Documentary, drama | Sweden

In March 2022, it was 50 years since Roland Dernmark suffered a shipwreck in the Bay of Biscay with the ship Stensö. I got to know Roland over twenty years ago and the story of his unlikely luck and the mere four beers they had to get by in the raft before they were found six days later stuck with me.

When I became interested in making documentaries, I contacted Roland and asked if we couldn’t talk for a bit, and that was the beginning of many cups of coffee and cigarettes. It turned out that Roland not only suffered shipwrecks but worked on boats that exploded, twice, dug for gold in Australia and lived and worked with the Sami people in Sweden and with musk oxen in the mountains.

Through all these years, when he wandered aimlessly among mountains, hitchhiked his way through the world and lived his life in his own way – he has hurt his leg a little bit once. And hurt his back a little twice. He came as a four-year-old adopted child to Linköping, Sweden, in 1944, and as a 17-year-old the town felt too small – Roland wanted to go out and see the world. His adoptive parents signed papers so he could go to sea and now he has been living on Vasavägen in Linköping for thirty years, turning off his hearing aid, and enjoying the solitude. 
This, is the story about Roland.