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.

[3] In 1903, Palmgren had contacted Carl Snoilsky, head librarian at the Royal Library (Kungliga biblioteket), but her request for employment was not granted.

[7] When Palmgren returned to Sweden at the end of December, she immediately started giving lectures and courses to disseminate what she had learned during her study trip.

She wrote a very brief official travelogue, which she then expanded considerably in her detailed report Bibliotek och folkuppfostran – anteckningar från en studieresa i Amerikas Förenta Stater ('Library and Public Education – Notes from a Study Tour in the United States of America').

She pointed out the differences from Swedish libraries, which were usually supported by fees from patrons or voluntary donations from better-off members of society.

American libraries – both academic and public – catered to all walks of life and all ages; they were thus intended for all members of society without distinction.

This was a popular version of her travel report "Bibliotek och folkuppfostran" ('Libraries and Public Education'), and it was aimed at politicians and other decision-makers, association members, teachers and others who needed to be convinced of the benefits of books and libraries.

Her book Bibliotek och folkuppfostran was translated into Finnish and Danish and helped to stimulate the establishment of modern public libraries in the other Nordic countries.

In February 1910 she published another publication, Om folkuppfostran 'On Popular Education',[10] in which she described library conditions in Germany after a short study trip to Dortmund in October of the previous year.

[1][9] On 1 April of the same year, she took her seat on the city council, and on 20 June she gave a highly publicized and discussed speech on the "library issue".

She attended the board meeting of the Stockholm Children's and Youth Library Association on 27 April 1911, three days before her wedding, after which she moved with her husband Jon Julius Munch-Petersen [da; sv] (1873–1939) to Copenhagen.

During the Conservative government of Prime Minister Arvid Lindman, she was asked to write a report proposing a new policy on libraries based on her international expertise and on the idea of popular enlightenment.

On 28 September 1911, she submitted her library report "Förslag angående de åtgärder som från statens sida bör vidtagas för främjande af det allmänna biblioteksväsendet i Sverige" 'Proposals concerning the measures that should be taken by the state to promote the public library system in Sweden' to the Ecclesiastical Department Minister, Elof Lindström [sv].

On 12 April 1912, the new Minister of Education, Fridtjuv Berg, presented a bill that in principle followed Palmgren Munch-Petersen's proposals for a library inquiry.

[12] Palmgren was almost 34 when she married Jon Julius Munch-Petersen in 1911, a hydraulic engineer and lecturer at the Technical University of Denmark, whom she had met in the early 1900s during their family's summer stays at Ramlösa mineral spa, south of Helsingborg.

I think that he is related in some way to the violin-playing Värmlanders, of whom you have given us such beautiful pictures, a kind of modern Liljekrona, if you like.They became engaged later in the autumn in Copenhagen and celebrated their wedding in Stockholm on 30 April 1911.

In July 1913 their second son was born, named after Jon's brother Harald, who had died in a mountaineering accident in the French Alps in 1904.

Palmgren Munch-Petersen made it her task in her new home country to work for the Swedish language, literature and culture, in addition to her growing family.

In September 1938, Valfrid and Jon Julius received the news that their son Gustaf Munch-Petersen had been reported missing in action in Spain, where he had participated on the government's side against Franco and the Falangists.

Palmgren Munch-Petersen remained in Denmark and spoke on the radio about Swedish literature for attacking the occupying power, and was therefore threatened.

They were expecting their second child in December 1937, when Gustaf suddenly left as early as November to join the International Brigades fighting Franco's fascists in Spain.

Her son Finn Munch-Petersen graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science and then participated in international relief work after World War II.

In a letter to Lisbeth Wesche, she writes that she had no faith left and felt she had wasted 28 years of her life on one pointless useless thing – the large dictionary.

Together with Ellen Hartmann, she published three books entitled Svensk – texthäfte till radioundervisning ('Swedish – booklet for radio education') with excerpts from the texts of Swedish authors.

The two also worked together on Swedish school radio, publishing the textbooks Svensk läsebok för skolradio and Dansk litteratur.

Towards the end of the war, the German occupying forces were so annoyed by her radio lectures that the Danish Freedom Council ordered her to go into hiding.

So in September 1944, her good friend and doctor Harald Abrahamsen admitted her as Mrs Poulsen to Bispebjerg Hospital, where she was kept in hiding for eight months.

The Danish Women's Society, in which Palmgren Munch-Petersen was active, was also a driving force in these efforts to increase cooperation between the Nordic countries.

She handed over her archive in batches, gave lectures to the staff about her years there, and also to the Association for Book Crafts [sv] in February 1959.

And especially so on her 70th birthday, when she received a large gift of money for her trip as a representative of the University of Copenhagen to the ALA Library Conference in San Francisco in 1947.