Eyvind Johnson

Who was Eyvind Johnson?

Eyvind Johnson lived from July 29, 1900 to August 25, 1976. Johnson was born Olof Edvin Verner Jonsson 29 July 1900 in a village near the town of Boden in Norrbotten. The small house where he was born is preserved and marked with a commemorative plaque. Johnson left school at the age of thirteen and then held various jobs such as log driving and working at a saw mill and as a ticket-seller and projectionist in a cinema. Eyvind Johnson (29 July 1900 – 25 August 1976) was a Swedish novelist and short story writer. In 1919 he left his hometown and moved to Stockholm where he began to publish articles in anarchist magazines like Brand. In Stockholm he became friends with other young proletarian writers and started the magazine Vår nutid.

He travelled in Germany in the 1920s and lived in Saint-Leu-la-Foret, near Paris, France, between 1927 and 1930 with his wife Aase Christoffersen (1900–1938).

Historical significance

Regarded as the most groundbreaking novelist in modern Swedish literature he became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1957 and shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature with Harry Martinson with the citation: for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom. At this point he had published his first books.