Gunnar Olof Björling, (31 May 1887 – 11 July 1960) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet. He was one of the leading figures of Finnish-Swedish

modernist literature Modernist literature originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterised by a self-conscious separation from traditional ways of writing in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented with literary form a ...

, along with

Elmer Diktonius Elmer Rafael Diktonius (20 January 1896 – 23 September 1961) was a Finland, Finnish poet and composer, who wrote in both Swedish language, Swedish and in Finnish language, Finnish. He was born in Helsinki. In 1922, he established an avant-gar ...

, Edith Södergran and Hagar Olsson.

Biography

Björling was born in

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

, to Edvard Björling (Åberg) and Lydia Maria Gustafsdotter Björling, with his brothers Bruno and Torsten. He spent his childhood in Helsinki and Viipuri, and the summer months in

Kangasala is a town in Finland, located in the Pirkanmaa region. It lies to the east of the regional capital, Tampere. The population of Kangasala is approximately , while the Tampere metropolitan area, metropolitan area has a population of approximat ...

. Between 1901 and 1902 he attended Hamina Cadet School, and then studied philosophy at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

. One of his teachers was the internationally renowned sociologist

Edvard Westermarck Edvard Alexander Westermarck (20 November 1862 in Helsinki – 3 September 1939 in Tenala) was a Finnish philosopher and sociologist. Among other subjects, he studied exogamy and the incest taboo. Biography Westermarck was born in 1862 in a w ...

, who greatly influenced Björling's thinking. During his school years in Helsinki, Björling became a passionate

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

, was active in the

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

s and participated in several minor operations. However, when the

Finnish Civil War The Finnish Civil War was a civil war in Finland in 1918 fought for the leadership and control of the country between Whites (Finland), White Finland and the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (Red Finland) during the country's transition fr ...

broke out in 1918, Björling supported the

whites White is a racial classification of people generally used for those of predominantly European ancestry. It is also a skin color specifier, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, ethnicity and point of view. De ...

, and helped a telegraphist working for the whites by hiding him in his basement. After the war, Björling participated in one of the courts which sentenced captured reds. Later in life, however, he renounced and distanced himself from his activities during and after the war. Björling's debut as a poet came in 1922, when he was 35 years old, with ''Vilande dag'', which consists of prose poems and

aphorism An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tra ...

s, some of them one-liners. Between 1928 and 1929, he contributed to the

Swedish-language Swedish ( ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family, spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland. It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the fourth most spoken Germanic language, and the first ...

modernist publication '' Quosego''. Although Björling is principally considered a modernist poet, he also experimented with

dadaism Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

, and was sometimes called "Europe's last dadaist". Björling was openly

bisexual Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior toward both males and females. It may also be defined as the attraction to more than one gender, to people of both the same and different gender, or the attraction t ...

in an era when it was broadly seen as a social deviation. The psychoanalyst Mikael Enckell, son of fellow Finnish modernist writer Rabbe Enckell, made the following analysis of Björling's sexuality: ''"It is not enough that he apparently was bisexual in a time and in a generation when this was socially stigmatizing in a way we can imagine only with difficulty. He himself hardly wholeheartedly affirmed his bisexuality, it was connected with notions of deep shame, moral inferiority and deviation."'' Björling died in Helsinki in 1960.

Bibliography

*''Vilande dag'', 1922 *''Korset och löftet'', 1925 *''Kiri-ra!'', 1930 *''Solgrönt'', 1933 *''Fågel badar snart i vatten'', 1934 *''Att syndens blåa nagel'', 1936 *''Där jag vet att du'', 1938 *''Det oomvända anletet'', 1939 *''Angelägenheten'', 1940 *''Ohjälpligheten'', 1943 *''O finns en dag'', 1944 *''Ord och att ej annat'', 1945 *''Luft är och ljus'', 1946 *''Ohört blott'', 1948 *''Vårt kattliv timmar'', 1949 *''Ett blyertsstreck'', 1951 *''Som alla dar'', 1953 *''Att i sitt öga'', 1954 *''Du går de ord'', 1955

Biography

Bibliography

References

Further reading