Biographical Note

Erik Ingmar Bergman was born early Sunday morning, July 14, 1918, in Uppsala, Sweden, of parents Erik and Karin Bergman. He had an older brother, Dag (later a career diplomat), born in 1914; his sister, Margareta (who became a successful novelist), was born four years later in 1922. His mother (née Karin Å kerblom) had influenza, and Ingmar was apparently sickly and undernourished in these early months. Throughout his life, Bergman seems to have had a somewhat fragile constitution and a nervous disposition. He recalls being fed gruel at the age of one or two and vomiting over everything – “This is probably my very first memory.”

Bergman's parents were second cousins, though her family was economically better off and part of the upper-class bourgeoisie that came to replace the landed aristocracy. Both families included pastors and churchmen, and the influence of Lutheran religion went especially deep. Erik Bergman's own father died when he was very young, and Erik was raised by his mother, aunt, and grandmother (Ingmar's grandmother, grand aunt, and great grandmother). Karin's mother (Ingmar's maternal grandmother) deeply opposed the marriage, but in spite of this the two were wed in 1912 after Erik was ordained and given a chaplaincy in a small rural mining community. Before Ingmar was born, Erik accepted the position of curate, or assistant pastor, at the prestigious Hedvig Eleonora Church in Stockholm, and the family moved to the city.