Dag Hammarskjöld is often described as a twentieth century Renaissance man. He mastered English, French, and German and could converse freely about music, literature, poetry, art and culture as well as philosophy and theology.
Even though the demands of his post were great, he gladly served as a member of the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the Nobel Prize for Literature. He also found time to translate work of philosophers and poets such as Saint-John Perse, photograph Mount Everest for National Geographic, engage in the redesign of the UN meditation room and chronicle his hikes in the Swedish mountains as the president of the Swedish Alpinist Club.