Elna Hansson

Elna Hansson (10-08-1814 – 21-01-1891), was a Swedish cunning woman and feldsher. As a practitioner of folk medicine, she was the first woman feldsher in Sweden.

Life

Elna was the daughter of the cunning woman Marna Nilsdotter of Lund and was the fifth generation of cunning women Elna became the mother of the cunning woman Johanna Maria Andersson, and the grandmother of Hedda Andersson.

Elna settled in Malmö after her marriage to farm labourer Hans Månsson Benedictsson described Hansson’s waiting room in her story, The Big Book.

In 1870, women were officially allowed to study medicine in Sweden. Elna Hansson and her daughter consequently decided that their granddaughter and daughter Hedda Andersson, the 7th-generation of a family of cunning women, should study medicine openly at the university and be given a medical license, to avoid the history of quackery charges which had affected their family: Hedda Andersson became the second formally-trained women physician in Sweden.