A Poet Left 200 Verses Carved into Forest Trees — They Took 80 Years to Find

What began as a routine timber survey in Sweden's Blekinge province has turned into one of the most extraordinary literary discoveries of the decade. Forestry workers mapping old-growth birch stands near the village of Olofström noticed strange, regular patterns in the bark of several trees. Upon closer inspection, they realized the marks were letters — deeply carved verses, warped and stretched by eighty years of natural growth.

Experts from Lund University have now confirmed that the carvings are the work of Harry Martinson, the Swedish poet and novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974. Martinson, who spent his impoverished childhood as a parish ward wandering the countryside of Blekinge, is believed to have carved the poems during the early 1940s, when he frequently returned to the forests of his youth.

"The trees literally grew around his words," said Dr. Astrid Lindqvist, the dendrochronologist leading the reconstruction effort. "Some letters have stretched to three times their original size. Others have been swallowed entirely as the bark healed over. It's like reading poetry through a funhouse mirror."

So far, her team has identified 214 individual poems across 73 trees spread over a four-kilometer stretch of forest. The verses appear to form a single, interconnected cycle about orphanhood, nature, and belonging — themes that defined Martinson's celebrated works like "Aniara" and "Flowering Nettle." However, these forest poems are rawer and more personal than anything in his published canon.

The discovery has reignited scholarly interest in Martinson's complicated legacy. Despite his Nobel Prize, Martinson faced vicious criticism from Swedish cultural commentators who considered the award politically motivated. The attacks contributed to a deep depression, and he died in 1978. For decades, his reputation remained overshadowed by controversy.

"These poems change everything," said Professor Erik Sandström of Uppsala University's Department of Literature. "They show a Martinson we never knew — writing not for publishers or prizes, but for the trees themselves. He never intended anyone to read them. The forest was his private journal."

The Swedish Academy of Letters has announced emergency funding to document every surviving tree before the carvings deteriorate further. A team of 3D scanners and bark-imaging specialists is already on site. Preliminary transcriptions of 40 poems are expected to be published this autumn by Bonniers, Martinson's original Swedish publisher.

Perhaps most poignantly, several trees bearing his verses have been marked for commercial logging in upcoming harvests. The Blekinge County Council has now declared the entire grove a protected cultural heritage site — ensuring that Martinson's living library will continue to grow, word by distorted word, for centuries to come.