Selma Lagerlöf

Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) was the first woman awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909). Her enduring fantasy The Wonderful Adventures of Nils sends a shrunken boy soaring across Sweden on the back of a goose, and her novels and folk-tinged tales like Gösta Berling’s Saga are steeped in legend, the supernatural and moral wonder. A foundational figure of Swedish letters and of literary fantasy.