Since the early 1900s, Swedish industries with the steel industry as the perhaps most prominent, were together with an energy market in transition pivotal for societal changes.  With very limited deposits of coal and oil but vast resources of waterpower in the north of Sweden, or “white coal” as it was called, the power company Vattenfall became a major force for power supplies and electrification of Swedish industries. The close ties between the steel industry and Vattenfall’s expansion of hydroelectric power including the electrification of the railway Malmbanan that was inaugurated in 1903 for the strategic transportation of iron ore, from the northern Swedish town Luleå, and Riksgränsen to Narvik at the Norwegian Atlantic coast, where decisive for the rapid growth of infrastructure. 

As Rick Prelinger and others have shown, industrial companies—in Sweden as elsewhere—became extensive users of visual media. Their multiple advertisement campaigns disclose the scope of possibilities at hand as well as it shows a change of focus over time, teaching the public how to understand and navigate in modern society. This text explore, by findings in company archives such as Swedish Pathé and Vattenfall together with the rich resources that the Swedish censorship board holds, the provenance of the multiple film titles about Malmbanan that appeared in film programs all over the country during the years 1910-1915. The railroad and the hydropower station at Porjus, north of the polar circle, with its principal purpose to provide the railway with electricity, received major attention not only as an icon of modernity but for its spectacular sceneries in the northern wilderness, as in Med jordens nordligaste järnväg: en färd Narvik-Riksgränsen (AB Sveafilms, 1911). Numerous film titles were made, often screened at regular movie theaters. Specific film titles were copied, renamed and repositioned within new company distribution networks as well as program contexts making the origin of the productions unclear. To further obstruct the question of provenance a slew of new films was made on the very same topic with very similar titles. By focusing on these film titles and their provenance, early film practices and print circulations when it comes to early non-fiction and industrial films in Sweden are examined and explored.