Gullan Bornemark

Gullan Bornemark was born Elin Gunhild Bohlin on 28 November 1927 in Härnösand, in what is now Västernorrland County, Sweden. Her father, Helge Bohlin (1892 to 1973), was a lecturer and later headmaster of the higher technical school in Härnösand, and her mother was Eva Elsner (1897 to 1985). She was born with absolute pitch and her parents encouraged her with music lessons from childhood. The family's Grotrian-Steinweg piano from Härnösand stayed with her for the rest of her life. As a young girl she attended Alice Tegnér's last public concert in Härnösand, an experience she remembered as formative. In 1947 the family moved to Malmö, where her father became headmaster of the higher technical school.

She trained as a music teacher at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (Musikhögskolan i Stockholm), graduating in 1951 as a qualified music director. In 1977, already a nationally known songwriter, she completed a church musician's degree at the Malmö Academy of Music, drawn by the organ and by her lifelong love of Bach. In 2023 Lund University's Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts made her an honorary doctor.

In 1952 she resigned from a permanent teaching post to found Musikleken Blåklockan, a music play school for children in Malmö, which she ran with her husband Valter until 2007, when she was 80. Writing songs that suited her teaching, she published her first songbook, Gubben i lådan, in 1962, followed by Hallå hallå (1964), Musseri-Mussera and Herr Gårman (1967) and many more, mostly illustrated by Ylva Källström-Eklund. Recordings followed, made live with her family, and the 1967 LP Sudda sudda och Tvätta bilen went gold in 1968. In the 1960s she presented children's television series including Tutirutan and Den glada butiken, made many programmes for Sveriges Radio and wrote traffic safety lyrics for Anita och Televinken. From 1966 she made extensive school tours for Rikskonserter and later on her own, also touring Norway in the 1970s and 1980s. Later she wrote church music, including hymn 799 "Mista en vän", and collaborated with her son Dan Bornemark on albums such as Fruktsallad (1995), Klang i bygget (1997), Jorden runt (1999) and Sjung för Guds skull (2000). Her 2018 album Mina egna favoriter won the Grammis for children's album of the year.

In 1950 she married the musician Valter Bornemark, who worked alongside her at Blåklockan and conducted the orchestra on her early recordings; he died in 2017. They had four children: Eva (born 1951), Sven (born 1957), Jörgen (1959 to 1997) and Dan (born 1965), all of whom took part in and inspired her musical work. She lived in Malmö for most of her adult life.

Bornemark believed in using music as a teaching tool and in taking children seriously. She planned lessons in advance but said it was always the children who decided how they turned out, and that many of her song ideas came from them. She described her songs as having different functions, some for getting a group to play together, some for opening a concert. She wrote and arranged hymns and church songs, and her eldest daughter Eva told the newspaper Dagen that her mother had long been longing for heaven.

Bornemark is credited with modernising the Swedish children's song, following in the line of Alice Tegnér. Songs such as "Sudda sudda", "Är du vaken Lars?" and "Min ponny" remain standard repertoire in Swedish preschools and homes. Sveriges Radio critic Lisa Wall said that she shaped a people with her songs and that she took children seriously, which was something completely new. The Swedish Music Hall of Fame wrote that musical playfulness was the key to her career, while music education was always at its core.

Alice Tegnér Music Prize (2000); SKAP honorary award (2007); City of Malmö culture prize (2008); H.M. The King's Medal, 8th size (2009); Fred Winter memorial fund award (2013); Swedish Music Hall of Fame (2015); Royal Swedish Academy of Music medal for the promotion of the art of music (2016); Music publishers' honorary award (2018); Grammis for children's album of the year for Mina egna favoriter (2019); Children's and youth choir leader of the year (2020); honorary doctorate, Lund University (2023).

She presented children's television in the 1960s, including Tutirutan and Den glada butiken, and made a long series of Småbarnskvartar programmes for Sveriges Radio with her own children and pupils from Blåklockan. She performed a medley of her songs on Allsång på Skansen in 2008, was interviewed on TV4's Nyhetsmorgon, and hosted Sommar i P1 on 12 August 2017.

Gullan Bornemark died on the evening of Wednesday 28 October 2026, aged 98. SVT reported that she passed away peacefully (somnade in); the place and cause of death were not made public. Her son Dan Bornemark said: "It is a huge loss of course" and that she had spontaneously come up with a new song as recently as August. Tributes came from Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who wrote that an icon had left us, and from Magdalena Andersson.