Poems by Olof von Dalin now in English

For the first time, a few of Olof von Dalin’s poetry has been translated into English. Dalin wrote about 2,500 poems, most of them songs or other pieces of occasional poetry. His verse is witty and elegant and full of double meanings, and he wrote it almost 300 years ago – a challenge for a translator.

Alan Crozier, born in Northern Ireland in 1953, studied at the University of Cambridge and holds a PhD in Germanic Philology.  Since coming to Sweden in 1982 he has worked as a translator, especially of academic texts. 

He now presents three poems by Olof von Dalin: Urban Life  (Öfwer Stads-Lefwernet) , Pastorale, and
Song (Wisa)

Olof von Dalin (1708-1763), an introduction

This essay gives a short introduction to Dalin’s life and work but also gives a closer study of two of the poems that Alan Crozier has translated, Urban Life and Song. The writer is  María Esther Vilar Álvarez (Spanish-Peruvian). She was born in Alicante, Spain in 2002. From 2012 to 2020 she lived in Ireland, a country where she completed primary and secondary education and obtained the Junior Certificate and the Leaving Certificate. In 2016 she obtained a short story award in Listowel’s Writer’s Week Competition. She is currently studying her Bachelors in Physics at Lund University.

Suggestions for further reading

Articles in English or English summaries in books on Olof von Dalin

Swanson, Alan (University of Groningen): Argus on the Stage. Dalin the playwright; In Scandinavian Studies No 2, 1997
Massengale, James (UCLA): The Songs of Olof von Dalin  in Scandinavian Studies No 2, 1997.

Forselius, Tilda Maria: God dag, min läsare! ,English summary  Ellerströms förlag 2015.  –  The book is a study of Swedish  ’moral weeklys’ from the 1730’s, e.g. Dalin’s Then Swänska Argus.

Möller, Daniel: Rolldiktningens poetik – Summary: The poetics of role-playing poetry. Olof von Dalin’s experimental occasional verse. Makadam förlag 2019