Dagny Carlsson, believed to be the world’s oldest blogger, who documented her life in Sweden and spread the word that age should not limit happiness, has passed away. She was 109.
Her friend Elena Strom announced the death. She didn’t say where or when Mrs. Carlsson died.
Ms. Carlsson started her blog under the name Bojan in 2011, after taking a computer course at the age of 99.
“I am proof of the truth in the saying that you are never too old to learn,” she wrote in a blog post. “That is, if you really want to.”
Mrs. Carlsson had thousands of followers and appeared regularly on Swedish television and radio. In March 2018, she met King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and his wife, Queen Silvia, at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.
On her blog, Ms. Carlsson described herself as “a tough aunt who likes most things”, who has a sense of humor and who is “a little straight forward”. Each post was accompanied by an image—sometimes of Mrs. Carlsson herself, sometimes of flowers or nature.
In her candid, approachable prose, Ms. Carlsson wrote about her gym routines, her thoughts on friendship and her loneliness during the coronavirus pandemic. Ms. Strom was a frequent guest contributor to the blog.
“I get self-fulfillment when I write,” Ms. Carlsson told Al Jazeera in a 2017 documentary. “Better late than never.”
Dagny Valborg Eriksson was born on May 8, 1912 in Kristianstad, southern Sweden, the eldest of five siblings.
After eight years in school, she took a job at a shirt factory and worked there for twenty years. She later worked in a corset factory north of Stockholm, where she met her second husband when she was 39. Later she worked at the Swedish Social Insurance Company.
Ms. Carlsson became passionate about cancer research after her husband died of rectal cancer in his 80s. CancerFonden, a non-profit organization in Sweden, wrote on its website that she had left her apartment and her collection of paintings to the organization in her will.
Information on survivors was not immediately available.
Mrs. Carlsson continued to live independently until last year, when she moved into a retirement home. In her last blog post, on January 28, she wrote that she was looking forward “to celebrating my 110th birthday in May, preferably with a small party”.
Dozens of commenters responded to that post, thanking Ms. Carlsson for her inspiration. “You really proved,” wrote one fan in tribute, “that it’s never too late to live and think positively.”
The Associated Press reporting contributed.
