Garbo's fate: eternally desired, never alone again.
April 6, 2011 7:37 AM   Subscribe

*Sooo* much hotter than Andrew Jackson. Sveriges Riksbank has announced that great Greta Garbo will grace the sexy, new blue-themed 100 Krona note, Sweden's closest equivalent to the US $20 bill. In April, the Riksbank is announcing a design competition for the banknotes, with the final design selected by early 2012, and the currency released by 2014-2015. Other new faces in Sweden's complete currency makeover include author Astrid Lindgren, musician Evert Taube, director Ingmar Bergman, sopranist Birgit Nilsson, and diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld.
posted by markkraft (51 comments total)
 
I vant to be a loan.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:43 AM on April 6, 2011 [18 favorites]


So Sweden isn't in the Euro? Lucky for them!
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:45 AM on April 6, 2011


I think you have grossly underestimated the oozing sexuality of the seventh President of the United States of America.
posted by bondcliff at 7:46 AM on April 6, 2011 [2 favorites]


I misread Birgit Nilsson as Brigette Nielsen and nearly had a heart attack. Otherwise - I vote for Dolph Lundgren on my cash thanks.
posted by longbaugh at 7:48 AM on April 6, 2011 [2 favorites]


It always bugs me that military leaders is the common trope in currency. I always found the 50 franc note, the one with the Little Prince, rather civilized. Mexico has a baroque poetess on it's 200 peso note.
posted by Omon Ra at 7:51 AM on April 6, 2011 [2 favorites]


Don't you mean "sexy diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld"?
posted by grubi at 7:51 AM on April 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


Ok, but you'll need to kill him first.

That's going to need beard of quite some magnitude.

*Paging Chuck Norris and Chris Costa. Please report to the white courtesy phone. We have a job for you.*
posted by longbaugh at 7:52 AM on April 6, 2011


Don't you mean "sexy diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld"?

Well, that's this year's Halloween costume decided.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:55 AM on April 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


Oh! I miss the old, pre-euro banknotes! The French money that was so flimsy and often smelled of Gauloises... being a lire-millionaire... and especially Dutch money. So secure in their value, the Dutch used lots of color and whimsical images on them.
posted by likeso at 8:00 AM on April 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


What? No ABBA? Sweden, where's the love?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:02 AM on April 6, 2011


If Sweden is going to put celebrities on its currency, than it's a crime to exclude ABBA. This has nothing to do with taste either, but the simple fact that at the height of their fame, ABBA was a statistically significant contributor to Sweden's GNP. Talk about nation builders!
posted by dry white toast at 8:02 AM on April 6, 2011


I'm sorry, but Andrew Jackson is totally hot. Certainly the hottest president on any US currency, including JFK. He's got amazing hair.
posted by kimdog at 8:02 AM on April 6, 2011




What a world it will be when we can see ABBA on our money, money, money.
posted by grubi at 8:19 AM on April 6, 2011 [3 favorites]


Populism, yeah yeah!
posted by saturday_morning at 8:32 AM on April 6, 2011


Omon Ra, I carry one of those Little Prince 50 Fr notes in my wallet. It's just about disintegrated.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:36 AM on April 6, 2011


What a world it will be when we can see ABBA on our money, money, money.

That must be funny.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:48 AM on April 6, 2011


I'm sorry, but Andrew Jackson is totally hot.

Unfortunately neither the dashing cape nor the fabulously swooshy hair makes up for the whole ethnic cleansing thing. I'd be delighted to trade him in for a Bogie or Sinatra $20.
posted by elizardbits at 8:49 AM on April 6, 2011 [5 favorites]


elizardbits, or at least Thomas Jefferson.
posted by Omon Ra at 9:01 AM on April 6, 2011


a Bogie or Sinatra $20

I just had a vision of the raging fury that the American right would launch into if the US started putting cultural history rather than Revered Leaders on our money. The all-consuming passion would burn through Fox News like a great inferno, displacing all actual politics for weeks or months. (Just picture Grover Norquist's face when someone hands him a mockup of the Wu-Tang $1 note / dollar dollar bill y'all.) It might actually be a smart move to keep them distracted with a nonsense issue, and at least it'd give Frances Fox Piven a breather. Let's make this happen.
posted by RogerB at 9:04 AM on April 6, 2011 [3 favorites]


(Also it would obviously be nice to see a woman on a US banknote instead of always banishing them to coin and stamp purgatory.)
posted by elizardbits at 9:10 AM on April 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


Unfortunately neither the dashing cape nor the fabulously swooshy hair makes up for the whole ethnic cleansing thing.

That's OK, why don't you try a nice Alexander Hamilton instead?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:26 AM on April 6, 2011


I just had a vision of the raging fury that the American right would launch into if the US started putting cultural history rather than Revered Leaders on our money.

This inspired a vision of the right completely distracted by and consumed in the battle over imagery on currency. It was beautiful.
posted by Salamandrous at 9:33 AM on April 6, 2011


Of course, in the US we are soon going to have the Nixon (Bush, Bush, Jr. etc.) dollar coins. This year it's Johnson, Garfield, Grant and Hayes.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:37 AM on April 6, 2011


RogerB, even if you only selected american artists of very high caliber, the right would probably complain because most of the successful ones were either gay, jewish, black or communist. Probably the only person you sort of could put in a bill without much questioning is Mark Twain.
posted by Omon Ra at 9:38 AM on April 6, 2011


How wonderful. No one can be this happy without being punished!

They only made one of her. Fantastic.
posted by fourcheesemac at 9:39 AM on April 6, 2011


No Bush or Bush Jr, dances_with_sneetches, the president has be dead to be put in those coins.
posted by Omon Ra at 9:39 AM on April 6, 2011


They should have put Lena Soderberg on there.

elizardbits, I will support Bogie or Sinatra on the $20, but I think all right-thinking people will agree that the person who belongs on the USD100 bill is Elvis.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:45 AM on April 6, 2011 [2 favorites]


I'm fairly certain that US banknotes should come adorned with the logos of Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:55 AM on April 6, 2011


The U.S. has too many celebrities. How would we pick whichever ones are most iconic and worthy of being on currency?
posted by Apocryphon at 9:57 AM on April 6, 2011


Via a reality teevee show.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:58 AM on April 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


How would we pick whichever ones are most iconic and worthy of being on currency?

In the future with digital paper and wifi you can have a constantly shifting barrage of "celebrity". President Palin would morph into VP Snooki depending on how well their reality shows are polling.
posted by longbaugh at 10:04 AM on April 6, 2011


@elizardbits The $10 bill has a lady's hand on it...
posted by zeoslap at 10:08 AM on April 6, 2011


Didn't the Guerrilla Girls do a poster about the images of women on money? If not, they should.
posted by RogerB at 10:19 AM on April 6, 2011



The U.S. has too many celebrities. How would we pick whichever ones are most iconic and worthy of being on currency?


We dopple Moist Von Lipwig into our universe and do the decision making for us.
posted by The Whelk at 10:21 AM on April 6, 2011


Of course, in the US we are soon going to have the Nixon (Bush, Bush, Jr. etc.) dollar coins.

Remember, kids, mutilating coins is only illegal if done fraudulently (not a lawyer, not legal advice, Jackson's image deserves defacing even more than Nixon's.)
posted by Zed at 10:39 AM on April 6, 2011


In April, the Riksbank will announce a design competition for the banknotes. This competition will take place in 2011. If no intellectual property law prob-lems arise, the General Council of the Riksbank is expected to be able to reach a decision on the final design for the notes by the beginning of 2012.

Hand me my cracked copy of Photoshop. There's still time!
posted by kersplunk at 10:47 AM on April 6, 2011


You cannot use a 20 dollar bill on First Nations reserves, or at least the ones that I have been in Montana, the Dakotas, and Southern Ontario. I want more women and more artists. I would kill to have like Warhol on the 1 and Elizabeth Cady Stanton on the 20.
posted by PinkMoose at 11:09 AM on April 6, 2011 [2 favorites]


props for the title, markkraft.
posted by dabitch at 11:36 AM on April 6, 2011


It is notable how many of the figures destined for Sweden's bills are women - almost half. There are no women at all on US bills - of any size.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:00 PM on April 6, 2011


You guys would all love the Currency Museum in Ottawa.
posted by QIbHom at 12:01 PM on April 6, 2011


$1 - Mark Twain
$2 - Billie Holiday
$5 - Emily Dickenson
$10 - Miles Davis
$20 - Orson Welles
$50 - Andy Warhol
$100 - Georgia O'Keeffe
$500 - Steve Reich
$1000 - David Lynch
$6000000 - Lee Majors
posted by shakespeherian at 12:17 PM on April 6, 2011 [3 favorites]


1,000,000 - Walt Whitman
posted by Omon Ra at 12:19 PM on April 6, 2011


$20 - Orson Welles

Only counterfeits.
posted by RogerB at 12:24 PM on April 6, 2011


$3- William S. Burroughs
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:27 PM on April 6, 2011


I'm trying to picture if a $3 bill with J Edgar Hoover or some such on it would send some conservatives into fits: as queer as a... damn it! Of course, that idiom seems to have disappeared from the lexicon.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:40 PM on April 6, 2011


What? No scientists? (of which Sweden has an abundance of utterly excellent ones (I'm not Swedish))

So, to name but a few off the top of my head,

Arrhenius x2
Rydberg
Sievert
Angstrom
Nyquist
Weibull
posted by Homemade Interossiter at 1:49 PM on April 6, 2011


$1: A library card.
posted by mdonley at 2:28 PM on April 6, 2011


I like your list, shakespeherian. Here's an alternate one, a little heavier on musicians...

$1 - Louis Armstrong
$2 - Groucho Marx
$5 - Marilyn Monroe (with a tiny, hidden image of JFK somewhere on her earring)
$10 - Stephen Foster
$20 - Hank Williams
$50 - Aretha Franklin (I know, still alive, but DO IT ANYWAY!)
$100 - Bob Dylan (ditto)
$500 - James Brown
$1000 - Stanley Kubrick
$10000 - Muddy Waters
$1000000 - Johnny cash
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:30 PM on April 6, 2011


I'd also be partial to a Feynman nickel.
posted by Omon Ra at 4:34 PM on April 6, 2011


I think it would be appropriate to pay taxes using a stack of Bergmans... though it would be even cooler if Death was on the note.

Also, I would *sooo* love it if they used this image for Astrid Lindgren's $3 bill.
posted by markkraft at 6:56 PM on April 6, 2011


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