Schildt is perhaps best known for his travelogues with the sailboat Daphne. He made the decision to become a Mediterranean sailor after being seriously injured during the Finnish Winter War and forced to spend a year and a half in hospital. "Then I thought that if I can do this, I will realize my dream: I will get a boat and sail around all corners of the Mediterranean," he later said. The architect Alvar Aalto was one of the guests at Daphne and their lifelong friendship was the basis for Schildt's masterpiece, the three-part biography of Aalto.[1]
Schildt went to school at the Nya Svenska Läroverket [sv]inHelsinki. He received his doctorate in philosophy with a dissertation on the painter Cezanne and also studied languages at the Sorbonne in Paris. He moved to Sweden in 1945 and was an employee of Svenska Dagbladet 1951–1990. He was offered an art professorship at the University of Helsinki, but chose to continue as a writer.[1]
Göran Schildt lived in Villa SkeppetinEkenäs in Finland and in Villa Kolkis on the island of Leros in Greece. He was married from 1941–1964 to the glass artist Mona Morales-Schildt, and from 1966 to Christine Schildt, born Werthmann (1940–).[1]
