Eric Axel Hermelin, Baron Hermelin (June 22, 1860 – November 8, 1944) was a Swedish author and prolific translator of Persian works of literature. Biography Hermelin was born into an aristocratic family in Svanshals, Ödeshög Municipality, Östergötland County and had a traditional education, at the end of which he spent a couple of years at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Uppsala, which he left without taking a degree. Already at this stage he seems to have developed a taste for alcohol, which later became an addiction, with drastic lifelong consequences. After an unsuccessful attempt at farming on a family estate, he began a wandering life abroad. In 1883 he went to the United States and eked out a living as a teacher, a carpenter, and a soldier, before returning to Europe in 1885. In 1886, he traveled to England and joined the British army as a soldier in the Middlesex Regiment (under the name of Thomas Edward Hallan). He went with his regiment to India in the following year. However, his army career in India proved a failure. He was much troubled by disease, and by then his drinking had developed into full-blown alcoholism, possibly in combination with the use of narcotic drugs. Nevertheless, he spent time on language studies, obviously in preparation for one of the language examinations that formed part of the British administrative system in India. He states that he learnt Hindustani (i.e., Urdu) and also started to learn Persian. There is, however, no record showing that he had passed any examination in these subjects. In later years he occasionally referred to his Indian "Monshi," and it is also likely that he had his first encounters with Sufism at that time. In April 1893 he was finally discharged from the army "with ignominy," i.e., for disciplinary reasons. After that he became an even more intrepid traveler, going to England and America (including Jamaica) and then back to Sweden, where he again tried his hand at farming. His aristocratic family found his alcoholism and disorderly life unacceptable and had him declared officially unfit to manage his life, and in 1897 he was placed under the care of a guardian. Regardless of this injunction, he went abroad again and lived in Australia and, possibly, America, earning a living through sundry occupations. He turned up in London in the autumn of 1907 and returned to Sweden in early