Birth of Selma Lagerlöf

Selma Lagerlöf was born on 20 November 1858 in Östra Ämtervik church parish. A Swedish writer, Lagerlöf grew up on the family estate of Mårbacka in Värmland, worked as a teacher, and became famous with her first novel, The Saga of Gösta Berling, which draws on the folklore and landscape of her home region. Her best-known work abroad is The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, written as a geography reader for Swedish schoolchildren, in which a boy travels across the country on the back of a goose. In 1909 she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1914 she was the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy. She used her fame to support the women's suffrage movement and later helped refugees from Nazi Germany.

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