Gustaf Björlin
1845–1922
Biography
Johan Gustaf Björlin, known as Gustaf Björlin, was a Swedish army officer, writer and member of parliament. He was born at Åmål in 1845 and died in Stockholm in June 1922. He rose through the general staff, and from 1882 to 1895 he headed its department of military history, where he edited the first two volumes of a major account of Sweden's wars of 1808 and 1809.
In 1895 he became a colonel and military commander on Gotland, a post he left in 1908 as a lieutenant general. From 1895 to 1909 he also sat in the First Chamber of the Riksdag for Gotland, taking part in debates on national defence. His writing ranged across military history, the case for conscription and volunteer shooting, and fiction. He also edited the magazine Svenske soldaten, written for ordinary soldiers, from 1879 to 1890.
Among his fiction was Carl Svenske, a two-volume tale of the Age of Liberty (Frihetstiden) published in Stockholm in 1876. The site holds this book, and it shows the historical fiction he wrote alongside his military and political career. Readers who know him for his histories of the army will find the novelist's side of a busy public man here.
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Books
Carl Svenske: Historisk berättelse från frihetstiden
by Gustaf Björlin
Sweden in the early 1740s is split between the warlike Hats and the cautious Caps, and the Hats are pushing the country toward a war of revenge on Russia. Gustaf Björlin follows the young Carl Svenske through the party intrigues of Stockholm and the campaign in Finland that came…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.