Erik Axel Karlfeldt

Swedish poet (1864–1931) and longtime permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1931, months after his death on 8 April that year. His own Nobel Foundation "Facts" page is one of only two primary pages on the Foundation's site that use the word "posthumously" in its own prose to describe an award, naming him alongside Dag Hammarskjöld as the Foundation's complete pre-1974 posthumous-award pair.

Matters to this vault as the older, literary half of the Nobel Foundation's posthumous-award history — the precedent Hammarskjöld's case, thirty years later, is measured against — and as one of only two cases whose own Foundation page actually applies the word "posthumous," in contrast with William Vickrey's and Ralph Steinman's, which don't (see the usage-pattern note).

References

• claim-nobel-no-posthumous-rule-broken-twice-before-1974 · claim-nobel-foundation-reserves-posthumous-label-for-pre-announcement-deaths
• Captures: 2026-10-04-does-william-vickreys-case-actually-count-as-posthumous