Lina Sandell-Berg

SANDELL-BERG, Lina (née Sandell, Karolina Vilhelmina, sometimes Sandell, Lina). b. 3 October 1832; d. 27 July 1903. Born at Fröderyd, Smaland, Sweden, the daughter of a pastor, she lost both her parents, her father drowning before her eyes in a boating accident. After the death of her parents she lived in a home run by a religious group, and began to write poems, using the initials ‘L.S.’. Many of them were set to music by the guitarist Oskar Ahnfelt (1813-1882), the ‘spiritual troubadour’ of Sweden. Some were published in Ahnfelt’s Andeliga Sånger (1867) (‘Devotional Songs’, financed by the famous singer Jenny Lind, who sang them). According to Sandell, Ahnfelt ‘has sung my songs into the...