Swedish postcard by Svenska Biografteatern, Stockholm, no. 15. Photo: Ferd. Flodin.
Edith Erastoff (1887–1945), born Edith Alma Frederika Lundberg, was a Swedish stage and screen actress, known for such films as Victor Sjöström's films Terje Vigen (1917) and Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru (1918) and Mauritz Stiller's Sången om den eldröda blomman (1919). After her first marriage to Georg Erastoff in 1906 (he died in 1918), she remarried Victor Sjöström in 1922.
Edith Alma Frederika Erastoff, née Lundberg, was born on 18 April 1887 in Helsinki (now Finland, then Russian Empire) to Russian-Jewish parents. Erastoff trained as an actress at Anton Franck's theatre school in Helsinki and made her stage debut in 1904 at the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki, where she was engaged until 1914. In the latter year, she came to Stockholm after being engaged at the Intima Teatern. She made her breakthrough in 1915 in the role of a hot-tempered young revolutionary woman in the nihilist play Attentatet. Erastoff remained at the Intima Teatrn until 1920 and afterwards acted at the Swedish Theatre in Stockholm from 1920 to 1922. She also guest-starred for Gösta Ekman at the Vasa Theatre in Stockholm.
Her theatre roles include Henriette in August Strindberg's Crime and Punishment, Antoinette in Molière's The Imaginary Sick, Gertrude in Holger Drachmann's Strandby Folk, Mrs Page in William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Madame Styf in Strindberg's The Home Seekers, Dagny in Henrik Ibsen's The Fighters at Helgeland, Madame de Pompadour in Pompadour's Triumph, Lady Teazle in Richard Sheridan's The School of Scandal, Mona in The Fatherland, and the title role in The Victory Goddess.
Edith Erastoff worked for years at Svenska Biografteatern. Erastoff made her film debut there in 1913 in Mauritz Stiller's Gränsfolken, starring Egil Eide and Richard Lund, and based on Emile Zola's novel La débâcle, set against the Franco-Prussian War and the Siege of Paris of 1870-71. In her second film with Stiller, Hämnaren (1915), she already had the female lead opposite John Ekman and Richard Lund in a tale about an upcoming priest's rejection of a Jewish girl and her baby. The film was thought lost but found by Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Germany in 2001, restored and presented at the 2003 edition of Cinema Ritrovato. In 2003 it was the oldest surviving film of Stiller. After Hämnaren, Erastoff did a series of films with actor-director Edmond Hansen (Hjälte mot sin vilja, 1915; Högsta vinsten, 1915; Ålderdom och dårskap, 1916), Konrad Tallroth (Chanson triste, 1917), actor-director Egil Eide (Envar sin egen lyckas smed, 1917; Fru Bonnets felsteg, 1917), and Fritz Magnussen (Värdshusets hemlighet, 1917).
Erastoff starred in Victor Sjöström's two blockbusters Terje Vigen and Berg-Ejvind and his wife, as well as Stiller's Sången om den eldröda blomman. In Terje Vigen/ A Man There Was she was the British lady opposite Sjöström himself in the title role, in what is considered the first film of Sweden's first Golden Age of cinema, highlighting the filming on location, and presenting nature as beauty but also as menace to the humans. In Berg-Ejvind/ The Outlaw and his Wife, instead of the menace of the sea in Terje Vigen, it is the snow and the cold of the mountains as well as hunger threatening two young runaways, played by Erastoff and Sjöström. Her next part was that of Kyllikki opposite Lars Hanson as womanizing, restless young man Olof in Mauritz Stiller's drama, Sången om den eldröda blomman (1919). After an argument with his father, Olof leaves home, becomes a raftsman and, with a life-threatening raft stunt, impresses Kyllikki, who initially considers him just another vagrant. When his wandering is over and he returns to Kylikki, she opposes her father's resistance and leaves with him to his family's farm.
Erastoff's last silent film was Högre ändamål (1921) by Rune Carlsten, in which she was the wife of the parish priest, played by Ivan Nilsson - a renowned stage actor whose only screen presence this was. After marrying Victor Sjöström in 1922, Edith Erastoff gave up stage and screen acting. She only returned to the sets once for her first and only sound film: Gustaf Edgren's Johan Ulfstjerna (1936). With Sjöström, Erastoff had one daughter, who also would become a stage and screen actress, Gunn-Marie Hjöril Imber Sjöström, later Guje Lagerwall (1918-2019).
Gustaf Collijn has called Erastoff "one of the most spirited and versatile actresses Sweden has ever had." Edith Erastoff died in 1945 at Sophiahemmet in Stockholm and was buried at Norra begravningsplatsen outside Stockholm.
Sources: Swedish Wikipedia, Swedish Film Database, IMDb.