Vilhelm Moberg

Vilhelm Moberg
Vilhelm Moberg, 1967
Born	Karl Artur Vilhelm Moberg (1898-08-20)20 August 1898 Moshultamåla, Sweden
Died	8 August 1973(1973-08-08) (aged 74) Väddö, Sweden
Resting place	Norra begravningsplatsen
Pen name	Ville i Momåla
Occupation	Journalist, author, playwright, historian, debater
Language	Swedish
Nationality	Swedish
Citizenship	Swedish
Period	c. 1917–1961
Notable works	The Emigrants
Children	Åsa Moberg

Karl Artur Vilhelm Moberg (20 August 1898 – 8 August 1973) was a Swedish journalist, author, playwright, historian, and debater. His literary career, spanning more than 45 years, is associated with his four‑volume series The Emigrants. The novels, published between 1949 and 1959, deal with the Swedish emigration to the United States in the 19th century. They have been adapted for a total of three movies (two in the 1970s and one in 2021), and a musical.

Among his other works are Raskens (1927) and Ride This Night (1941), a historical novel of a 17th‑century rebellion in Småland, acknowledged for its subliminal but widely recognised criticism of the Hitler regime.

A prominent public intellectual and debater in Sweden, Moberg was recognized for his vocal criticism of the Swedish monarchy (most notably after the Haijby affair), describing it as 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. In 1971, he scolded Prime Minister Olof Palme for refusing to present the Nobel Prize in Literature to its recipient Alexander Solzhenitsyn – who was refused permission to attend the ceremony in Stockholm – through the Swedish embassy in Moscow.

Moberg's suicide by self‑inflicted drowning drew much attention. He had had a long struggle with depression and writer's block.