Helena Nyblom was a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 children's story author. She is perhaps most remembered for The Swan Suit.

Biography

Helena was born in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, daughter to the Danish painter Jørgen Roed

Jørgen Roed

Jørgen Roed, , Danish portrait and genre painter associated with the Golden Age of Danish Painting, was born in Ringsted to Peder Jørgensen Roed and wife, Ellen Hansdatter.-Growing up:...

. Her brother was the painter Holger Roed

Holger Roed

Holger Peter Roed, known as Holger Roed , Danish painter, was born in Copenhagen to painter Jørgen Roed and wife Emilie Mathilde...

. In September 1864 she married the Swedish academic Carl Rupert Nyblom, Associate Professor of Aesthetics at Uppsala University

Uppsala University

Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477. It consistently ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of...

, and at the end of the month the newly-weds took a steamer to Uppsala

Uppsala

- Economy :Today Uppsala is well established in medical research and recognized for its leading position in biotechnology.*Abbott Medical Optics *GE Healthcare*Pfizer *Phadia, an offshoot of Pharmacia*Fresenius*Q-Med...

. Helena's first writings were poems and short stories. The stories, written in Danish and then translated into Swedish by her husband, were first published in the Ny Illustrerad Tidskrift (New Illustrated Journal) and subsequently collected in four volumes between 1875 and 1881. Helena did not think highly of the stories, which she regarded as potboilers. (The Nybloms had six children and needed the money.) Innately musical, she put more of herself into her poems, many of which were later set to music by Emil Sjögren

Emil Sjögren

Johan Gustav Emil Sjögren was a Swedish composer.Born in Stockholm, Sjögren entered the Stockholm Conservatory at the age of seventeen and later continued his studies at the Berlin Conservatory....

 and other composers. Her first collection of poems, written in Danish, came out in 1881. It attracted attention not just in Denmark, but also in Sweden, where it was praised by the poet Carl Snoilsky

Carl Snoilsky

Count Carl Johan Gustaf Snoilsky was a Swedish lyric poet, known for his realist poetry.Snoilsky was born in Stockholm. He was educated at the Clara School and Stockholms lyceum and in 1860 became a student at the University of Uppsala. He was trained for diplomacy, which he quit for work at the...

. In 1895 Helena converted to Roman Catholicism. She published her first fairy tales in 1897, when she was 54 years old. In all she wrote more than 80 fairy tales, in which she mixed Swedish folklore, ancient myths and romantic motifs. Many of her tales contain clear feminist messages. Besides publishing her own collections, she also contributed to the Swedish folklore and fairy tales annual Among Gnomes and Trolls

Bland tomtar och troll

Bland tomtar och troll is a popular Swedish folklore and fairy tales annual. Founded in 1907 and continuing to this very day, several of the foremost Swedish authors and illustrators have worked for the annual....

, where many of her tales were illustrated by John Bauer.

Works translated into English

• The Little Maid Who Danced to Every Mood and the Knight Who Wanted the Best of Everything (c1910)
• Jolly Calle and Other Swedish Fairy Tales (1912)
• The Witch of the Woods: Fairy Tales from Sweden (1968)
• The Queen's Necklace: A Swedish Folktale (1994)