"Purity in beauty": Prose poetry writer Albert Viksten in new light.Karlstad University, social science and liberal artsLevel: Bachelor thesisAuthor: Willy KlaesonSupervisor: Johan GardforsExaminer: Alfred Sjödin"Purity in beauty". That was the ideal state of nature for author Albert Viksten, and something he advocated during a fifty-year career as a writer of novels, short stories, poems and fact-based texts. He was one of Sweden's most prolific writers and agitators, relentlessly criticizing the industrial exploitation and destruction of the natural habitat he tried to preserve during an era when the working class awakened to the social injustices in society. Albert Viksten was one of the proletarian autodidacts that made an impact on the writing scene, foremost during the 1930's, even though he had made his debute earlier. In fact, he was influential during several decades. The purpose of this text is to study Albert Viksten in an ecocritical light, which hasn't been done before, and to lift him from the obscurity of time by showing the importance and relevance of his books in this day and age. Criticism of western civilization as exploiter and threat to nature is a recurring theme in Viksten's books. I find Viksten - in his books - taking an ecocentric stance: humans, animals and nature are of equal importance. His message is doubtless that forests, lakes and landscapes must be conserved, otherwise humans and animals will not have a habitat to exist within. It is humans who are the gate-keepers and preservers of nature and thus have the sole responsibility to save the environment, but Viksten rather finds man to be a "chemical poision-blender", who in self-destructing fashion does his utmost to wreck his own environment. Albert Viksten has been accused of simplifying his fictional women's characters by dividing them into two categories: madonnas and whores. I will discuss this perspective and point out that Viksten's women are more complex than that. Key words: nature, environmentalism, ecocentrism, criticism of civilization, female image.