Laura Fitinghoff
1848–1908
Biography
Laura Fitinghoff was a Swedish writer, best remembered for her children's books. She was born Laura Mathilda Bernhardina Runsten in 1848, the daughter of a pastor who also sat in the Swedish parliament, and she grew up on a large farm at Sollefteå in the north of the country. Her family lived in Stockholm while her father attended to his parliamentary work, and she studied music there with her sisters. She married Conrad Fitinghoff, a businessman, but the marriage did not hold, and the couple became estranged. She took in lodgers and turned to writing to earn her living, supporting her daughter Rosa as she did so.
Her early books were written mostly for women and children, and many drew on her own experience of family and small-town life. She became a member of the Swedish writers' association and took part in the literary circles of Stockholm. Her novel Vårluft won second prize in a literary competition in 1891. Her daughter Rosa also became a writer, and later worked as her mother's assistant.
Her best-known book is Barnen ifrån Frostmofjället (Children from Frostmofjället), about seven poor orphans who travel through northern Sweden in the 1860s with a goat that keeps them fed. It was translated into several languages, was filmed in 1945 as Barnen från Frostmofjället, and appeared in English in 1927 as Children of the Moor. The book on this site is the Swedish original, first published in 1907.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Barnen ifrån Frostmofjället
by Laura Fitinghoff
Seven orphaned siblings are left alone in the Jämtland hills when their mother dies, and set out on foot across Sweden to find a new home, helped and hindered by the people they meet. Laura Fitinghoff's children's classic, based on a true story of the 1860s, follows the children…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.