led by Carl Gustaf Armfeldt froze to death, caught in a blizzard on their way back home through the northern part of the Sylan mountains in the Tydal region. Cederström was well aware that he had taken such artistic liberties and in 1919 responded to the criticism by commenting:
Realist Tydal Norway stretcher landscape Swedish mountain embalmed Sylan Tistedalen Carl Gustaf Armfeldt Uddevalla Carolean Death March Sweden artistic liberties