Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam was a Swedish poet, novelist and laureate of the 1916 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1912. His poems and prose work are filled with a great joy of life, sometimes imbued with a love of Swedish history and scenery, particularly its physical aspects.

The 1916 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Swedish poet and prose writer Verner von Heidenstam (1859–1940) "in recognition of his significance as the leading representative of a new era in our literature." Heidenstam was the second Swedish Nobel laureate in Literature after Selma Lagerlöf in 1909.