Drömmen om Amerika

The true story behind the movie takes it start in 1874 with two misfits - Gustaf Adolf Eriksson (Hjert) and Conrad Pettersson Lundqvist (Tector) - that meet in the big prison of Långholmen in Stockholm. Both driven by the wish of freedom - the one common thing between these two guys. After leaving jail they have lost there civil rights which also have been added to their public records. That makes it very difficult for them to get a descent work in Sweden. Among lots of other Swedes at that time, they eager for America and to get there they decide to rob a Postal coach. They plan and it fails, they plan again and just before midnight between 31 August and 1 September 1874, a couple of miles outside the little town of Malmköping, they stop a coach - that's NOT a Postal coach but a private one - with an engineer - Herman Uppmark - riding in it. Another failure! But now they have shot and killed two persons - Mr Herman Uppmark and the coach driver Johan August Larsson - and become hunted down as "desperados". As fugitives they travel, to among other places, to the island of Gotland, in the Baltic Sea, where they travel around and "work" as the thieves and burglars who (almost) always loses what they have stolen! Finally they get enough money to emigrate and goes back to mainland Sweden, to get on a train to Gothenburg from where their trip to America should start. On the railway station in Stockholm, 5 November 1874, they get recognized and arrested. At the final trails 18 February 1875 they got sentenced to death and at 18 May the get executed by beheading. Hjert just close to the scene of the crime and Tector about 10 km outside Visby. Those two where the last killed at public executions in Sweden, although the last execution in Sweden took place just in Långholmen prison in 1910 (for the very first time in Sweden with a guillotine as it was considered more human than beheading people with a broad-axe!).