Albert Viksten
A Portrait of My Father
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With Albert Viksten-A Portrait of my Father, daughter Karin Viksten-Koerner introduces her non-Swedish family members and any wilderness-nature and pioneer history interested reader to a part of her remarkable Swedish father's literary production.
Albert Viksten (1889-1969) was a self-taught writer and adult education lecturer and an early spokesman for both socialistic and environmentalism views in Sweden. As a youth he laboured in the woods, tending charcoal burners, which were then common in the northern Swedish forests. He loved to read and studied Strindberg and Dostoevsky in the glum light of the logging camp bunk, sent off contributions to the local newspaper and was soon hired as a journalist, and later as editor. At the end of WWI, Albert, keen on romantic adventure, left for Scandinavia's Northern Arctic, where he among other experiences lived through the harshness of seal hunting. Home again, his career took off, with novels, travel stories and nature writings. He frequently travelled abroad, returning home to write.
For 32 years he also toured Sweden as a popular wilderness-nature lecturer. Married, with four children, he enjoyed family life in Farila, Halsingland, in central-northern Sweden.
Viksten's production includes novels, essays, poetry and social reportage, where he often speaks for the individual's connection to nature and wildlife and against modern city culture.
This first English translation has two parts. The first explains Albert Viksten's devotion to the Canadian/Alaskan wilderness, where he four times visited his brothers Gus, Erik and Adolf, who left Sweden for Canada just before the Great Depression. The second part describes the author's firm anchoring in northern Swedish nature and traditions.
Several excerpts are from Viksten's short story collections about prospectors, trappers, hobos and adventurers looking for luck in Canada's wilderness. Today these books still attract Swedish readers dreaming of romantic adventures in the wild.About Karin Viksten-Koerner
Karin Viksten-Koerner lives in Victoria, B.C., Canada. She is the oldest daughter of Albert and Lisa Viksten. After studies in early childhood education, and also painting, Karin married a Canadian, Nicholas Koerner, and settled in Vancouver. Together with her late husband, her first Canadian experience was living in several Vancouver Island "logging camp" communities, where Karin became active in local affairs. She particularly enjoyed establishing the first communal kindergarten in Jordan River. Later on, residing in Vancouver and San Francisco, Karin furthered her painting studies and then graduated from Victoria College of Art in 1987.
Sons Stephen and James live in Victoria and daughter Marianne with physician husband Rodolfo Bianco and two children reside in Smithers and Victoria.Excerpts
"These days women are such, at least here in America, that you don't want to risk it. I could sell my house and everything I own, but not my freedom.Married men are prisoners, haven't got a say in anything. And if the marriage doesn't work, they'll skin you."
He suddenly gets up. Down in the vegetable gard