Moa Martinson (born Helga Maria Swarts; 2 November 1890 – 5 August 1964) was one of Sweden's most noted authors of proletarian literature. Her ambition was to change society with her authorship and to portray the conditions of the working class, and also the personal development of women. Her works were about motherhood, love, poverty, politics, religion, urbanization and the hard living conditions of the working-class woman.
Martinson was born on 2 November 1890 in Vårdnäs, Linköping Municipality. Her mother was Kristina Swartz (sometimes spelt Christina Schwartz) who served as a maid wherever jobs were available. There are no legal records stating who her father was, but according to researchers Annika Johansson and Bonnie Festin, he was probably Anders Teodor Andersson, a farmhand who served at the Kärr farm in Motala at the same time as Swartz. Since she carried, what in those days was referred to as an illegitimate child, she had to go to her parents home for the birth. Swartz' father, Nils Peter Swartz, was a poor soldier who lived with his wife, Carin Olofsdotter, in a derelict croft in Vårdnäs. On 17 February 1891, Swartz sued Andersson for child support at the Motala district court, where two witnesses testified that they had seen her and Andersson in the same bed around the time the child would have been conceived. Andersson failed to appear in court in February as well as on the two following hearings. Swartz finally said that he had gone to America and the proceedings were stayed.
The identity of her father was unknown to Martinson her entire life, but her speculations about who it could be were an inspiration for her work. In her book Pigmamma ("Maid Mother") she portrays her mother's situation as pregnant with a married man's child. At one point she thought that her father was a married man, whom her mother had worked for. Her romantic view of her mysterious father decreased as time went by. In her book Mor gifter sig (My Mother Gets Married), written twelve years later, it became clear how much Martinson despised her absent father. In Fjäderbrevet (The Feather Letter), written another six years later, there is no mention of him at all.
During the first years of her life, Martinson lived with her paternal grandparents and their youngest daughter Hulda while Swartz worked as a maid or in the textile mills in Norrköping. There are several discrepancies in the timeline of Martinson's early years between official records and her books. These are most likely due to that her stories built on the oral traditions of the family. In 1892, her grandfather became ill and died and her grandmother could no longer take care of Martinson so she went to live with her mother. There is no record of where they lived until 1894, when they moved to Norrköping. Swartz earned very little money. In 1894–1896, she worked at Norrköping's wool weaving mills, where working conditions were extremely bad and wages low. During her early school years, Martinson had a stepfather, Alfred Karlsson, who she described as an alcoholic. He was a sometime statare who worked odd jobs in the countryside outside Norrköping. He married Swartz on 11 March 1896, and they had three more daughters, but they all died within days of being born. After the years at the textile mill, the family moved several times to different locations in Östergötland, settling down for a time wherever work was available. This affected Martinson's schooling since they only stayed in one place for a couple of months. Despite this, she left school with high marks after six years in 1903. She was confirmed in 1905 in Risinge Church, Finspång Municipality, after which she got her first job at a farm in Vikbolandet.
In Martinson's book Kvinnor och äppleträd (Women and Apple Trees), which is set in Norrköping, she described the hard and ruthless situation that she and her mother was in during the 1890s. Because of the book, Martinson was accused for denigration by right-wing critics, but Martinson said that what she did was the opposite. The different run-down lodgings the family moved in and out of are described in the books Kyrkbröllop (Church wedding) and (My Mother Gets Married) as well as in a couple of the short stories in Jag möter en diktare (I meet a poet).
At the age of fifteen, she trained to become a pantry chef; at the time, she was the youngest in that profession in Sweden. During the summer of 1906, she worked as a kitchen maid in the main restaurant at the Norrköping Exhibition of Art and Industry. Situated at the top of Syltberget ("Sylt Hill"), the restaurant was accessed by an 80-steps stairway. In Kungens rosor (The King's Roses), Martinsson recounts her work in the restaurant and mentions the stairs. The novel got its name from a conversation that she had at the exhibition with King Oscar II of Sweden on 3 July 1906. The conversation revolved around flowers, which the King said that he felt had souls. As of 2016, the stairs remain and have been named "Moa Martinson's Stairs".
In the midst of summer, she walks down the eighty steps. Counting them out loud one after the other, even though she knows very well their number. It is cloudy, almost dark, even though it is only July. The bright nights are waning. The scents of roses and honeysuckles waft around her. She stops, enthralled by the silence and beauty of the summer night. The noise from the day's bustle still lingers in her ears.
In 1906, Martinson moved to Stockholm in the hope of getting a job, but this turned out to be harder than she expected. During the financial depression of 1907–1909, she had to move back to Norrköping. At this time, she followed events related to concerns about the labour market. This period of Martinson's life had a significant impact on her political engagement. She also wrote poems and sent a collection to a notary interested in literature, but her work was rejected. She later described the poems as "lofty", since that was how she thought such texts should be written.
In 1908–1909, Martinson worked as a pantry chef at restaurants and hotels in Sweden. In the winter of 1909, she met Karl Johansson in Ösmo. He was nine years older, and was a stone worker who lived with his brother Valfrid and their father Johan Petter in a torp called Johannesdal, in the woods between Ösmo and Sorunda. She became pregnant in March 1909 and Johansson proposed, but Martinson was doubtful about marrying him. Despite this, she and Karl moved to Johannesdal and in her book Den osynlige älskaren ("The Invisible Lover") she wrote about her first year as mother and wife, the hard life in Johannesdal and how she desperately wanted to get away.
In 1910, her first son Olof was born, and in 1922 she and Johansson were married. The reason she hesitated for such a long time to marry him was partly due to Johansson's drinking and partly because she did not want to live in the dark forest.
After the birth of Olof, the family soon expanded. In 1911, their second son Tore was born, followed by three more sons: Erik in 1913, Manfred in 1914 and Knut in 1916. The birth of Knut was especially hard, since she had to deliver him all alone on the kitchen floor in the torp. Martinson recounted the birth in Kvinnor och äppelträd, which has been called "one of Swedish literature's most powerful depictions of a childbirth".
Life on Johannesdal was poor and hard but the upbringing of her sons was important to Martinson. She was opposed to spanking children and disliked the militant nationalistic romanticism taught in schools at the time.
Martinson's political interest started to develop in 1921, when unemployment in Sweden was higher than ever before, and in 1922 she and Johansson joined the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden where Martinson became very active. To further educate herself, she read the works of authors like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Émile Zola, Maxim Gorky and Martin Andersen Nexø. Because of her political interest in better pay and conditions for workers and her ability to speak in any context, she was elected to the municipal council in Sorunda where she represented the Labour Party. She resigned from office in 1926.