Vilhelm Moberg

Who was Vilhelm Moberg?

Karl Artur Vilhelm Moberg was a Swedish journalist, author, playwright, historian and debater. His literary career, spanning more than 45 years, is associated with his series The Emigrants of four books published between 1949 and 1959, concerning the Swedish emigration to the United States in the 19th century, as well as the two movie adaptions made from the books by Jan Troell. Among other works are Raskens and Ride This Night, a historical novel of a 17th-century rebellion in Småland acknowledged for its subliminal but widely recognised criticism against the Hitler regime.

A noted public intellectual and debater in Sweden, he was famous for very vocal criticism of the Swedish monarchy, likening it with a servile government by divine mandate and publicly supporting its replacement with a Swiss-style confederal republic. He spoke out aggressively against the policies of Nazi Germany, the Greek military junta and the Soviet Union, and his works were among those destroyed in Nazi book burnings.