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5 unusual facts about Selma Lagerlöf


Friðþjófs saga hins frœkna

Swedish composer Elfrida Andrée wrote an opera to a libretto by Selma Lagerlöf based on the poem, also called Frithjof's Saga; it was never performed publicly, but selections from the opera received a private hearing in 1898.

Hanna Hirsch-Pauli

Her lifetime production was sparse and mostly consisting of portraits, such as the one of painter Karl Nordström (1890; in the Bonnier portrait collection, Nedre Manilla, Stockholm), writer Verner von Heidenstam as Hans Alienus (one of his literary characters, 1896), writer Selma Lagerlöf (1932, Nationalmuseum) and the group portrait Vänner ("Friends", 1907, Nationalmuseum) showing writer Ellen Key reading to a group in the home of the Pauli family.

Högre lärarinneseminariet

Högre lärarinneseminariet counted many notable students, such as Emilia Fogelklou, Selma Lagerlöf, Valborg Olander, Jeanna Oterdahl, Anna Maria Roos, Anna Sandström, Alice Tegnér and Anna Whitlock.

Leonard J. Fick

As late as 2007, one former Fick student reported that next to his bedside table was Gösta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman and the first Swede to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1909.

Tore Svennberg

Svennberg also appeared in a number of films, beginning in the Victor Sjöström-directed 1919 drama Sons of Ingmar, based on the novel Jerusalem by Selma Lagerlöf, and performed in his last film role at the age of 82 in Per Lindberg's 1940 drama Stål.


Albert Bonniers Förlag

Under his son, Karl Otto Bonnier, the company grew to be one of the largest publishers in Sweden and was the publisher of books by August Strindberg, Verner von Heidenstam, Gustaf Fröding, Selma Lagerlöf and Hjalmar Söderberg.

Ola Thommessen

Tidens Tegn soon became one of the country's most important and largest newspapers, and many important cultural personalities were among the contributors, including Sven Elvestad, Olaf Bull, Hans E. Kinck, Herman Wildenvey, Nils Collett Vogt and Selma Lagerlöf.

Svenska Akademiens ordlista

It was used from the first edition of Selma Lagerlöf's geography textbook Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (1906, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils).


see also