The 1951 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded the Swedish author Pär Lagerkvist "for the artistic vigour and true independence of mind with which he endeavours in his poetry to find answers to the eternal questions confronting mankind." Lagerkvist is the fourth Swedish recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Selma Lagerlöf in 1909, Verner von Heidenstam in 1916, and Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1931.
