Steen Steensen Blicher

Steen Steensen Blicher (1782–1848) was a Danish Romantic writer and poet, born in Vium near Viborg in Jutland. He wrote in standard Danish and in the Jutlandic dialect, and he is usually regarded as the pioneer of Danish prose fiction and the short story in his language.

The son of a Protestant clergyman, he grew up among peasant life and the moorlands of Jutland, a landscape that became the centre of his work. He studied theology in Copenhagen while working as a tutor, and he tried his hand at teaching and farming before taking holy orders. He served as parson at Thorning and later at Spentrup, where he stayed until his death. His family life was hard: he had many children, lived with constant debts, and separated from his wife in 1827 after her infidelity, though no divorce followed. He resigned his pastoral post shortly before dying in poverty.

His first prose pieces appeared in 1824 in the Copenhagen magazine La Harpe, and from 1827 he edited the periodical Aurora Borealis for three years, publishing many of his short tales there. His style moves between a reflective narrator and the colloquial speech of peasants, squires and robbers. Recurring themes include human fate, unhappy love, melancholy and Time as an opponent. Some of his narrators are unreliable; in The Parson of Veilbye, a narrator's mistaken conclusions lead to a wrongful conviction. His poetry, written from the Napoleonic years until his death, includes Birds of Passage (1838), composed during a long illness. His theatre is now little known.

His legacy lies in the Danish short story, of which he is seen as a pioneer, and in the literary portrait of Jutland. Several of his poems have been set to music, and his novel The Parson of Veilbye is part of the Danish Culture Canon. Since 1951 the Danish Blicher Society has existed, and since 1955 it has awarded the Blicher Prize in his name.