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Heidenstam was born in 1859, of a prosperous family.

On his father's side he was of German descent, on his mother's he came of the old Swedish nobility.

The family estate was situated near Vadstena on Lake Vattern in south central Sweden.

It is a lonely, rather desolate region, but full of legendary and historic associations.

As a boy in a local school he was shy and solitary, absorbed in his fondness for nature and his visions of Sweden's ancient glory.

He liked to fancy himself as a chieftain and to dress for the part.

Being somewhat delicate in health, at the age of sixteen he was sent to Southern Europe, for which he at once developed a passion, so that he spent nearly all of the following ten years abroad, at first in Italy, then in Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Palestine.

In one of his summers at home he married, to the great disapproval of his father, who objected because of his extreme youth.