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Erik Axel Karlfeldt
(1864-1931)
Swedish poet whose essentially regional, tradition-bound poetry was
extremely popular and won him the Nobel Prize for Literature posthumously
in 1931; he had refused it in 1918.
Karlfeldt's strong ties to the peasant culture of his rural homeland
remained a dominant influence on him all his life. He published his
most important works in six volumes of verse: Vildmarks-och karleksvisor
(1895; "Songs of Wilderness and of Love"), Fridolins visor
(1898; "Fridolin's Songs"), Fridolins lustgard (1901; "Fridolin's
Pleasure Garden"), Flora och Pomona (1906), Flora och Bellona (1918),
and finally, four years before his death, Hosthorn (1927; "The
Horn of Autumn"). Some of his poems have been published in English
translation in Arcadia Borealis: Selected Poems of Erik Axel Karlfeldt
(1938). In time, even some of his admirers criticized him for employing
his gifts so exclusively in the service of a dying local culture.
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