The 1931 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded for the poetry of Erik Axel Karlfeldt. Karlfeldt, who had been the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, had died a few months before the prize was awarded. Still, a Nobel Prize medal was made. Since 1974, Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously.
The medal was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by Erik Axel Karlfeldt's family in 2000.
