author
Johannes Ewald
1743–1781
An intense, short-lived voice of 18th-century Danish literature, he helped lead poetry and drama in a more personal, emotional direction. He is also remembered because a song from one of his plays became part of Denmark’s national tradition.
1 Audiobook
The Death of Balder
by Johannes Ewald
About the author
Born in Copenhagen in 1743, Johannes Ewald became one of Denmark’s most important poets and dramatists. Britannica describes him as one of the country’s greatest lyric poets, and he is often seen as a pioneering modern voice in Danish literature because of the strongly personal feeling in his writing.
His life was difficult and brief. After an unsettled youth, he turned to writing and produced poems, plays, and prose that drew on both deep emotion and material from Nordic legend and history. One of his best-known works is Fiskerne (The Fishermen), which includes the words to “Kong Christian stod ved højen mast,” later adopted as one of Denmark’s national anthems.
Ewald died in Copenhagen in 1781 at just 37. Even with a small body of work compared with longer-lived writers, his influence was lasting, and he is still remembered as a central figure in the rise of modern Danish literature.