Barbro Alving

Barbro Alving (12 January 1909 – 22 January 1987) was a Swedish journalist and writer, a pacifist and feminist, often using the pseudonym Bang. She wrote for, among others, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter and the magazines Idun and Vecko-Journalen. She reported from various scenes during the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Cold War. Alving was born in Uppsala, as the youngest daughter of the author and columnist Fanny Alving and Hjalmar Alving, who was a lecturer in Scandinavian languages and Nordic literature. At the age of eleven she moved with her family to Stockholm, where Hjalmar Alving had been appointed headmaster at Whitlockska samskolan. Alving was enrolled at Whitlockska, and graduated in 1928.

Alving never married, but she had a daughter, Maud Fanny Alving, with illustrator and artist Birger Lundquist in 1938. Maud, better known as Ruffa Alving-Olin, was also a journalist, who collected and published letters, notes and other materials after Barbro Alving's death. Alving formed a household with Anna Laura Sjöcrona when her daughter was one year old, and the three constituted "a different kind of family", in Ruffa's words. Alving and Sjöcrona lived together for over 40 years, until Alving's death.