Barbro Alving
Barbro Alving, writing as her trademark signature Bang, was one of Sweden's most renowned journalists. She was one of the first female war reporters, as well as an active voice for peace, and a fervent supporter of the women's movement. She began her career as a journalist by volunteering at Stockholms Dagblad, and was later hired by Idun magazine. In 1934 she was recruited to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
Om arkivet
The Barbro Alving collection (A 96) consists of 239 volumes and covers the years 1891 to 2015. This includes an extensive correspondence, both letters that she wrote and letters she received from friends, private individuals and various organisations. Here, too, are her manuscripts, notes and news clippings. In addition the collection has a large amount of photos, including from Alving's journeys around the world as a foreign correspondent.
With a few exceptions, the archive is organised, but in different layers as several additional acquisitions have been given separate inventories.
For many years, Alving worked on a biography of her close friend and mentor, Elin Wägner. A lot of the material she gathered concerning Wägner is in the collection. However, the biography was never finished, and Alving handed the task over to author couple Ulla Isaksson and Erik Hjalmar Linder.
KvinnSam also holds the personal archives of Barbro Alving's mother Fanny Alving, her father Hjalmar Alving and her sister Beat-Sofi Alving.
Biography
Barbro Alving (1909–1987) was born in Uppsala, as the youngest daughter of author and columnist Fanny Alving, and lecturer-researcher of Nordic languages Hjalmar Alving. In 1920 the family moved to Stockholm, where Alving and her older sister Beat-Sofi (born 1907) were enrolled at the Whitlock school, where Hjalmar Alving was the director of studies.
Already as a girl, Alving wanted to become a famous reporter, and travel to places of unrest across the globe, meeting the celebrities of the world. Her career began after graduation, at the Stockholms Dagblad. This is where she was given the signature Bang, which she kept throughout her life. Just about a month later, she was employed as a subeditor at Idun magazine, where she stayed for three years. Alving's first foreign commission was to provide supplementary cover of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, on behalf of Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Her report was a major success, and after her own initiative to go to Spain during the Civil War, to report on the horrors and consequences of the war, she garnered much attention and cemented her position as a war correspondent.
Her career was put on temporary hiatus when her daughter Ruffa (christened Maud Fanny) was born on February 25th, 1938. Ruffa's father already had a family, and Alving decided to raise her daughter alone. This, too, attracted a lot of attention from the press, and "Bang children" became a widespread term for children whose mothers chose solo parenting in the late 1930s. Already in the war years, Alving had met Loyse Sjöcrona, a Scanian noblewoman working as a registry clerk at the Svenska Mejeriernas Riksförening, and they decided to share their future and the responsibility for Ruffa.
In 1947, Alving embarked on a reporting trip around the world, on behalf of Dagens Nyheter. This would coincide with the indepence of India, and an armed uprising in Indonesia. She also visited Singapore, Hong Kong and China. In Japan she wrote a much-renowned report on the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In the 1950s, Alving reported from the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and in the 1960s from the war in Indochina. She became a pacifist early on, and in the 1950s she was active in the opposition against a potential Swedish nuclear weapon. Her pacifism lead to her being sentenced to a month in prison as a conscientious objector of the civil defence. She wrote about the experience of her incarceration in the Dagbok från Långholmen. Beyond her reports, she wrote columns for many years, under the pseudonym Käringen mot strömmen - "Contrary Crone".
Apart from her writing, Alving was a prolific radio profile. Radio Sweden were swift in their discovery of her distinctive, deep and expressive voice. In 1960 she was put in charge of her own radio show, Bang med skrivmaskin och grammofon, "Bang with a typewriter and record player", where she told stories and reflected on many issues, light-hearted yet profound, while also playing music. Several of these episodes are available through the Radio Sweden website.
The above text is based on, among other materials, Barbro Alving (Bang), by Beata Arnborg, from the Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women (SKBL).
Read more
The Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women (SKBL)
Books available in Libris, by Barbro Alving
Books available in Libris, about Barbro Alving