[1] His poetry combines formal virtuosity with a sympathy for the ordinary, the neglected and the down-trodden, sometimes written in his own regional dialect.

Fröding wrote openly about his personal problems with alcohol and women and had to face a trial for obscenity.

During the first half of the 1890s he spent a couple of years at the Suttestad institution in Lillehammer, Norway, where he finished his work on his third book of poetry Stänk och flikar, which was published in 1896.

But as the year neared Christmas, his sister Cecilia made the difficult decision to make him stay at a hospital in Uppsala.

A play by Swedish playwright Gottfrid Grafström, called Sjung vackert om kärlek, about Fröding's time at the mental institution in Uppsala was first performed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1973[2] and has had periodic revivals since.