Melberg, Enel

Enel Melberg, born in Tallinn in 1943, came to Sweden in a refugee boat at an age of one year. She was raised in Gothenburg, studied in Lund and lives nowadays in Oslo after a time in Värmland, Sweden.

As a writer she published several books, both in Swedish and Norwegian, about exile, "multiculturalism" and multilingualism, using several "languages" and styles. She has also translated 13 books from Estonian into Swedish, among them the grand novel Kolme katku vahel by Jaan Kross (Mellan tre farsoter. Romanen om Balthasar Russow, published in 2024). She thus speaks Estonian, but writes in Swedish.

Her Swedish translation of "Sõja laul" was published by Ellerströms in Lund/Stockholm in 2007.

Grundström, Harald

A priest by profession, Harald Grundström was born in Jörns district, Skellefteå, in 1885 and died in Uppsala in 1960. He is today probably best known for his work in Saami linguistics. For more than thirty years, he worked in Jokkmokk (Jåhkåmåhkke), Northern Sweden, where he got to know the Saami culture and language. From the early 1920s and onwards, he published extensively on topics relating to Saami folklore and ethnography, while also documenting the Lule Saami language and place names. Grundström is also known for transcribing, translating and publishing the memoirs of Saami reindeer herder Anta Pirak.

Grundström’s most important contribution to the field of linguistics is his comprehensive dictionary of Lule Saami, based on materials gathered by himself and the two professors Björn Collinder and K. B. Wiklund. Published between the years of 1946 and 1954, the dictionary spans almost two thousand pages and contains information on several Lule Saami dialects, along with translations into Swedish and German as well as abundant example sentences and a morphological overview of the Lule Saami language.
Grundström also did important philological work in publishing a long lost manuscript on Saami beliefs, as well as editing and translating the lyrics in a collection of traditional Saami music. In addition to his scientific work on the Saami language and culture, Grundström also translated hymns and other religious texts to Lule Saami.

In 1944, he was appointed honorary doctor of Uppsala University. A collection of his sermons was published posthumously in 1980.

Lundberg, Ulla-Lena

Ulla-Lena Lundberg is a Finland-Swedish writer, nowadays living in Porvoo, Finland, but writing in Swedish. She was born on the island of Kökar, Åland islands, in 1947. Her parents were church pastor Pehr Lundberg and folk teacher May Olin. She grew up in Espoo and Pargas, took her graduate in 1967. After studying Nordic ethnology and Religious studies, she became FD h.c. at Åbo Academi University in 1993.

In 1962 Lundberg published her first small collection of poetry. Her prose works include the non-fiction book Kökar (1976), the novels Sand (1986) and Leo (1989), the travel book Sibirien (1993) and the novel Ice (2012) for which she was awarded the Finlandia Prize and which has been adapted for the stage by the Finnish National Opera.

Longer stays abroad took her to the USA, Japan, England, Zambia, Botswana, Kenya and Tanzania. She has worked as a freelance for the radio at a young age, was guest writer at the University of Minnesota in 1986-87 and art professor between 1994 and 1999.

Among her literary awards are: Swedish Academy of Finland Prize 1990, Thanks for the Book Medal 1990, Pro Finlandia Medal 1990, Runeberg Prize 1998, Swedish Culture Fund's Grand Prize 1998, Folktingsmedal 1999, Journal Vi's Literature Prize 2002, Tollander Prize 2011, Finlandia Prize 2012.

Andersson, Leo

Leo Andersson is an experienced Swedish translator working for Bonniers publishing house in Stockholm. Among others his wirks include the collective translation of Dan Brown's “The Lost Symbol”.

Gehlin, Jan

Born 1922 in Norrköping. Candidate of Law in 1946. Judge at the Justic of Appeal (Hovrätt) in 1977. Chairman of the Swedish Authors' Association 1965-70 and for its successor Sveriges Författarförbund 1971-82.
In addition to his long-standing and appreciated activities in the authors' service - he has successfully engaged in author's law problems - he has devoted himself to writing as a poet and novelist. He debuted with the poem collection Att gripa varligt (1943) in a modernist style.
As a novelist he has written the partially autobiographical books Enskilt område (1949) and Gränstrakter (1953), the latter a depiction of the time for military preparedness. His other novels include Vackre prinsen (1968), which deals with the subject of legal certainty, and Malin Palm (1987), which, according to the author himself, is a kind of morality with an "old-fashioned morality". He also translated, mostly from Danish.

Collinder, Björn

Björn (Torbjörn) Collinder (1894-1983), was a Swedish professor of Finno-Ugric languages at Uppsala university and one of the world’s leading experts in Uralic languages. Born in Sundsvall, Collinder lived most of life in Uppsala, but for periods also worked in USA, in Helsinki, Canberra and Vienna. Collinder was publicly well known in Sweden for his linguistic purism and as an advocator of replacing English loanwords with older or dialectical Swedish words.

Collinder is remembered for his popular translations of Kalevala (1948) and Beowulf (1954). He edited and refined both translations continuously, with the fourth and last version of Kalavala being printed in 1970. Later he also translated Old Norse works as the Poetic Edda, Shakespeare and classic Greek drama. Collinders style as translator was influenced by his interest for meter and form, but also by a romantic and archaic perception of the older history of the North, which gave his translations a touch of Old Norse literature regardless the origin of the work. His dramatic translations were mostly useless for the theatres, but his Kalevala and his Beowulf are still published.

For his translations Björn Collinder twice (1950, 1955) received the Letterstedtska Award (Letterstedtska priset). His translations were as well rewarded with the Translation Prize of the Swedish Academy (Svenska Akademiens översättarpris) 1971 and Elsa Thulins Translation Prize (Elsa Thulins översättarpris) 1977.