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Director Ingmar Bergman notes to housekeeper sold at auction

Dec 14, 2011, 17:31 GMT

Stockholm - Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman's former housekeeper cashed in on Wednesday when an auction house sold a batch of handwritten messages he wrote to her.

'The new cheese is rubbish, it doesn't taste of anything,' Bergman wrote in one of the notes to Anita Haglof when she worked for him between 1995 and 2005.

Bergman, who also directed on the stage, died in 2007 at the age of 89.

In other notes, some accompanied by sketches, Bergman mentioned his whereabouts, liking for certain gingerbread biscuits and how he wanted his bed to be made.

The 23 notes sold for 44,000 kronor (6,300 dollars). The asking price was 25,000-30,000 kronor, the Stockholm Auktionsverket said.

A second batch of 21 brief notes of dreams that Bergman jotted down fetched 34,000 kronor, about double the asking price.

Haglof told Swedish television she would use the money to pay a dentist bill.

The auction house said Bergman's estate would have to give approval for any publication of the notes.

Haglof worked as Bergman's housekeeper in Stockholm and at his home on Faro, just off Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Bergman used the small island as a setting for six films and built a house there in 1967.

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