About Sven

Sven Gillsäter was a very well recognized and appreciated photographer, author and lecturer on nature and wildlife in far-away places. His career as a free-lance photographer took off when given a bonus by a Swedish newspaper for his coverage of the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. He used this money to spend months in the Indonesian jungles covering exotic animals and people. The book he published following this stay allowed him to continue traveling, and soon his projects had taken him to bear country in Alaska, the savannahs in Africa, the mountains in the Middle East and the enchanted islands of the Galapagos in South America. He became a prolific producer of TV-documentaries, in an era when there was only one channel in Sweden. Many of these programs, as well as his books, were translated into English, German, and Russian, among others. 

In the summer of 1968-1969, Sven Gillsäter together with his wife Harriet and 2,5 year old son Björn set off to spend six months in the Falkland Islands. He was contracted by the Swedish Television to do three documentaries about human and animal life on the Islands, which eventually aired in 1969. He also undertook to write a book about the experience, which he called “Penguins in the Wind” (in Swedish). In addition to being an account of the stay on the Islands, it is a nature and wildlife book with plenty of (at the time) unique images.

His curious mind tempted Sven Gillsäter to visit places where few Swedes had set their foot, and where there was an interesting flora and fauna. Beyond the temptation of covering all the various kinds of penguins that live on the Falkland Islands, Sven was intrigued by the stories about Norwegians who had settled on the Falkland Islands after the whale hunting days. There must be a very good reason beyond escapism why someone wants to settle in these extremely remote, isolated and challenged islands weatherwise, he told himself.