Gustaf Fröding

Gustaf Fröding (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɡɵ̂sːtav ˈfrø̂ːdɪŋ]; 22 August 1860 – 8 February 1911) was a Swedish poet and writer from Alster, Värmland. The family moved to Kristinehamn in the year 1867. He later studied at Uppsala University and worked as a journalist in Karlstad.

Poetry

His poetry combines formal virtuosity with a sympathy for the ordinary, the neglected and the down-trodden, sometimes written in his own regional dialect. It is highly musical and lends itself to musical setting; many of his poems have been set to music and recorded by Swedish singers such as Olle Adolphson, Monica Zetterlund, the Värmland group Sven-Ingvars and the Swedish band Mando Diao.

Fröding wrote openly about his personal problems with alcohol and women and had to face a trial for obscenity.

Sickness

The latter part of his life he spent in different mental institutions and hospitals to cure his mental illness and alcoholism, and eventually diabetes. During the first half of the 1890s he spent a couple of years at the Suttestad institution in Lillehammer, Norway, where he finished his work on his third book of poetry Stänk och flikar, which was published in 1896. He wrote much of the material at a mental institution in Görlitz, Germany. In 1896 he moved back to Sweden. But as the year neared Christmas, his sister Cecilia made the difficult decision to make him stay at a hospital in Uppsala. Under the care of professor Frey Svenson Fröding got away from liquor and women, except one, Ida Bäckman. Fröding never married Ida, but grew fond of a nurse named Signe Trotzig. When he left hospital in Uppsala she stayed with him to the day he died.