Eric Axel Hermelin, Baron Hermelin was a Swedish author and prolific translator of Persian works of literature.
Hermelin was born into an aristocratic family in Svanshals, deshg Municipality, stergtland 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 . 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 fullblown alcoholism, possibly in combination with the use of narc
Source: Wikipedia