Skilled labour

I too felt a certain ill-defined awe and wonder upon watching the following document, a feeling of having encountered something powerful and unfamiliar. Having dwelt a little on the wherefores, I think I have pinpointed the source of this feeling: the film depicts people in an advanced condition of knowing what the fuck they are doing, which state of being I have certainly heard of, but often despair of observing first-hand.

This is a ten-minute silent film made in 1923 in central Sweden. A man forges nails; then two men make ox-shoes. Afterwards we pay a visit to a sawmill. It is not boring. If you find it boring, you should ask yourself some searching questions. Notice that the ox-shoes are made (with great and fascinating aplomb) in pairs, and that the winter models sport spikes. Also note the clean modernist typeface used for the captions. I encourage you to watch all the way to the end, where an odd insult awaits those who cannot speak Swedish. You will laugh at its impertinence, and then you will feel bad and stupid for laughing at someone else’s language, which is a little like pointing at a fat person, especially if the fat person then turns out to be your own reflection. Or something.