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.

 

 

Strindberg, August

Born in Stockholm in 1850, August Strindberg died in 1912. Extremely productive Swedish playwright, novelist and experimental artist, painter and photographer. The first stories from the Stockholm Archipelago fall into the time as an editor for the daily newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" in 1873. His breakthrough came in 1879 with the critical novel The Red Room (Röda rummet). After a blasphemy trial, Strindberg spent many years in Copenhagen, Austria, Berlin and Paris. In 1907 he founded the Intimate Theatre in Stockholm.



Liljegren, Eva

Born in 1915, Eva Liljegren died in 2000. She worked as an editor (at Bonniers pubishing house in Stockholm between 1959 and 1980) and translator, mostly from German. Among her authors were the Nobel prize winner Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, Elias Canetti and Elfriede Jelinek, but even classic writers like Jane Austen and Hermann Hesse. She also translated Karen Blixen and Helle Stangerup from Danish.
 
She won several literary awards in Sweden, among them De Nio's Translator Prize in 1989 and Natur och Kultur's Translator Prize in 1990.  

Blomqvist, Lars Erik

Fil. lic in Slavic languages (Russian literature) at Stockholm University in 1967, lecturer in the Department of East European Studies at Uppsala University 1975-1996 (University Teaching Excellence Award 1990), died on October 10, 2021 in Stockholm.
As a writer and translator from Russian to Swedish he received several literary awards: De Nio Award 1994, Swedish Academy Award 1995 as well as the Elsa Thulin Translation Award 1996.