Lars Herman Folke Gyllenhaal (born July 9, 1968) is a Swedish author, mainly writing on military history and especially on Swedes in 20th century wars. He is the only child of former press counselor to the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Herman Gyllenhaal and nurse Monica Gyllenhaal, née Wennerholm. He is married to Ann-Sofie Gyllenhaal, née Svensson. They have one son and one daughter. He is a member of the Gyllenhaal family of Swedish nobility. He lives with his family in Piteå in North Sweden. He was awarded the honor "Citizen of the Year" of Piteå in 2011 for his research in military history.
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Gyllenhaal studied French at the University of Savoy in France, and Russian at a language institute in Moscow, USSR.
Gyllenhaal began writing as a freelance journalist. From 1992 to 1994 he was employed by local government authorities in the Russian county of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula.
He returned to Sweden in 1994 and was recruited by Centek,[1] an industry and management development foundation. He was employed as a project manager at Centek until he left on his own accord in 2000 to become a full-time author specializing in military history and the history of the Barents Region.
In 2005 his book Swedes at War 1914-1945 (co-written with Lennart Westberg) was nominated "Swedish History Book of the Year".
Gyllenhaal has done research work for several documentary films on WWII such as "Krieg in der Arktis" (War in the Arctic) by Jens Becker and Ralf Daubitz and the prize-winning "Blood Road" and "Under a Rusty Star", both by Gunilla Bresky.
Since 2005 he has been an elected member of the Swedish Military History Commission. He has been engaged in the development of the Swedish Defense Museum in Boden.