Literature's first female Nobel laureate bought her childhood home
Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) published Gösta Berling's Saga at thirty-three, then in 1909 became literature's first female Nobel laureate. She later bought back her childhood estate with that prize money and took a lasting seat in the Swedish Academy.
Born 20 November 1858 at Mårbacka in Värmland, fifth of six children of lieutenant Erik Gustaf Lagerlöf and Louise Wallroth, Selma arrived with a hip injury and was briefly lame after childhood illness. Grandmother's fairy tales, home schooling in English and French, and Reid's Osceola at seven fixed her writerly aim. Sale of Mårbacka in 1884 scarred her; her father opposed further education and women's activism. After Högre lärarinneseminariet (1882–85) she taught girls in Landskrona (1885–95), drafting Gösta Berling against Strindberg-style realism. An Idun contest won a contract; Georg Brandes's praise of the Danish translation ignited fame. Fredrika Limnell's patronage and travels with companion Sophie Elkan to Italy, Palestine, and Egypt fed Antikrists mirakler and Jerusalem.
Asked in 1902 by the National Teachers' Association for a children's geography, she wrote Nils Holgerssons underbara resa—thumb-sized Nils riding a goose across Sweden's provinces—later translated into more than thirty languages. She quit teaching in 1895, moved to Falun in 1897, and worked with literary aide Valborg Olander amid a fraught triangle with Elkan; published letters suggest passionate bonds when such love between women was illegal. A suffrage speaker, she opened the 1911 International Suffrage Congress in Stockholm and celebrated the 1919 victory. In 1919 she sold film rights to unpublished work; Sjöström's 1921 Körkarlen adaptation became a silent-cinema landmark. Near death in 1940 she helped win Nelly Sachs and Sachs's mother their last flight from Nazi Germany to Swedish asylum.
On 10 December 1909 the Academy awarded her the Nobel for lofty idealism and spiritual perception after bitter internal struggle; her speech imagined thanking her father in heaven for debts to supporters. First woman Academy member in 1914, Uppsala honorary doctor in 1907, she sent her Nobel and Academy medals to Finland at World War II's start to fund resistance—Finland raised money otherwise and returned them. In 1991 she became the first woman on a Swedish banknote (20 kronor). Mårbacka is a museum; Sunne's prize still honors writers in her spirit.
Source: Selma Lagerlöf
