Dagny Carlsson, believed to be the world’s oldest blogger, who documented her life in Sweden and spread the message that age should not limit happiness, has died. She was 109.
Her friend Elena Strom announced the death. She did not say where or when Ms. Carlsson died.
Ms. Carlsson started her blog under the name Bojan in 2011, after taking a computer course when she was 99.
“I’m a proof of the truth in the proverb that you’re never too old to learn,” she wrote in one blog post. “That is, if you really want to.”
Ms. Carlsson had thousands of followers and regularly appeared on Swedish television and radio. In March 2018 she met with King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and his wife, Queen Silvia, at the royal palace in Stockholm.
On her blog, Ms. Carlsson described herself as “a tough aunt who likes most things,” who has a sense of humor and who is “a little straightforward.” Each post was accompanied with an image — sometimes of Ms. Carlsson herself, sometimes of flowers or nature.
In her frank, approachable prose, Ms. Carlsson wrote about her gymnastics routines, her thoughts on friendship and her loneliness during the coronavirus pandemic. Ms. Strom was a frequent guest contributor to the blog.
“I get self-fulfillment when I write,” Ms. Carlsson told Al Jazeera in a 2017 documentary. “Better late than never.”
Dagny Valborg Eriksson was born on May 8, 1912, in Kristianstad, in southern Sweden, the eldest of five siblings.
After eight years at school, she took a job at a shirt factory and worked there for 20 years. She later worked at a corset factory north of Stockholm, where she met her second husband when she was 39. She later worked at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency.
Ms. Carlsson became passionate about cancer research after her husband died of rectal cancer in his 80s. CancerFonden, a nonprofit in Sweden, wrote on its website that she had left her apartment and her collection of paintings to the organization in her will.
Information about survivors was not immediately available.
Ms. Carlsson continued to live independently until last year, when she moved into a retirement home. In her last blog post, on Jan. 28, she wrote that she was looking forward “to celebrating my 110th birthday in May, preferably with a small party.”
Dozens of commenters responded to that post, thanking Ms. Carlsson for her inspiration. “You have really proven,” one fan wrote in tribute, “that it is never too late to start living and thinking positively.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
