Gottfrid Billing

Billing was born in Önnestad, near Kristianstad on April 29, 1841, the son of a landlord Magnus Billing and Hedvig Charlotta Collin. In the early 1860s Billing enrolled as a theology student at Lund University. Billing represented a very conservative political view that has sometimes been called Oscarian after King Oscar II. In 1881 he became professor of practical theology at Lund University

In 1884, he was appointed Bishop of Västerås and was consecrated on September 7, 1884 by Archbishop Anton Niklas Sundberg. In Västerås, he deepened his contacts with the royal family. He also represented Västerås in the parliament's first chamber on the conservative bench. In 1900, after the death of Anton Niklas Sundberg, Billing was offered the Archbishopric of Uppsala however he refused. Nonetheless, he accepted to take over Sundberg's place in the Swedish Academy, a post he kept until his death in 1925. In 1898 he was appointed Bishop of Lund.

Billing was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1908 and the Royal Society of the Humanities at Lund in 1919. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in Lund on September 28, 1918 and received the Royal Order of the Seraphim on June 6, 1921.

In 1868 he married Frida Bring, daughter of Bishop Ebbe Gustaf Bring of Linköping, and Ulla Ehrenborg, sister of the writer Betty Ehrenborg. He was the father of Einar Billing who became Bishop of Västerås, and cousin of Swedish painter Tore Billing. Billing died on January 14, 1925 and was buried at Norra kyrkogården in Lund.[1]