Irbe, Andrejs

Andrejs Irbe, pseudonym for Gunars Irbe, was born in Riga in 1924. He died in 2004.
Irbe was a sociologist and writer of both poetry and prose who after emigrating from Latvia lived in the suburbs of Stockholm.

He published several collections of poetry and short stories in Latvian like Mums nav svētvakaru (We Have no Nights of Sabbath, Chicago 1962) or Marisandra kaza (Marisandrs' Goat, Västerås 1966) and worked as an editor for the exile-Latvian literary magazine Jaunā Gaita. He has also been writing in Swedish (among others the poetry collection Född i f.d. svenska Lifland, 1976) and translated from Latvian to Swedish, at times together with Tomas Tranströmer.

Huss, Markus

Markus Huss, born in 1981, died in late December 2024.

He was Associate Professor in German Literature at Stockholm University. Previously, Markus Huss worked as a senior lecturer in Comparative Literature at Karlstad University and as a substitute lecturer in Comparative Literature at Södertörn University. He had been Fulbright Hildeman Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2017.

He took a PhD in Comparative Literature at Södertörn University and Stockholm University, 2014, defending his thesis Motståndets akustik. Språk och (o)ljud hos Peter Weiss 1946–1960.

Huldén, Lars

Lars Huldén was a Swedish-speaking Finnish writer, scholar and translator. Born in Jakobstad, Finland, in 1926, he grew up on the farm Nörråkers in Munsala, Ostrobothnia. (His father, Evert Huldén, had been both a farmer and a poet.) His first book of poetry was published in 1958. Lars Huldén died at the age of 90 on 11 October 2016 in Helsinki. 

He was professor of Nordic languages at Helsinki university 1964–1989. In 1986 Huldén received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1993. He has researched Carl Michael Bellman, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Swedish dialects and toponomy.

Lars Huldén and his son Mats Huldén translated Kalevala into Swedish in 1999. In 2000, Lars Huldén was awarded the Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize.

Bellman, Carl Michael

Carl Michael Bellman was born in Stockholm in 1740 and died there in 1795.
Born into a respectable bourgeois family in the Södermalm district of Stockholm, Bellman was first educated privately and later studied briefly in Uppsala. Apart from this period and his flight from creditors to Norway in 1763, he spent his entire life in Stockholm. This temporary flight meant that Bellman was unable to resume his position at the National Bank on his return. In the troubled years that followed, during which his family became impoverished and his parents died, he began to write drinking songs. Soon these songs and his Bible parodies were widely read and won him recognition and financial support at the art-loving court of Gustav III.
In his songs, some of which he set to music himself, he used classical allusions, elaborate metaphors and pastoral motifs. His multi-layered lyrics are characterized by an insatiable joy of life, but also by the knowledge of death and misery. With a language that is among the most beautiful in Swedish literature, he relentlessly describes the less beautiful sides of social reality.
Completely impoverished after the death of his parents, Bellman was unable to achieve a high social position despite his fame. He died of tuberculosis, which he contracted in the royal castle in 1794 during a ten-week imprisonment for high debts.

Ekelöf, Gunnar

Swedish writer Gunnar Ekelöf, born in Stockholm in 1907, died in Sigtuna in 1968, was one of the most prolific poets of the 20th century. He became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1958 and an honorary doctor of philosophy in Uppsala in 1958.

Ekelöf grew up in an upper-class Stockholm home with a syphilitic father from whom the mother divorced. After graduating, he pursued oriental studies in London, which he continued in Uppsala. They established a deep familiarity especially with Arabic and Persian culture. Trips to France brought him into contact with surrealist poetry and modernist art and music. Ekelöf lost his wealth in the Kreuger crash in 1932 and was forced to feed on reviews and art critics.

His translations include both poems by Ibn al-‘Arabí and anthologies of French poetry, esp. French surrealism. In his writings he moved on from romanticism to a more existential sphere on the borders of mysticism and metaphysical poetry.

Gunnar Ekelöf made his debut in 1932 with the poetry collection "Late on Earth” (sent på jorden). After three more poetry collections, which he partly renounced, his big breakthrough came in 1941 with the poetry collection "Ferry Song” (Färjesång) (1941), while he further established his name with the socially critical poetry collection "Non Serviam" (1945). The major achievement in his late work came in 1965-67, with the publication of the large-scale Akrit trilogy, consisting of three suites written partly under the influence of his great interest in the Orient and Byzantine history. For the first part of the trilogy, "Diwan over the Prince of Emgión", Ekelöf was awarded the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1966.

In 1938 he made a pilgrimage to Raivola, the homestead of late Edith Södergran in Karelia, together with Finnland-Swedish poet Elmer Diktonius.



Rydstedt, Anna

Anna Rydstedt's place in the world was the south of Öland, with the village of her birth, Ventlinge, as its centre, surrounded by the great heaths of Alvaret to the east and the blue-grey Kalmarsund with its white wave peaks to the west. Anna Rydstedt (1928-1994) originally wanted to become a priest, but was forced to give up because the Church of Sweden did not yet allow women priests. She graduated and studied to become a folk high school teacher in Lund, and then worked in Eslöv, Denmark, and Stockholm. 
Her debut collection of poems, „Bannlyst prästinna“ (1953), depicts a defiant struggle against misunderstanding and prejudice. In her next three collections, Anna found both her own language and her place in the world, returning to memories of growing up on Öland in the distinctly autobiographical „Jag var ett barn“ (1970). Here, in particular, she deals with the trauma of her mother's death five years earlier.
Anna Rydstedt's published a total of eight collections of poetry and became a critically acclaimed and widely read poet. Her poetry has continued to be urgent, and its ability to educate, comfort and provoke reflection remains undiminished. With her last book, „Kore“ (1994), published the same year Anna Rydstedt died, she returned to the ancient myths and characters that helped her portray the frustration of not being allowed to study theology. To date, her collected poems have been published twice, a biography and a dissertation have been written, and several anthologies and posthumous editions have shown that Anna Rydstedt's unsentimental, earthbound and heaven-bound poetry belongs to the realm of inalienable literature.

Jonas Ellerström