Martinson, Moa

Swedish author, born in Vårdnäs in Östergötland as the daughter of an unmarried textile worker. Her real name was Helga Maria Swartz. She grew up in a farm laborer environment, her stepfather being a farm laborer on the farms around Norrköping. Her schooling only included elementary school and it was only in adult age that she studied to become to a cold-buffet manageress. In 1910, she married the general laborer Karl Johansson from Ösmo in Södertörn (the southern half of the province of Stockholm) and gave birth to five sons until 1916. The two youngest tragically died in a drowning-accident in 1925 and her husband committed suicide in 1928. From 1922, she contributed to the syndicalist and anarchist press under her first name Helga. She did not start calling herself Moa until after 1927. In 1927, she met the 14 year younger author Harry Martinson, then a poor vagabond poet. They married in 1929 and then lived at a croft in Sorunda. Several other proletarian authors often came to visit them there, among others Ivar Lo-Johansson who much later wrote about their marital problems in the book Tröskeln (1982). The marriage was officially dissolved in 1941.