Per Olof Swanberg  In Memoriam  

Per Olof (P.O.) Swanberg is well known among European Crane workers. He was born in the southern part of Sweden 1908 and died in May 2001, at the age of 93. From his early years he was interested in birds. When he was studying zoology at the University of Lund, he made many friends who joined him in birdwatching. When he was 18 years old he won a photographic contest and while visiting a photo shop he met the owner, Victor Hasselblad. Then they often went cycling to the birdlake Krankesjön, often discussing how to construct a better camera for photographing birds. After years of technical developing the result was the Hasselblad camera, which later became the first camera on the Moon with NASA.  

When P.O. was 21 years old he started writing and photographing for his first book “Krankesjön”, published in 1931. His next book was published in 1936, “Fjällfåglars Paradis” (the Paradise of Nordic mountain birds). It was the first book describing the birds in the northern part of Sweden, Lappland, with many excellent photos of rare birds and a fascinating text of the nature and the discoveries. When he was photographing the Gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus) from a little hide in a cliff, he had to sit so still that he damaged one nerve in his leg – a little handicap which he carried all his life. He found the first nest of Purple Sandpiper (Calidris maritima) in Lappland. He is author of the first Swedish book dealing with bird photography, “Fåglar” 1956 and the main author of “Tranan” 1993.

After studying zoology in Lund he was a dentist from 1933 and had his own consulting office 1935–1978 in the city of Skara, some kilometres from the Crane area at Lake Hornborga. Since the beginning of 1900 it was well known that Cranes were resting in the southern parts of Lake Hornborga. After harvest of potatoes in autumn they find frozen remains of potatoes when they rest during migration in April. During the 1950s the interest from lain people for Cranes and to visit the Crane areas in April increased and P.O.Swanberg received more and more questions about their behaviour. He had to find answers by himself. At the same time the lake was threatened as a good bird lake. The owner of the estates wanted to dry it up totally. In 1950s there was only a small pond of open water in it. In 1980s the growing of potatoes ceased and the number of resting Cranes decreased from some thousands to some hundreds.

P.O.Swanberg got involved both in gaining more knowledge about Cranes and saving Lake Hornborga. Thanks to his purposefulness and stubborness he succeeded to reach both goals; to save Lake Hornborga for the future and to find out more about the behaviour of Cranes. He received a honorary doctorate at the University of Lund 1971, got the Van Tienhoven price from the University of Bonn in 1974 and the Rosenberg award in 1979. He also was one of the pioneers to establish the Swedish Ornithological Association.

Until his last day he was involved in the Crane work. When Clas Hermansson and I visited him the day before he died, he woke up from unconsciousness just to have an answer of his old question: "How many Cranes breed at Lake Hornborga?" Clas had just made an inventory of it and P.O. got the answer: 28. He smiled and said: "It would be bad if you can´t band some of the juveniles". These were his last words. The first three were banded some weeks after his death. He often talked about the importance to have some Cranes banded in the northern part of Sweden as we don´t know if they are migrating across the Baltic to Finland instead of through Sweden. The first 10 juveniles banded in the year 2000, he really was satisfied for that.

One of the founders of International Crane Foundation (ICF), George Archibald, wrote as a young student to P.O. and asked about Cranes. After establishing ICF in Wisconsin the team at ICF wanted to prove for the Russians that it was possible to transport eggs from Siberian White Crane (Grus leucogeranus) from Russia to USA and to hatch them in ICF in Wisconsin. P.O. organised fetching of eggs from some Grus grus nests in the a region north of lake Hornborga, Värmland, and sending them to Wisconsin, by SAS flights. Everything worked out and one of the hatched Cranes lived many years and was named after Per Olof Swanberg. The first steps for saving Siberian Cranes had been taken.

Göran Lundin