Heidenstam, Verner Von

Related Category: Scandinavian Literature: Biographies

(vĕr´nər fən hā´dənstäm), 1859–1940, Swedish lyric poet, novelist, and essayist. His first volume of poetry, Pilgrimage and Wanderyears (1888), challenged the contemporary realistic and utilitarian Swedish literature. His subjective and personal style was also evident in Poems (1895) and New Poems (1915), which established him as one of Sweden's lyric poets. In the historical novels The Charles Men (1897–98, tr. 1920), Saint Birgitta's Pilgrimage (1901), and The Tree of the Folkungs (2 vol., 1905–7; tr. 1925), he evoked a sense of national continuity. Heidenstam received the 1916 Nobel Prize in Literature.