Martina Bergman-Österberg

Martina Sofia Helena Bergman-Österberg (née Bergman; 7 October 1849 – 29 July 1915) was a Swedish-born physical education instructor and women's suffrage advocate who spent most of her working life in Britain. After studying gymnastics in Stockholm she moved to London, where she founded the first physical education instructor's college in England, to which she admitted women only. Bergman-Österberg pioneered teaching physical education as a full subject within the English school curriculum, with Swedish-style gymnastics (as opposed to the German model) at its core. She also advocated the wearing of gymslips by women playing sports, and played a pivotal role in the early development of netball. Bergman-Österberg was an advocate of women's emancipation, directly encouraging women to be active in sport and education, and also donating money to women's emancipation organisations in her native Sweden. Several of her students founded the Ling Association, which later became the Physical Education Association of the United Kingdom.

Martina Bergman-Österberg was born on 7 October 1849 in Hammarlunda, a farming community in Malmöhus County (now part of Skåne County), Sweden. Her parents were Karl Bergman, a farmer, and Betty Lundgren; she also had two brothers who both died at a young age, and three sisters who eventually settled abroad. After receiving a private education at home, she was employed as a governess from 1870–73, and from 1874–77 she worked as a Nordisk familjebok librarian, where she met her future husband.

In 1879, she started a two-year course at the Royal Central Gymnastics Institute in Stockholm, studying pedagogical and medical gymnastics. She was trained in the Swedish system of gymnastics devised by Pehr Henrik Ling. Her gymnastics studies also took her to England, France, Germany and Switzerland. She graduated in 1881, and later that year moved to London.

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