page_title: Värmland
section_title: Culture and literature
hierarchical_section_title: Värmland / History / Culture and literature
caption_attribution_description: A statue of Gustaf Fröding in Karlstad, Sweden
context_page_description: Värmland is a landskap in west-central Sweden. It borders Västergötland, Dalsland, Dalarna, Västmanland, and Närke, and is bounded by Norway in the west. Latin name versions are Varmelandia, Vermelandia, Wermelandia, Værmalandia, Værmolandia, Virmolandia and Vermillandia. Some of the Latinised forms show the origin of the name to come from the large local lake by the name of Värmeln; others from the river name *Værma, the main outlet of said lake. The province was originally part of Götaland, and became part of Svealand in 1815.
context_section_description: The province has powerful literary and musical traditions and has spawned some of the most well-known and loved authors of Sweden. In the 19th century several leading authors had their origin here, and retained links to Värmland, among them Erik Gustaf Geijer, Esaias Tegnér, Gustaf Fröding and Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf.  Lagerlöf's novel, Gösta Berlings Saga, is a neo-romantic saga that takes place in Värmland in the 1820s and 1830s.  It was also made into a film starring Greta Garbo. It was also made into an opera, I cavalieri di Ekebù, by Italian composer Riccardo Zandonai in 1925.
  Education, theatre and a somewhat glamorous lifestyle  were buoyed by the landed gentry and the wealth being generated through a lively local iron trade, and also by the position of the landscape on the edge between civilization and wilderness, which inspired art, literature and folklore. During the second half of the 19th century, the iron processing industry was largely put out of business by the revolution in the steel industry which made Central Europe and the United States vastly superior in this field, and the overall economic crisis throughout Europe of the 1870s and 1880s, and the subsequent emigration to North America, shook the landscape. The consequence, however, was to make authors like Lagerlöf and Fröding more aware of the heritage of their province, and they both drew on what they felt to be an oral tradition of story-telling and local legends. This emphasis on richly textured, often romantic or burlesque tales which nonetheless transcend the local has remained a focus of later writers, such as Göran Tunström (1937–2000) and Lars Andersson (b. 1954).
  The musical traditions have inspired a number of prominent musicians, such as singers Zarah Leander, Monica Zetterlund and Rigmor Gustafsson.
caption: A statue of Gustaf Fröding in Karlstad.
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