Hjalmar Bergman

Who was Hjalmar Bergman?

Hjalmar Fredrik Elgérus Bergman was a Swedish writer and playwright.

The son of a banker in Örebro, Bergman briefly studied philosophy at Uppsala University but soon broke off his studies and took up the life of a free writer. He married Stina Lindberg, the daughter of actor and stage producer August Lindberg. Up to his father's death in 1915 Bergman was heavily sponsored by the family patriarch; after the old man died from a stroke it turned out that the family business had become highly indebted and Bergman was forced to start making money out of his writing and court readers in a more outgoing and more entertaining manner. He rose to the challenge and in the following ten years reached the peak of his work.

Much of his output takes place in a small town in mid-Sweden, which is growing into a parallel universe in a Balzacian manner. The shameful secrets of a dozen of interwoven families gradually come out of the closet as the stories grow increasingly symbolic. A pessimistic outlook is always counterbalanced by a grotesque humour - indeed in a book like Markurells i Wadköping the latter almost succeeds in completely shading the former.