Oscar Ahnfelt

Oscar Ahnfelt was a Swedish guitarist, composer, publisher, and itinerant revival preacher. Born at Gullarp in Skåne, the son of a clergyman, he studied theology and worked as a tutor before turning toward music. After moving to Stockholm in 1840, he studied and taught guitar, opened his own guitar school, and performed in cultivated musical circles. He commissioned a distinctive ten-string guitar with additional bass strings, an instrument well suited to his later work as a traveling singer.

Ahnfelt joined the evangelical revival centered on Carl Olof Rosenius and from 1845 spent decades traveling as a lay preacher and musician. Because Swedish law restricted religious meetings outside the established church until 1856, his early gatherings sometimes drew official suspicion and legal scrutiny. He nevertheless reached wide audiences with sermons and guitar-accompanied spiritual songs.

Between 1850 and 1877 Ahnfelt issued twelve parts of Andeliga sånger, combining his own tunes with works by other composers. Jenny Lind helped finance early publication. Many texts came from Rosenius and Lina Sandell, whose words Ahnfelt helped carry through Scandinavian revival networks. His tune BLOTT EN DAG appeared with Sandell's text in the tenth part in 1872 and became the standard melody for the hymn.