Barbro Alving (12 January 1909 – 22 January 1987) was a Swedish journalist and writer. She wrote for, among others, Dagens Nyheter and Vecko-Journalen and is known under the signature Bang. She was a pacifist and feminist. She reported from various scenes during the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Cold War.^[1][2]

Alving was born in Uppsala, the daughter of Fanny Alving and Hjalmar Alving. Her father was a teacher of Nordic literature^[3] and her mother was a writer.^[2] She moved to Stockholm in her early 20s. Alving never married, but she had a daughter Maud Fanny Alving with illustrator and artist Birger Lundquist in 1938. Maud, better known as Ruffa Alving-Olin, is herself a journalist, and has collected and published letters, notes and other materials after Barbro Alving's death.^[1] Alving began living with Anna Laura Sjöcrona when her daughter Ruffa was only one year old, forming "a different kind of family", in her daughter's words. Alving and Sjöcrona lived together for over 40 years, until Alving's death.

She was editorial secretary of Idun from 1928 to 1931, and then a journalist at Dagens Nyheter from 1934 to 1959. She reported from the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, from the Spanish Civil War, and the Winter War in Finland in 1939-40, from Norway in 1940, and Hungary in 1956. As a foreign correspondent, she repoted from the United States, Vietnam, Africa and the Far East over a number of years.

She became a pacifist, and converted to Catholicism in 1959. She supported the campaign in the 1950s to prevent Sweden acquiring nuclear weapon. She lost her job due to her beliefs. She refused to participate in civil defense, and was jailed for one month. She wrote of her period in period in her 1956 book Dagbok från Långholmen (Diary of Långholmen) (1956).

She was inspired as a journalist, feminist and pacifist by Elin Wägner. She collected biographical material after Wagner's death in 1949 which became a biography by Ulla Isaksson and Erik Hjalmar Linder.

She wrote numerous books, some under the pseudonym "Käringen mot strömmen" ("old woman against the tide"). She wrote several screenplays, and was awarded the Nios Grand Prize in 1975. The feminist magazine Bang is named after her.

[edit] References

[edit] Further information

[edit] External links

• Barbro Alving Society
• Stockholm Public Library

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