SCANDINAVIA - STUFF THAT!

Remember the vicious wolf on the cover of the Photo Issue? If you didn’t know already, we’re sad to tell you that it’s been dead and stuffed for many, many years. We decided to go and see the guy who made him look so real. Going to the museum, we expected to interview a shy, sciencey kind of guy. But we found this nutty taxidermist who chain-smoked as he dug out old photos and told funny stories about his craft.

Vice: So how long have you been working here at the museum?
Erik Källgren: Over 30 years now. I started when I was around 14.

14? How do you end up in a taxidermist's studio at that age?
I was always interested in animals. I loved collecting feathers and bones, that sort of thing. From two or three-years-old I liked looking at birds and just being in the forest. By seven or eight I was always off in the woods, sneak hunting, fishing, things like that. I was interested in Red Indians and that whole world. As a boy I’d be there with a sling shot or a bow and arrow or a, you know [curls hands in front of his mouth and blows]…

A pipe-shooter?
Yes. It’s easily done. Look [builds a pipe-shooter out of a needle and a piece of paper]. I used to shoot sparrows and things with this. It was dangerous, now I look back on it. It could kill a man, if you get a lead needle in the eye. I stopped when I realized that. After I got a bird, I’d spread out the wings and the tail, and just look at the bird. I used to steal eggs too. That’s all illegal of course, very illegal. But as a young boy, I didn’t care. At about 11 I got my first air rifle. At 14, I got my first .22 rifle.

OK, but how did you get involved with the museum?
It was my younger brother actually. He found a dead sparrow which had been hit by a car. But it was a beautiful one, so beautiful. He and I brought it here, to the museum, to get it mounted. It cost a lot of money, so we were gardening for weeks. My brother picked it up from the museum, but when I got home that day he said to me, “Erik, you’re not going to like this.” It was really badly done. I was so fucking angry. It had been so expensive. I went with one of my older brothers to the museum and knocked on their door. “Who did this?!” I demanded. “Who has done this to my bird?!” It was a horrible job, you have no idea. Turns out the person who did it wasn’t properly trained at all; he just did it to make money on the side. We were arguing and arguing, when the head taxidermist came past to see what the commotion was. He agreed that it was a terrible job, and that he was ashamed that such a thing came out of the museum. He asked me to come in and see him in his office. He told me all about all sorts of animals and other things. He was impressed that I could tell the bad mounts from the good ones. He suggested that if I wanted to come in when I had spare time after school and we could remount my sparrow. I never went to school anyway. I was running around the forest all day, so I had lots of time to see him. He made me mount the sparrow myself. He just told me exactly what to do. Since then, I spent a lot of time just hanging around the museum, doing odd jobs, see here [shows me old pictures of him with a vacuum cleaner in what looks like Noah’s Ark].

Is taxidermy science or art?
For me, it is in the middle between science and art. You can’t just be a scientist, because you really have to have experience, you have to feel the character of the specimen, see what they do out in the woods, it ain’t like a photo. The best taxidermist in the world, who taught me a lot, was only good at African animals because that’s where he spent most of his time. He made the polar bear in this museum, but it doesn’t look right. There’s something about a tiger in it, not a bear. The way it sits. See that otter over there? That’s brilliant. Cute, eh? Look at it, they’re hilarious animals. So funny… they just spend the whole day in the water, they just look like they love their life, you know? But it’s not just art and feeling either, you also have to know the anatomy very well. A lot of scientists come and ask me questions about animals.

How many do you think you’ve ever done, and how many are there in the museum?
There are around 100,000 animals in various states around the museum or in storage vaults scattered throughout Stockholm. I’ve probably handled – that’s mounted, repaired, assisted or renovated – about 1,000 animals in my life. I studied for three years with a very, very skilled taxonomist, and after that I did my first animal, a seal, and the museum liked it. So I finally had a real job here! When I was with the African taxonomist, we did 35 birds in 11 days. I was very, very lucky because I got to work with so many skilled taxonomists. However, it was theoretically very difficult because… well, because I never really went to school at all, so I don’t have an education. I had to learn everything the hard way. Birds have always been good to me though. They’re my specialty. I can do everything I guess, but everything is different. A fish is not like anything else. I’ve done bears, birds, snakes, frogs, skeletons – humans and dinosaurs – even rocks and vegetables, and some prehistoric and extinct stuff like this [shows me a saber-tooth tiger, an elephant/pig/seal thing, a tiny horse the size of a rabbit]. Insects, too. See here [shows me a mounted bird, covered in mounted ants which were cleaning the bird of lice] – these ants nearly drove my brain insane. I drink and smoke too much these days, so my hands are not so steady, and these fucking ants were the devil. I thought it would be the end of me. You need to use a needle to stick through them – you should have seen my fucking finger at the end of it.

Any funny things, like mating wolves or squirrels playing poker?
Ah, yes once I made an entire mouse orchestra. And around the museum are mounts of mice being chased by cats - it’s fun for the kids. I might be getting some fun things to do in this exhibition from Norway, but I can’t talk about it yet.

What’s the biggest animal you’ve done? I mean, how long would it take to skin, mould, and mount an elephant?
I could do an elephant… it would take me around four years, if I could get four assistants. When I was young I helped with an elephant seal. It was huge.

What are your current projects?
All sorts of things. Things I’ve never done before, moulds of skeletons for a new exhibition on the evolution of man. They are buying some figures from a fantastic French artist, of the oldest human ever found, like 5 million years old. The figures are beautifully done, real looking reconstructions, unlike this [shows me a really shitty homo erectus that looks like a naked oompa loompa]. The French artist uses techniques normally used by the police force, so she can reconstruct faces from the cranium of men alive many thousands of years ago.

What about animal rights groups like PETA and stuff, do you get heat from them?
Parts of society look down on me, I think. One time a journalist interviewed me and took pictures while I prepared the mount and the bloody corpse and everything. In the article he didn’t even show a picture of the final result. Turns out he was, you know, like a vegetarian or something. He believed fruits have feelings and stuff. About 80 per cent of Sweden live in the city in front of a computer, and they think I’m a bit screwed up. I’m a hunter, always have been. I don’t hunt so much these days though. I used to go on collecting missions for the museum, to the Falkland Islands, Georgia, Africa too. You know, collecting, taking care of the animals.

Taking care?
Yes, shooting them. Making sure that they are well preserved as soon as they die in the forest. I’d like to go to Australia. Wonderful birds. And lots of snakes. You have eight of the 10 most deadly snakes there. I don’t like Australian snakes. Once we had these two Australian pythons here - big fucking snakes, over two metres long. One of them, of course, escaped from his cage. We couldn’t find him, searched all day in the office, but in the end we had to go home. The night guard ran into it though and took out his gun. But he didn’t shoot, he ran and he quit the next day. He’d had it. He used to get scared of all the stuffed animals at night, so when one of them started moving it was the last straw. We didn’t find it until three days later. In Georgia though, the sailors there say it’s the roughest, most dangerous place in the world. And they hated that – really wouldn’t go near us – after we shot a few albatrosses. Superstition. I remember once, I was in the rubber boat in the ocean, and suddenly I saw that the sky was black. It was coming. I went as fast as I could into a bay. When it came the wind just flattened the waves, it was over 100 knots. I had a beer can and I threw it and it just disappeared, sucked up into the sky. After about an hour, the storm was gone and it was sunny again.

Is your home like a frozen zoo?
No, no, absolutely not. I don’t have any animals at home. My specimens are never perfect. I can be satisfied with them, but they are never perfect. When you freeze an animal in form, you have to make a lot of compromises. The eyes might look funny. It would get too irritating, staring at them at home.

Come on, tell me about the new exhibition from Norway?
OK then. It’s quite funny. Researchers there have found out that homosexuality in animals is really quite common. Especially in whales and dolphins. Monkeys, of course, they’re just like us.

Wow, I love gay animals!
The swan, apparently, has a situation where two gay males will take turns every season to rape and fertilize a female, but when the offspring are born the two of them will chase away the female and raise the kids themselves. With male whales, one will put his penis into the blow-hole of the other. Like a blow-job, but their teeth are too sharp so they can’t use their mouths.

OSCAR HEDSTRÖM