Hedvig Posse

Hedvig Posse (8 August 1861 – 22 December 1927) was a Swedish missionary in South Africa, linguist and hymn writer.^[1] She was one of the "most prominent translators and recorders of Zulu music and oral history", who translated a number of stories, fairy tales and poetry from Zulu to Swedish.^[2] She also translated Swedish hymns into Zulu, with the "aim of replacing traditional songs with Christian texts".^[3]

Born on 8 August 1861 in Stockholm, Sweden, Hedvig Posse was the daughter of the Swedish author Betty Ehrenborg-Posse and her husband Baron Johan August Posse, who was a lawyer and parliamentarian.^[3] She did not receive any formal education, but was taught privately by a tutor at her home. In 1887, she applied to Svenska Kyrkans Missions (SKM), expressing her interest to be a missionary in South Africa. Between 1887 and 1897, she worked at Oscarberg's mission station, located at Rorke's Drift, in the northern part of Natal province (now called KwaZulu-Natal). Her assignments included teaching Zulus in schools.^[1]

Her good economic standing helped her to take independent decisions in terms of initiating different activities including the building of a health centre, called the Bethany Mission Hospital, at Dundee Coalfields, a coal-mining town in Natal.^[4] Her involvement in healthcare was considered a pioneering work of missionaries at that time, and later became part of SKM.^[1] She was trained at the Huguenot Seminarium in Wellington, South Africa (now part of Huguenot College), a specialized training institute for female missionaries. She briefly served at the North American mission station of Inanda.^[3]

During her service as a missionary, she documented and translated Zulu songs, and engaged in watercolour painting, photography and building houses for the locals.^[1][5]

She was 66 years old when she died in Uppsala on 22 December 1927.^[3]