1873 - 1950. Writer
When the Danes were asked to vote for the greatest Danish novel of the 20th century they had a long list of internationally acclaimed writers to choose from including Karen Blixen and Peter Hoegh. However the prize fell upon The King´s Fall by Johannes V. Jensen, one of only three Danes to have won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Jensen was born in 1873 and grew up in a village in North Jutland. As a young man he studied medicine in Copenhagen, before finally deciding to dedicate himself to literature. Jensen was a prolific writer and published more than 60 volumes, among them the highly acclaimed The King´s Fall.
Jensen received the Nobel Prize in 1944 and his overwhelming volume of work did not go unnoticed by the Nobel Committee:
‘This child of the dry and windy moors of Jutland has, almost out of spite, astonished his contemporaries by a remarkably prolific production. He could well be considered one of the most fertile Scandinavian writers.
Today Jensen is considered to be the father of Danish modernism with his unique style of a direct and straightforward language. Johannes V. Jensen died in Copenhagen in 1950.