Dark forces: The Forgotten Swedish Version of Dracula

“Powers of Darkness represents one of the greatest discoveries in the long history of the Dracula story,” writes John E. Browning, an expert in the horror and vampire genres, in his preface.

This is a unique version of Bram Stoker's masterful, bloody work, published in Sweden in 1899. It is a book twice the length of the classic 1897 novel and also substantially more charged with eroticism and violence. There is no doubt that Bram Stoker was involved in the creation of Powers of Darkness, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Here we encounter a host of characters and motifs found in Stoker’s notes for Dracula, which the author, however, cut from the final version. Literary scholars agree that Powers of Darkness is based on an early version of the classic Dracula. The novel was subsequently translated into Icelandic in a significantly shortened form, but this is the original!

Dracula lovers and new readers alike are presented with a markedly different story with an entirely new ending. Count Dracula does not merely intend to spread his vampiric blood throughout the world; as part of a conspiracy with world powers, he plans to establish a fascist world order linked to the worship of pagan gods through bloody rituals.

And through Dracula's castle in the Carpathians wanders the White Lady, an irresistible beauty who tries to lure the solicitor’s clerk, Thomas Harker, into the snares of doom with her kisses.