Ester Blenda Nordström (1891–1948)

Ester Blenda Nordström was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She began working as a journalist under the pseudonym The Boy and wrote for Svenska Dagbladet from 1911 to 1917 under the pen name Bansai. In 1914, at age 23, she posed as a peasant girl and took a job on a farm, writing a series of articles that exposed the harsh working conditions of domestic servants in Sweden, En månad som tjänsteflicka på en gård i Södermanland (A Month as a Servant Girl on a Farm in Södermanland). The articles brought her to national attention. She also documented her experiences in a book called En piga bland pigor (A Maid Among Maids), which was a bestseller, reprinted in several editions, and adapted into a film in 1924. For this pioneering work, she is often called Sweden's first undercover journalist. Ester drove a motorcycle through Sweden for a further series of reports. She worked as a teacher in Lappland and lived for a year in Sami society. In 1922, she traveled to New York City on a third-class ticket and worked as a waitress and kitchen help in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota; later she hitchhiked across the USA. She published these experiences in the book Amerikanskt. From 1925 to 1929, she was married to entomologist René Malaise and participated in his research in the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Soviet Far East. She subseqiemt;u wrote Byn i vulkanens skugga (The Village in the Shadow of the Volcano). Nordström also was a pioneer in the field of children's fiction, especially in books for young girls. At age 45, she suffered a brain hemorrhage and afterwards could no longer write or travel. She died at age 57 in 1948.