Oskar Ahnfelt

Born: May 21, 1813, Gul­larp, Skåne, Swe­den. Died: October 22, 1882, Karls­­hamn, Blek­inge, Swe­den. Buried: Karls­­hamn, Blek­inge, Sweden. Sweden’s “Spiritual Troubadour,” Ahnfelt com­posed or ar­ranged the mu­sic for all of Li­na San­dell-Berg’s hymns, in­clud­ing Children of The Heav­en­ly Fa­ther. Like San­dell-Berg, he was a Pi­e­tist and tra­veled through­out Scan­di­na­via sing­ing her hymns, ac­com­pa­ny­ing him­self with a 10 string gui­tar. The state church op­posed pi­e­tis­tic hymns and or­dered Ahnfelt to sing them be­fore King Karl XV. After hear­ing them, the king said, “You may sing as much as you de­sire in both of my king­doms.” He sang them so much that San­dell-Berg wrote, “Ahn­felt has sung my songs into the hearts of the peo­ple.” Jen­ny Lind, the Swed­ish Night­ing­ale, was al­so a Pi­e­tist and pop­u­lar­ized Sandell-Berg’s hymns in Amer­i­ca and wher­e­ver she sang. She al­so fi­nanced the first ed­i­tion of Ahnfelt’s songs, con­sist­ing most­ly of Sandell-Berg’s hymns.