HEIDENSTAM, VERNER VON ), Swedish writer, was born on July 6, 1859, in Olshammar. He lived for several years in the south of Europe, Egypt and the East. On his return home, he published a collection of poems, Vallfart och Vandringsaar (Pilgrimage and Years of Wandering) (1888), based on oriental life, which formed a protest against the naturalism then prevalent in Swedish literature. This book marked the beginning of the great literary renaissance of the '9os in Sweden. In 1889 he published Endymion, an oriental story, and in 1892 his great work, Hans Alienus, a fanciful epic concerning a pilgrimage in search of beauty through various ages and countries. His other collection of Poems (1895) indicates the author's transition to national ideas. This national tendency attained its zenith in his great prose work, Karolinerna (2 vols., 1897-98 ; Eng. trans. The Carlists, 1902), dealing with the time of Charles XII. Then fol lowed Den Hellige Birgittas Pilegrims f aerd (St. Bridget's Pil grimage) in 1901 ; descriptions of Sweden in ancient times and in the Middle Ages in Folkungatradet (2 vol., 1905, 192o), and Svenskarna og deres h˘vdinger (Swedes and Their Chieftains, 2 vol., 1908, 1909). In 1915 Heidenstam published Nya Dikter, which established him as the greatest of contemporary Swedish lyricists, and in 1916 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. See F. Book, Sveriges moderns litteratur (end ed., 1921).