Danish poet and novelist. As a novelist, Aakjaer was intensely concerned with social misery and the need for reform. Vredens børn (The Children of Wrath, 1904) describes the oppressed existence life by servants on peasant farms. He is best known, however, for his lyric poetry, in which he celebrates the courage of the peasants and the beauties of his native Jutland. A merry simplicity characterizes the poetry of such collections as Fri felt (1906), Rugens sange (1906: tr Songs of the Heath, 1962), and Den Sommer of den Eng (1910).