STJERNHJELM, GEORG (1598-1672), Swedish poet and scholar, whose original name was Goran Lilja, was born at Wika in Dalecarlia on Aug. 7, 1598. He took his degree at Greifswald, and spent some years in travelling over every quarter of Europe. Gustavus Adolphus gave him a responsible post at Dorpat in 163o, and raised him next year to the nobility. After the king's death, Christina attached him, as a kind of poet laureate, to her court in Stockholm. His property lay in Livonia, and when the Russians plundered that Province in 1656 the poet, who was in temporary disgrace at the court, was reduced to extreme poverty for two or three years. He subsequently became judge at Trond hjem, member of the council of war (1661) and president (1667) of the College of Antiquities at Stockholm. He died at Stockholm on April 22, 1672. His greatest poem Hercules (pr. 1653) is a didactic allegory in hexameters, written in very musical verse, and with almost Oriental splendour of phrase and imagery.
Brollops-Besviirs Ihugkommelse, a sort of serio-comic epitha lamium in the same measure, is another brilliant work. His masques, Then fangne Cupido (Cupid Caught) (1649), Freds-afl (The Birth of Peace) (1649), and Parnassus triumphams (1651), were written for the entertainment of Queen Christina. He can scarcely be said to have been successful in his attempt, in the first two of these, to introduce unrhymed song-measures.
Stjernhjelm was an active philologist, and left a great number of works on language, of which only a few have been printed. He also wrote on history, mathematics, philosophy and natural science, producing original and valuable work on every subject he attempted. There is a full list of his writings in the Svenskt biographiskt Lexikon, vol. xv. (Uppsala, 1848).