Sven ''Axel'' Olaus Wallengren (originally Svensson) (26 January 1865, Lund – 4 December 1896,

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

) was a Swedish author, poet, and journalist, who wrote under the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

Falstaff, fakir. Wallengren was born in Lund where he would spend most of his short life. His father Mårten Svensson (1831-1898) was the poor son of a peasant who had managed to work his way up to a respectable position as a local civil servant, and his mother Olivia Wallengren (1842-1879) was the daughter of a clergyman. Although the latter died of

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in w ...

when young Axel was only fourteen and his many siblings even younger, he seems to have had a fairly harmonious middle-class childhood. After having attended the local gymnasium Katedralskolan, Wallengren enrolled as a student at

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in 1886. After this he entered the faculty of law - probably mainly as a result of his father's ambitions - but from then on his literary and other interests would take the upper hand of him, and he never fulfilled this part of his education. Wallengren had begun developing his writing skills already as a schoolboy through "Vala", a literary society at his gymnasium. Originally mainly working as a poet he got his first poems published already as a teenager.

Sources

* Hans Küntzel: "Axel Wallengren - en studie" in ''Axel Wallengrens Samlade skrifter'' (= Collected works), vol. 1 (Stockholm 1923) Swedish male poets Swedish male writers People from Lund 1865 births 1896 deaths 19th-century Swedish journalists Male journalists 19th-century Swedish poets 19th-century male writers {{Sweden-writer-stub