Carl Michael Bellman

Carl Michael Bellman (1740–1795) was Sweden's national poet-songwriter. After trying banking and study at Uppsala, debt drove him to Norway in 1763. From 1768, back in Stockholm, he composed a new kind of song, accompanying himself on the cittern in taverns and at court. King Gustav III called him a master improviser and became his patron.

His reputation rests on two collections, Fredman's Epistles and Fredman's Songs, published in 1790 and 1791, whose drinking-house characters and rococo allusions blend comedy, satire and melancholy. Bellman died in Stockholm in 1795.