ABBA On The Web - March 2005
With the ABBA focus firmly on Sweden at the moment with the Stockholm premiere of the musical ‘MAMMA MIA!’, it seems timely to pay a visit to an ABBA website from a Swedish fan with a Swedish perspective.The site is called All About ABBA/Allt om ABBA and its webmaster is Robin Andersson, a teenage fan and sometime contributor to the ABBF Fan Club magazine from Stockholm.
The site is in both Swedish and English versions, but the Swedish version is by far the more comprehensive. Indeed, originally the site was in Swedish only and was called ABBA på svenska (ABBA in Swedish).Upon entering either version, the look and layout is similar but slightly different, with a navigation bar down the left side linking to the various pages in the site. The site is clean and very easy on the eye, with a simple navigation structure that makes it simple to find anything within the site.
From the main page, you can access several very special and unique features of the site.There are links to several galleries of rare and not-often seen (or even previously unseen) photographs, including a large gallery entitled Åh vilka tider/Those Were The Days, named of course for the 1973 song that appeared on the B side of the Swedish ‘Ring Ring’ single. Åh vilka tider includes galleries for individual years, which includes some ABBA history for that year. Though at the moment, not every year has a gallery.
There is also a special featured record section, which is much more comprehensive in the Swedish version. Here you’ll find out about some extremely rare ABBA and related records, including the ultra-rare Polar Music album released with Polar’s Annual Report in 1981, featuring Benny and Björn’s ‘Fanfare for Ice Hockey World Championships 1981’ plus several ABBA tracks.Looking at the rest of the site, and starting from the top of the navigation bar, you’ll find biographies of the ABBA members, with fairly up-to-date information, plus information about the three most important people in the ABBA story besides the four members themselves – Stig Anderson, Görel Hanser and Michael B. Tretow.
Next down is a thorough discography of albums, singles, and video releases.In the Swedish version, this section also includes several vintage articles from Swedish magazines, plus some other memorabilia – music folios, rare record releases and other paraphernalia.
Next down is a small picture gallery, then comprehensive discographies of the four members’ solo careers.Then there’s the Övrigt/Other Things section, with some different and unusual features, including an ABBA test, price comparison of ABBA recordings available from Swedish shops, and in the Swedish version, a translated transcript of an Agnetha interview from 1985.
The main page announces that a new version of the site is under construction. Robin’s allowed me a sneak peak of the new version, which promises to be bigger and better, but still including all the features of the current version (the new version will be at http://www.allaboutabba.com/). So there’s something to look forward to in the future. But in the meantime, you can enjoy a visit right now to All About ABBA/Allt om ABBA!