Alfhild Valfrid Matilda Palmgren, as married Palmgren Munch-Petersen (3 June 1877 – 6 December 1967), was a Swedish educator, linguist, and politician. She reformed Swedish library policy and introduced the public library system in Sweden and Denmark.
Biography
Upbringing and education
Valfrid Palmgren was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on 3 June 1877, the second daughter of Karl Edvard A. H. Palmgren (1840–1910) and Ida Teresia Pohl (1853–1937), and was known as "Vava" at home. Her siblings were elder sister Signe Maria Elisabet (born 1875), Sigrid Hildegun Anna (1882–1883) and Gustaf (born 1884). She would have had another brother, but he had died by the time of her birth in 1886. Growing up, Valfrid and her sister Signe were treated as equal to all other children – regardless of gender – in accordance with their parents' educational ideas.
In 1882, Valfrid and Signe were enrolled in their father's school, Palmgrenska samskolan, which was the first school in Europe to offer co-education up to graduation, where they attended together until the twelfth year. Their father said morning prayers and taught Christianity, history and geography. Their aunt Ida taught writing and handicrafts (sloyd). Their mother was assistant headmistress and taught Swedish. The schoolchildren were also taught foreign languages – German, English and French – based on the modern method of starting from the spoken language. In 1895 Palmgren passed her oral and written examinations, with good grades in languages in particular. She was herself active there as a teacher from 1896 to 1907.
She spent summers with her family at Toivo on Norra Lagnö (in the present-day municipality of Värmdö), and later at Ramlösa mineral spa when her father's health began to fail. Palmgren and her siblings also had the opportunity to make short and long educational trips in Europe: in 1893 she spent two months in Germany, and the following year in France and England for three and a half months with her sister. Such trips were made every year and year-and-a-half thereafter.
Palmgren enrolled at Uppsala University in the spring semester of 1896, where she chose to study language. Parallel to her studies, she worked as a teacher at the Palmgrenska samskolan, teaching German, mathematics and geography, and later also French. In 1900, a government grant of SEK 750 enabled her to travel to England and study at Oxford for six months.
In 1901 Palmgren graduated from Uppsala University with a bachelor's degree in German, English, Romance languages, practical philosophy, mathematics and theoretical philosophy. Two years later she received her licentiate of philosophy in Romance languages and theoretical philosophy, followed by her doctorate in 1905. Her doctoral thesis was on the use of the infinitive by the French Calvinist and Baroque poet Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné () and was dedicated to her parents. In 1905, Palmgren was the third woman in Sweden to receive a doctorate in Romance languages, after Anna Ahlström in 1899 and Gerda Östberg in 1903.
Royal Library
In 1903, Palmgren had contacted Carl Snoilsky, head librarian at the Royal Library (), but her request for employment was not granted. He advised her to take her doctorate first. Before she completed her doctoral thesis in May 1905, Palmgren approached Snoilsky's successor, head librarian ; he was significantly more positive and offered her a probationary position from September of that year as the first female librarian. The probationary position was converted on 24 November 1905 into a position as an additional regular librarian assistant in the printing department.
Palmgren remained there until February 1911, when she resigned at her own request to marry and move to Copenhagen.
KB's cafeteria, Kafé Valfrid, is named after her.
Study trip to the United States
In her work at the Royal Library, Palmgren often had to inform visitors hungry for knowledge that most of the library's books were not for home loan and refer them to public or workers' libraries. But she soon realized (after visiting the public libraries) that they did not have the literature she was looking for and were not intended for people who wanted to study. She then realized that she needed to travel to the pioneering United States. She applied for and was awarded a travel grant from the (, at that time responsible for education) to "study library science with special reference to seminary, school and public libraries".