Heidenstam, Verner von (1859-1940)

Swedish poet and prose writer. His verse, Vallfart och vandringsår/Pilgrimage and Years of Wandering (1888), Dikter/Poems (1895), and Nya Dikter/New Poems (1915), abounds in colour, exoticism, and joie de vivre. Similar qualities are to be found in the epic Hans Alienus (1892), a mixture of prose and verse. His novel Endymion (1889) is a story of the East and Karolinerna/The Carlists (1897-98) contains a collection of tales about Charles XII. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1916.

Heidenstam was born in Olshammar. As a boy he had to travel for his health, visiting Greece and the East. In Rome he spent two years as a pupil of the Swedish painter Kronberg, and he also studied at the Ecôle des Beaux Arts, Paris.