[1] He was ordained to the Swedish State Church in Uppsala in 1912 and served as a priest in Valbo as of 1913.

In this capacity, he served as a royal chaplain to the court of King Gustav V of Sweden.

Ingmar Bergman later consulted it to write the semi-biographical script about his parents' complex courtship in The Best Intentions (1991),[2] a story that includes the unhappy early years of their marriage up to the point where the mother is pregnant with her second son, effectively Ingmar himself.

[3][4] He was further portrayed in cinema with Sunday's Children, directed by Daniel Bergman and released in 1992.

Whereas Ingmar's recollections of Erik Bergman are damning in Fanny and Alexander, his study of his father is "far more forgiving" in The Best Intentions and Sunday's Children.