Olga Herlin

Olga Gustava Herlin (3 February 1875 in Stockholm – 24 April 1965 in Stockholm) was Sweden's first female engraver. She introduced new working methods and served for nearly 50 years at the Swedish Kingdom's general mapping service and its predecessors. She was the first woman to be elected to the Swedish Cartographic Society in 1920.

Biography Olga Herlin was the oldest of seven children born to the map engraver and engineer Claes Ewald Reinhold Herlin and his wife Claudia, née Sjöberg.

As a fourteen-year-old, she accompanied her father to his office on Sundays at the topographic department of the General Staff, where he taught her terrain theory and topography as well as how to represent different terrain contours in her maps. Then he demonstrated map production using copper engraving.

Beginning in June 1889, Herlin carried out engraving work at home. The first year she engraved marsh and forest on the Kebnekaise and Kaalasluspa map sheets. When she finished school as a fifteen-year-old, she was able to start working more regularly and gradually also performed proofreading and retouching. By 1902, she had engraved all or parts of about 50 maps.

Herlin never started a family. She died on 24 April 1965, in Stockholm and is buried in the family grave at the Norra cemetery in Solna.