Harriet Bosse - Early Career

Early Career

Bosse was born in Norway's capital Kristiania, today called Oslo, as the thirteenth of fourteen children of Anne-Marie and Johann Heinrich Bosse. Her German father was a publisher and bookseller, and his business led to the family's alternating residence in Kristiania and Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Bosse was to experience some confusion of national identity throughout her life, and to take the 512 kilometres (318 mi) rail trip between the cities many times. A bold, independent child, she first made the journey alone when she was only six years old.

Two of Bosse's older sisters, Alma (1863–1947) and Dagmar (1866–1954), were already successful performers when Harriet was a small child. Inspired by these role models, Harriet began her acting career in a Norwegian touring company run by her sister Alma and Alma's husband Johan Fahlstrøm (1867–1938). Invited to play Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, the eighteen-year-old Harriet reported in a letter to her sister Inez that she had been paralysed by stage-fright before the premiere, but had then taken delight in the performance, the curtain-calls, and the way people stared at her in the street the next day. Alma was Harriet's first and only—rather authoritarian—acting teacher. Their harmonious and sisterly teacher–pupil relationship became strained when Alma discovered that her husband Johan and Harriet were having an affair. Both Bosse parents were now dead, and Harriet, ordered by Alma to leave, used a modest legacy from her father to finance studies in Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Paris.

The Paris stage—at that time in dynamic conflict between traditional and experimental production styles—was inspirational for Bosse and convinced her that the low-key realistic acting style in which she was training herself was the right choice. Returning to Scandinavia, she was hesitant as to whether she should carve out a career in Stockholm, with its greater opportunities, or in Kristiania, to which she had closer emotional ties. In spite of the disadvantage of speaking Swedish with a Norwegian accent, Bosse let herself be persuaded by her opera-singer sister Dagmar to try her luck in Stockholm. She applied for a place at the Royal Dramatic Theatre ("Dramaten"), the main drama venue of Stockholm, governed by the conservative tastes of King Oscar II and his personal advisors. After working hard at elocution lessons to improve her Swedish, which was Dramaten's condition for employing her, Bosse was eventually to become famous on the Swedish stage for her beautiful speaking voice and precise articulation. Having trained her Swedish to a high level, she was engaged by Dramaten in 1899, where the sensation of the day was the innovative play Gustaf Vasa by August Strindberg.