Selma Lagerlöf’s Legacy in Landskrona 

Selma Lagerlöf was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature and is famed to this day for her piercing intellect and colourful imagination. And it all started in Landskrona. 

Selma Lagerlöf moved to Landskrona in 1885 to take up a teaching position at an all-girls school. It was her first job after completing her studies. She spent the next ten years of her life in Landskrona, and it was here she started writing her debut novel Gösta Berling’s Saga, which would eventually win her the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Selma enjoyed living in Landskrona. She particularly loved promenading along the coast and looking out over the Öresund strait, towards Ven and Denmark. This was during a time when many Swedish cities were beginning to realise the value of recreational parks and pathways for walking, and Landskrona had started to take full advantage of its natural beauty. Fittingly, a statue of Selma can today be seen gazing out over the water, right where she would have taken her much appreciated walks. 

“If you could imagine how beautiful it is here now. You could invite people here and have them pay just to sit at our beach and look at the strait.” – Selma Lagerlöf in a letter to her friend Sophie Elkan. 

Lasting friendships 

Among Selma’s students in Landskrona was the doctor’s daughter Ruth Brandberg, who would go on to become one of the first female landscape architects in Sweden. Her relationship with Selma proved important to the young Ruth, as her first job after completing her studies was at the Mårbacka manor house – owned, at the time, by her former teacher.  

Selma also found friends while living in Landskrona, who she stayed in touch with long after leaving the city. Among these were the Swedish philanthropist Elisa Malmros and fellow teacher Anna Oom. The letters between these three intelligent women have been collected and published posthumously, giving further insight into one of Sweden’s most successful authors. Her relationship with Elisa and Anna likely contributed to Selma’s development as a writer and intellectual. In fact, Elisa inspired at least two of the characters that would later appear in Selma’s books.