1900 John Mackinnon Robertson
Christianity and Mythology

"So far as names of persons and places show, the chief God of Scandinavian paganism was Thor; Odin's supremacy and Balder's prestige being alike apparently late literary developments. Freyr, too, seems to have been the Sun-God alongside of Thor; and, again, Heimdal in the Edda has many of Balder's characteristics;" just as, by the common consent of Holtzmann, Bergmann, and Rydberg, the figure of Harbard in the sagas is identical with that of Loki."

1900
Notes and Studies in Philosophy and Literature,
Vol. 9

Footnotes on pages 191-193:

"An admirable account of various early versions of the myth of the Germanic migration is given by Viktor Rydberg in his Teutonic Mythology, translated from the Swedish by R. B. Anderson, London, 1891."

"Rydberg apparently assumes a migration from Tyrklandia to Asaland for the sake of reconciling the Heimskringla narrative with that of the Prose Edda and giving continuity to the account as a whole."

 "Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology, pp. 65 ff., finds that the popular traditions of the East Goths,West Goths, Langobardians, Gepidae, Burgundians, Herulians, Franks, Saxons, Swabians, and Alamannians "are unanimous in pointing to the North as the Teutonic cradle." Tacitus, the oldest authority of all, confirms this (Gcrmania., ii, iii, xliv)."

1900 Publications of the Folklore Society (Great Britain)
Frederik York Powell, in review, writes:

A review of "The Cult Of Othin :
An Essay in The Ancient Religion of The North."
 By H. M. Chadwick, Fellow of Clare College,
Cambridge. London : Clay. 1899.

It is perhaps in the direction of monographs such as the present that the first series of attacks upon the complicated questions of Northern mythology can best be delivered. Mr. Chadwick has given full and thoughtful consideration to his subject in this handy, neatly printed, but unindexed little book.

Starting with a good general acquaintance with the texts and with what has been written upon them of real value, from Grimm to Petersen and Bugge, he has arrived at the following conclusions : " (i) The cult of Othin was in all probability known in the North at the beginning of the sixth century; there is no reason for supposing that it was then new. (2) The cult does not seem to have been practised by the Swedes in the first halfcentury of the present era. (3) If the adoption of cremation was due to the cult of Othin, the cult can hardly have been introduced into Sweden later than the end of the first century."

…Rydberg has pointed out the parallelism with Swipdaeg (who indeed may be Heremod under another name) as the eponym of the Dagling, or Dayling, clan. The English genealogies (cited also in Flatejar-bóc) gives to Heremód for father Hermon (P) and for grandfather Hraethra, and there need really be no hesitation in acknowledging the identity of the Heremod to whom Woden gave a helm and mailcoat with the Heremod of Beowulf’s Lay, of whom it is written—

 . . hine mihtig god maegenes wynnum eafeflum staple ofer ealle men fort! gefremede—

 an obvious allusion to Woden's signal favours to his son, purged of all heathenism in the true Alfredian manner. Heremód is made to have lived earlier than the other great exile, Sigemund, and this agrees with the priority in the Hyndluliód verse, and seems to point to Herem6d's peculiar connection with Wodenworship and the struggling beginnings of this cult which the Cheruscans were to make so notorious and powerful. We do not know Heremód's clan; he first appears to us at the Daneking's court among the Scioldungs, his own pedigree running up to Sceaf in the O. E. genealogies. The Heath-bard hero Starcad, Storwerc's son, was also Woden's foster-son, and though his hard, tough, old-fashioned ways, contempt for southern civilization, honourable observance of chastity, and giant-like behaviour in general, smack of the old days, he is yet clearly, as Mr. Chadwick shows, a person whose fame can only have added to the glory of the god he served so earnestly, who was ever his patron and protector. Saxo (vi. 187) cites Teutonic knowledge of Starcad's experiences and feats.

 It is to be hoped that Mr. Chadwick will follow this beginning up with monographs on Tew and on Thunder, with a view to getting at fixed points in the developments of religious beliefs and cults in the north of Europe. The connection of Woden and Brage (probably a mere by-name of the Friend of Mim) with song and the amours and other earthly adventures of Woden are worth considering, if only for the curious parallels to other myths they hold out. Since Grimm died the special subject of Teutonic mythology has not been dealt with by a true master-hand and but rarely by a really ingenious mind (such as Rydberg). Bugge has indeed tried one key most skilfully for all it is worth; but the doctrine of infection is like the doctrine of analogy, that is called in when regular phonetic change fails to account for an extraordinary case. There is plenty of room for earnest and observant students of Mr. Chadwick's type. 

  F. York Powell

1900 Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia s.v. "Scandinavian Mythology" by Rasmus B. Anderson

"The most prominent writers on Scandinavian mythology of the nineteenth century are Finn Magnusson, Lexicon Mythologicum (Copenhagen, 1828); Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (4th ed. 1875; an Eng. trans, by Stallybrnss London, 1880); Karl Simrock, Deutsche Mythologie (several editions); Wilhelm Mannhardt, Germanische Mythen (1858); P. A. Munch, Nordmandenes Gudelære i Hedenold (Christiania, 1847); R. Keyser, Nordvuendenes religions forfatning i Hedendommen (Christiania, 1847); N. F. S. Grundtvig, Nordens Mythologi (Copenhagen, 1808-32); N. M. Petersen, Nordisk Mythologi (Copenhagen, 1849); Benjamin Thorpe, Northern Mythology (London, 1851); Rasmus B. Anderson, Norse Mythology (5th ed. Chicago. 1891). Finally, special attention should be called to the elaborate investigations made since 1880 by the Norwegian linguist Sophus Bugge (Studier over de nordiske gude- og helte-sagens Oprindelse, Christiania, 1890) and by the Swedish scholar Viktor Rydberg (Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi (Goteborg, 1886-90). Bugge attempts to show the influence of classical mythology and early Christianity upon Scandinavian myths, while Rydberg, in opposition to Bugge, vindicates the exclusive Teutonic origin, and seeks to establish the harmonious connection between the various myth, as parts of an all-embracing mythological epic. In his conflict with Bugge he is ably supported by the German scholar Müllenhoff (Deutsche Alterthumskunde, vol. v., 1883).  An English translation of Rydberg's work by R. B. Anderson appeared in London in 1889, and bears the title Teutonic Mythology.

 

24 November 1900 Saturday Review of Politcs, Literature, Science and Art, Vol. 90., p. 456.

SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE.

      Swedish literature is keeping pace with the times. Twenty years ago, or twenty-five, there were no novels written, no essays, there was no drama or comedy, and the only short stories were those put together for wretched periodicals on vile paper. There was Viktor Rydberg and his historic novel "The Last Athenian," but then Rydberg was an exception and would have been one anywhere, at any time A scholar, dreamer and poet, living in a world apart (in a commercial city !), preoccupied with religious and philosophical questions; engaged in a bold fight for freedom of thought (sadly needed in Lutheran Sweden), yet the author of "The Teaching of the Bible about Christ "—a beautiful presentment of Christ as the Ideal Man; attracted by all that to his speculative mind suggested deeper issues—Greek thought and art, the pathetic figure of Antinous, the Black Art of the Middle Ages; engaged for years on a translation of Goethe's "Faust"; deeply versed in old Northern lore, and all that recalls it; the creator of a prose style of singular wealth, firmness and beauty; but above all a dreamer of dreams and a lover of little children, the Viktor Rydberg of that day struck many who saw him as fey, bergtageh—as one who had been 'hill-taken' by the Trolls and never been the same afterwards. Later, he was made to come out of his shell somewhat, was given an honorary Ph.D. and made a Professor of the History of Civilisation, and published the remarkable work on Germanic mythology which has made him known in Europe; but he remained a scholar and seeker, rather than a teacher and leader. His influence on Swedish literature was thus great, but not immediate. After the first fierce onslaught on the Lutheran clergy he rather kept aloof ; much to the disappointment of some eager young righters of wrong On the other hand, he was full of individual sympathy and had the poet's gift of imaginative discernment and of a wide range of friendships."

p. 467: "Rydberg went for his inspiration to the perennial sources of the youthful life of language."

1901 Nathan Söderblom
La Vie Future d'Après le Mazdéisme
à la Lumière des Croyances
 Paralléles dans les Autres Religions

Rydberg is mentioned throughout this French work.

 

In a review of this work in the
Publications of the British Folklore Society,
Vol. 52, p. 104, 1901, Alfred Nutt writes:

"Although this work is primarily intended for the student of the history of religion it contains much to interest the folklorist. The author begins by discussing, in a sane and scholarly spirit, primitive beliefs concerning a prolongation or renewal of life after death as the necessary basis of all eschatological systems. It is, however, his view of the relation between the fundamental myths of Zoroastrian eschatology and similar myths of other peoples, Indo-Germanic or Semitic, as also between the completed Avestic system and that of Judaism, which chiefly concerns us. He is for the most part an opponent of the borrowing theory; he is notably adverse to admitting that Judaism owes the conception of a future life, a judgment, and a heaven to the followers of Zoroaster; he holds that these conceptions are the natural outcome of religious development among the Jews. At the same time he combats the hypothesis of Jewish or Judaeo-Hellenic influence on the Avestic literature. I am perfectly content to accept his conclusion, but am all the more surprised to note that when it is a question of comparing Avestic and Eddaic myths M. Soderblom is by no means so convinced an anti-borrower. His language is vague and obscure, but if I understand him right he ascribes the similarity (first pointed out with such convincing mastery of exposition by Rydberg) between the Eddaic myths of the great winter, the destruction of mankind, and the preservation of a couple from whom a new humanity is to spring, and the Avestic myth of the vara of Zima, to direct borrowing on the part of the Eddaic writers, and notably of Snorre. Why ? It is surely simpler to argue, what is indeed evident on other grounds, that Germans and Iranians, both members of the Aryan unity, were in such close contact before the Iranians set forth to occupy the regions to the south-west or south of the Caspian as to bring about exceptionally close kinship of the mythic germs which each race was to develop independently. Avesta and Edda are, as regards certain myths, closer to each other than even Avesta and Veda, or than either of the three to Hellenic mythology. This fact enables us to postulate prehistoric contacts between Germans and Iranians of which we should otherwise be ignorant. To explain it by literary influence within the historic period (i.e. from 500 B.c. to 900 A.d.) seems to me a complete ignoring of the plainest facts of history. For probably two-thirds of this space of time the Germans were almost as much cut off from the Aryans of Iran as from the Aryans of Northern India. If Eddaic mythology is to be treated as a loan (a point on which readers of Folk-Lore know my opinion) let it be a loan from those Aryan peoples with whom the Germans were in historic contact, Celts, Greeks, Romans. I cannot but think M. Soderblom has paid too little attention to the non-eschatological Elysium (as it may be called) found in Greece, in Celtdom, and in Scandinavia. Certain Avestic myths find their natural explanation in a similar conception. And I may be permitted some surprise at his referring for Irish examples not to the Voyage of Bran, where the whole subject is discussed, but to a chance allusion in an article by M. Beauvois on Central American mythology. This book, translated from the Swedish, is, perhaps through the translator's fault, hard reading, but it is well worth the attention of English readers. In spite of the fact that England possesses in Dr. Mills and Mr. West two of the most eminent of living "Zoroastrianists," in spite of the fact that the official heads of the oldest existing organised religion, save Judaism, are British subjects, the civilisation and religion of the Iranian Aryans are too little known in this country. And yet for the solution of many problems connected with the development of Aryan religion and culture, more assistance is perhaps to be derived from the Avestic than from the Vedic literature. "

1901 Winifred Faraday
The Edda: The Divine Mythology of the North - p. 60
Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance & Folklore

"If Rydberg, as seems very probable, is right in identifying Menglad and Svipdag with Freyja and the mortal lover who wins her and whom she afterwards loses, the story would be a parallel to those of Venus and Adonis, Ishtar and Tammuz."

 1901 Studio International - p. 142

 STOCKHOLM.—Miss Tyra Kleen's drawing, The Wandering Jew, belongs to a series of illustrations for a Swedish poem, "Den nya Grottesangen " ("The New Song of Grotte"); that Victor Rydberg published in 1891. The motive of this poem is taken from the ancient Swedish " Grotte" myth that occurs among the Edda sagas. Grotte was a mill, made out of two rocks that a couple of giantesses, Fenja and Menja, threw up on the earth's surface. These giantesses were made prisoners and given to King Frode, who made them turn the mill. Their work first produced gold and happiness, but when the King, in his passion for gold, refused to let them have any rest, they began to grind out fire and death, and the mill went round with such a furious speed that it broke down.

Taking this old story as the basis of his poem, Victor Rydberg represents the modern world as an enormous gold-mill in which we all are slaves. Miss Tyra Kleen's drawing belongs to the introduction, where the author relates how he, during a journey to Germany, went to Hildesheim, where, one quiet moonlight night, he met the Wandering Jew, Ahasuerus, and had a long talk with him at Rolandsbrunnen.

          

1902 Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye.
The Religion of the Teutons
(translated from the Dutch):

 “The comparative school has even at the present some firm adherents. Among these may be reckoned the Swede V. Rydberg, who shows great learning in the combination of various species of mythical narratives and according to whom even the cosmogonic myths are to be classed among the original possessions of the primitive Indo-European period. Such attempts, however—of which this single example will suffice—lie outside of the current modern development.” 

As the 20th century progressed, however, the notion that the cosmogonic myths were Indo-European in origin, as Rydberg did, became the accepted mainstream theory.

  

1902 William Henry Duignan
Notes on Staffordshire Place Names - p. 167 

"'Now it is not unimportant that one of the highways, Waetlinga Straet, is at the same time translated to the sky, and gets to look quite mythical. A plain enough road ... is the Milky Way in the heavens, i. e. it is travelled by the car of some heathen god. . . . Waetlinga is plainly a genitive plural; who the Waetlings were, and how they came to give their name to an earthly and a heavenly street, we do not know. . . . Among other nations also fancy and fable have let the names of earthly and heavenly roads run into one another.' Rydberg (Teutonic Mythology, Anderson's translation, 647) writes: 'The Watlings, after whom the Milky Way is named, are descendants of Vate-Vada, Volund's father.' At 667 he says: ' The name Irung, Iring, as a synonym of Gjuke, is of importance from a mythological point of view. Widukind of Corvei (about the year 950) tells us in ch. 13 of his Saxon Chronicle that the Milky Way is designated by Iring's name even to this day. Just previously he had mentioned a Saxon warrior by this name, whom he believes to have been the cause of this appellation. . . . According to Anglo-Saxon glossaries, the Milky Way is called " Iringes weg." With this we should compare the statements made above, that the Milky Way among the Teutonic population of England was called the way of the Watlings (that is, the descendants of Vate, i. e. Ivalde). Both statements harmonize. In the one it is the descendants of Ivalde in general, in the other it is Slagfin-Iring whose name is connected with the Milky Way. Thus Slagfin, like Volund and Orvandel-Egil, was a starhero.' At 670,  he writes: 'Gjuke and Hjuke are therefore names borne by one and the same person, by Slagfin the Niflung, who is the progenitor of the Gjukungo. They also look like analogous formations from different roots. This also gives us the explanation of the name of the Asgard bridge, Bilrost, " Bil's way." The Milky Way is Bil-Idun's way, just as it is her brother Hjuke's; for we have already seen that the Milky Way is called Irung's way, and that Irung is a synonym of Slagfin-Gjuke. Bil travelled the shining way when she was taken up to Asgard as an asynje. Slagfin travelled it as Balder's and Hoder's foster-brother. If we now add that the same way was travelled by Svipdag when he sought and found Freyja in Asgard, and by ThjasseVolund's daughter, Skade, when she demanded from the gods a ransom for the slaying of her father, then we find here no less than four descendants of Ivalde who have travelled over the Milky Way to Asgard; and as Volund's father among his numerous names also bore that of Vate-Vada, then this explains how the Milky Way came to be called Watling Street in the Old English literature, and thus Vigfusson's opinion that the Asgard bridge is identical with the Milky Way is correct.' Rydberg's Vate- Vada, or Ivalde, and Watla are synonyms, and Slagfin-Irung, Volund or Weland, and Orvandel-Egil were his sons; hence by legend and saga their names were associated with the Milky Way, and, transferred from Norse to Saxon, crossed to England, and took root here both in heavenly and earthly ' ways.'

 
1902 CLARE JERROLD
Journal of the Viking Society for Northern Research, Vol. III Part 1  
“THE BALDER MYTH AND SOME ENGLISH POETS."

Now the only persons in the Lower World in the Eddas who is kind and just, like Gudmund, is the giant Mimi, who guards the well of sacred mead, the water of which turned everything white like silver, and into which the rootlets of the world-tree drop, being silvered over with the mead. Near by the roots of the world-tree Heimdal's horn lay, "hid beneath the hedge-o'ershadowing holy tree" ("Voluspa," 27). Among Mimi's treasures is the peerless sword and a wonderful arm-ring. There is, therefore, a remarkable correspondence with Mimi of the older stories and Gudmund of Saxo's history. When the world is destroyed and a new one arises from the deep, two mortals are seen walking across the plain, they having been preserved in "Treasure-Mimi's Grove." This is told both in the Prose and Poetic Edda. "Vafþruðnismal," in the Poetic Edda, tells us that they were there cared for during the long winter, the Prose Edda that they were there during the conflagration of the world; thus they were there a considerable time. They fed upon morning dew; the world-tree was watered by the three fountains—Kettle-roarer in the north, Mimi's well of wisdom, and Urd's fountain in the south. From its leaves dropped dew into the dales, and as the waters of the wells had sacred qualities, the dew of the world-tree probably possessed them also. We are told in the " Menglad and Swipdag Saga " of a castle in which the Asmegir dwelt, of which the builders were eight elfs or dwarfs, and the gate of which is guarded by the most cunning of the dwarfs, Delling. One of the dwarfs was known to be in particular communication with Mimi, and Delling, the Lord of the Dawn, dwelt in the Lower World. That being so, the castle of the Asmegir which he guarded must be in the Lower World. That is confirmed by the verse in "Balder's Draumar "—
 
Here stands for Balder mead well brewed,
Sweet drink; shield overspread;
And the Asmegir wait impatient.
 
Only three times in the whole mythology are the Asmegir mentioned: once as inhabiting a wonderful castle in the Lower World, guarded by a cunning elf, and once as impatiently waiting the coming of Balder in a place where mead stood ready brewed for him. The third mention of them is in "Olaf Tryggvasson's Saga," where Hakon, in the elaborate similes of Icelandic poetry, is called "the red target "= the sun, or possibly the sun-god Balder, and his men Asmegir. Thus again Balder and the Asmegir are drawn together. Professor Rydberg has a very subtle chapter upon the identity of the Asmegir in his book on Teutonic mythology.
As to the word As can only refer to Asa, while to megir is given the meaning of son, in the way that all men were the sons of Odin. Thus, literally, the Asmegir were the sons of the Asas.
Upon these considerations we find that Balder went to Hel in the Lower World, where the sons of the Gods impatiently awaited him, preparing an offering of mead, and that he was kept as a kind of free prisoner by Hel, who gave him the high seat in her hall. Now it seems to me that the idea that Balder went at his death to the abode of the damned had rise, not in Norse literature, but in the hasty conclusions and loose thinking of the writers upon that literature. The Sagas tell us that Hel was the home of all those who did not die by battle, whether they were good or evil. From the pictures of the Lower World given by different writers, it is natural to believe that the good lived in those fields of bliss, among the flowers that never died. On the Northern mountains of the Lower World stood the gates of Nifelhel, "where died the men from Hel" ("Vafþruðnismal "), and beyond those gates was the region of the damned, the kingdom over which Hel reigned. There she was said to rule, and there is only one description given of her castle, a description which in no respect corresponds with that of the castle in which the Asmegir waited impatiently. Snorri Sturlasson tells us what this Lower World queen and her castle were like. She was tall, and looked like a queen upon one side of her, but when she turned the other she was hideous and revolting, the flesh was dead and blue, the eye sunken, the lips drawn back, showing gruesome teeth. Odin, seeing a certain power in her, sent her to Nifelheim, saying that she was fit to have a kingdom of her own. Her palace was terribly high, with large gates, and Anguish was the name of her hall. The dish was named Famine, Starving was the knife with which the food was cut, the waiters were named Slowness and Delay, at the entrance was a beetling cliff, Care was the bed, and the walls were hung with Burning Misery. The beetling cliff alone should have prevented the supposition that Hermod leapt the gate of her hall. The mead set ready and the sons of Asa's waiting does not fit in with famine, starving, anguish and misery. We must look elsewhere for the Hel to which Balder was sent, and there can be little doubt that it was in that grove called Treasure-Mimi's Holt, where two human beings without sin were preserved in order that they might inhabit the new and purer world.
In considering who Hel is, we must remember that the word at first designated a place solely. Before wickedness arose in the world, Hel was the realm of bliss to which the dead descended. Later, when evil crept in among the Gods, Nifelhel was added, it being the abode of the evil dead, who had to die a second death on passing from Hel to Nifelhel. Hel was also the name given to the Goddess of the Lower World. Long before hearing of Loki's daughter we are told that three sisters dwelt in a hall beneath the southern root of the world-tree, and that they watered that root from their sacred burn. Urth was one called, the Goddess of death and fate. To her fountain rode the Gods every day to judge the dead with her, and she apportioned their after-fate. Grim says of Hel, that she was not originally death or any evil being, that the "higher we are allowed to penetrate into our antiquities, the less hellish and more God-like may Helja appear."
When Nifelhel arose, the queen of that place also received the name of Hel, and when Christianity superseded the old wild religion, every vestige of good was withdrawn from the idea of the Lower World, and it became, under new influences, a place entirely given to evil. Thus those who in considering this mythology have considered it with a conscious or unconscious Christian bias, rather than with the minds of scientists, have always read into these myths what was never in them. Snorri himself did it, and those who have followed him have but gone farther in the same road. For instance, he says of Balder: "He abideth in that place hight Breiðablik, that is heaven; in that stead may naught be that is unclean, as is here said—' Breiðablik hight where Balder hath for himself reared a hall. In that land where wis there lieth least loathliness.'" Yet in the verse which Snorre owns to be his authority, there is no justification for the mention of heaven, nor the impossibility of uncleanness entering it.
Without entering further into detail, I will conclude by summing up according to the results of modern research :— Balder never entered the abode of Hel, Loki's evil daughter; he had no honour among those twice dead who lived in Nifelhel; Hermod did not interview Hel, the daughter of Loki, and when he crossed the gold-roofed bridge, he went, not to Nifelhel, but to the castle of the Asmegir, where he found Balder sitting in the high seat. The Hel whom he interviewed the following morning was Urth, the Goddess of fate and death, she who meted judgment to those who died, and who had probably good reason for desiring to keep Balder in the society of those who should one day be rulers of the new earth.

 1902 Henrik Schück.
Till Lodbroks-sagan
Svenska fornminnesföreningens Tidskrift -p. 131

 (Critique by Henrik Schück of Rydberg’s essay on the Röksten)

I Vitterhets- Historie- och Antiqvitetsakademiens Handlingar Hand XI Ny Följd har Victor Rydberg offentliggjort en uppsats: Om Hjältesagan på Rökstenen. Inskriften å stenen börjar som bekant med orden: »Efter Vamud stånda dessa runor. Och Varin tecknade dem, fadern, till minne af dödsutkorad son.» »Inskriften» — fortsätter Rydberg — »vill således göra troligt, att den, som låtit resa stenen, hetat Varin. Det är af Bugge redan framhållet och måste falla hvarje läsare i ögonen, att de i inskriften omtalade händelserna, åtminstone i den form de där meddelas, tillhöra dikten, icke värkligheten.»

Af detta faktum har emellertid ej Bugge dragit någon annan slutsats, än att dessa fantastiska uppgifter ej handlat om Vamud eller Varin, men man har ej betviflat, att det nyktra tillkännagifvande, hvarmed inskriften börjar, varit en värklig grafskrift, ristad af en fader till minne af en son. Rydberg anser däremot, att både Vamud och Varin tillhöra dikten. Efter denna utgångspunkt fortsätter Rydberg med att undersöka, hvilken den saga är, som där meddelas, och han begagnar därvid den metod, han äfven annorstädes använder. Varin förekommer i Olof Tryggvasons saga såsom namn på en i förbigående omtalad sagokonung, och denne identifieras nu af Rydberg med Rökstenens Varin. Olofsagans Varin berättas hafva i strid slagit en konung Ogvald, och denne åter omtalas i Fornmanna Sögur II 26, men där säges han hafva fallit för Hekling Viking. Hekling identifieras därför med Varin eller — rättare — hekling» betraktas såsom ett epitet åt denne. Men i Ragnar Lodbroks saga erhålla äfven Lodbrokssönerna epitetet »Hæklings megir», och resultatet af dessa kombinationer blir således identiteten mellan Varin och Lodbrok.

 Tron på värdet af denna identifieringsmetod torde, åtminstone inom vetenskapliga kretsar, vara så individuell för Viktor Rydberg, att jag här ej skulle hafva redogjort för denna bevisföring, så vida Rydberg ej i själfva inskriften trott sig finna ett nytt stöd för den. »Den isländska romanen om Ragnar Lodbrok — säger han — försäkrar, att sedan konung Ella fått veta, hvem den i ormgården omkomne stridsmanuen var, gjorde han allt för att blidka och försona Ragnars söner. Därtill hörde i främsta rummet en ärande högsättning. 

Rådde öfver
Reidhafvets stränder
Thiaurik, sjökämpars
käcke förare.
Rustad å gångarn
Gote nu sitter
gördlad med skölden
hjältarnes höfding.

Vamud kallas här Thiaurik(r) Enär runristaren, såsom man vet, begagnat sig äfven af chifferskrift, ligger möjligheten nära, att han gjort det också här, och att Thiaurik(r) är ett chiffernamn Vid sidan af en regelbunden kortskrifning finner man chiffer, som kräfver olika nycklar. En af de använda chifferskrifterna grundar sig på den runräcka, som uppstår, då man börjar med ätten Tyrs runor, fortsätter med Fröjs och slutar med Hagals. Denna skrift kan påkalla två nycklar. Den ene, med hvars tillhjälp Bugge löst ett par af stenens chiffergåtor, låter runans betydelse bestämmas af hennes ställning inom ätten; den andra af hennes ställning i rnnräckan som en helhet. Den senare nyckeln har följande utseende: f=t

Om vi nu på namnet Thiaurik(r) lägga denna chifferskrift,' få vi således Lorbrok, hvilket kommer Lodbrok (Loðbrök) så nära, som det med begagnandet af en chiffernyckel är möjligt och i hvarje fall tillräckligt nära för att hänvisa chifferletaren på den, som menas.» Får man, såsom här, fritt välja hvilken chiffernyckel som hälst, bör man tydligen, om lyckan ej är allt tor ogunstig, kunna få fram ett ord. som har åtskilliga bokstäfver gemensamma med det ord, som åstundas. Resultatet är således långt ifrån öfverraskande. Men den bokstafskomplex, som uppstår med den här föreslagna chifterläsningen af inskriftens ThiaurikR, är icke Lorbrok, utan, som hvar och en kan finna, LorbRofs, en förbindelse, som blott har fyra bokstäfver af åtta (50 %) gemensamma med Lodbrok. För att få fram Lorbrok, som ju dock ej är detsamma som Lodbrok, nödgas Rydberg först alldeles ignorera nominativmärket -r i ThiaurikR, vidare måste han identifiera r och R (r finale), och för det tredje måste han läsa en af bokstäfverna (k) på det vanliga sättet, men ändock återstår en bokstaf, som ej är lika. Vore denna del af inskriften på prosa, kunde man emellertid icke bevisa, att Rydberg misstagit sig; man kunde på sin höjd påstå, att han ej förebringat några skäl för sin åsikt, men nu är inskriften på vers, och det ord, som skall rimma med þurmodi måste således börja med Þ Detta gör þiaurikt, men ej Loåbrök (Lorbrok eller Lorbrioks), och Rydbergs åsikt är således ej blott obevisad, utan äfven bevisligen oriktig.

Emellertid är det en punkt i denna afhandling, jag tror vara riktig eller tangera det riktiga. Rydberg anser nämligen, att Lodbrokssagan icke är en enhetlig saga, utan att det funnits en ursprunglig Lodbrokssaga, som sedermera förbundits med Ragnarssönernas, Ivars och Björn Järnsidas äfventyr.1 Denna idé är visserligen ej originell för Rydberg, utan har redan förut uttalats af Storm och andra, och Rydberg gör heller intet försök att skilja sagans yngre beståndsdelar från dess äldre; de antydningar i denna riktning, som förekomma, synas mig i hvarje fall förfelade. Men tanken är tvifvelsutan riktig, och jag har därför gjort ett försök att lösa problemet. ....

 

1903 Singoalla by Viktor Rydberg
Translated by Axel Josephsson
Illustrated by Carl Larsson

 

In presenting the English version of Viktor Rydberg's famous romance, " Singoalla," I am actuated by a desire to acquaint the English reading world with one of the most weird and romantic stories ever written in the Swedish language. Viktor Rydberg was one of the greatest writers and philosophers Sweden produced during the last century, and as " Singoalla" has often been pronounced his masterpiece I felt that the work ought to be translated into English. Viktor Rydberg wrote in unusually pure and poetical Swedish, which, of course, gives special charm to the reading of a work like " Singoalla " in the original, but this also made the translation of the work into English such a difficult undertaking that it has never been attempted until now, though the book has been published in several other languages. As several of Viktor Rydberg's works have been published in English and as they have contained prefaces with reviews of Viktor Rydberg's place in the world's literature, I shall not repeat them here, but will only say a few words by way of introduction.

1903 Jessie Laidlay Weston
The Legends of the Wagner Drama: Studies in Mythology and Romance

"Since concluding the above study the writer has met with Professor Rydberg's Teutonic Mythology, containing an interesting and carefully worked-out theory of the origin of the Nibelung Hoard. As the theory suggests an explanation of some of the points noted in these studies, an abstract of it may be of interest to the reader.... the special virtue of which is not clearly indicated ; Rydberg thinks that it had the power of multiplying itself."

 1904 Andrew Peter Fors   
The Ethical World-Conception of the Norse People

 p. 7  "V. Rydberg. Two volumes in Swedish.Volume I is translated into English by R.B. Anderson. Vol. II possesses special value in the comparative mythology of the Aryan people."

p. 12 "This world-tree, according to Rydberg, represents life in its totality — the biological, the moral, and the divine.

p. 18 "For a comparison of the Norse and the Asiatic-Aryan myth-cycles see Rydberg."

p. 22 "Harbard in Harbardsljod has been thought to be Odin, but Rydberg makes it probable that it is Loki who there accosts and mocks Thor — something that would be more like Loki than Odin."

  p. 25 "For a full discussion of this distinction see Rydberg, especially as to the continuity and character of the meaning of punishment in time and after death."

p. 27 "See also RYDBERG, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 169."

p. 42  "... righteous judgment, and not simply to judgment passed by posterity, or as to the keeping of a person's good name in memory, or vice versa — see Rydberg."

 p.  55  "See V. RYDBERG, op. cii., Part II, p. 177." 

1904 Sweden Statistiska centralbyrån
Sweden: Its People and its Industry 

V. Rydberg (1828/95), as shown by the all-pervading spirit of his many-sided literary activity and especially by the ideal and personal manner employed in his philosophical writings, came near to the Boströmian tendency. More than anybody else he has promoted the spreading within wide circles of the essential life of Swedish idealism.

1904 The Bookseller Vol. 9

"Singoalla, a romance by Viktor Rydberg, translated from the Swedish by Axel Josephsson. A classic admirably translated for the pleasure of English readers. Rydberg was one of the greatest authors and philosophers of Sweden, a writer of unusually pure and poetic charm. In presenting his masterpiece in attractive form the publishers have done the story full justice in illustration and typography. The book is above the ordinary in many ways. The pictures are by Carl Larson, and are taken from a de luxe edition published in Sweden a few years ago. $1.25.—F."

1904 Johan Christian Blangstrup, Jens Braage
Salmonsens store illustrerede konversationsleksikon 

Rydberg, Abraham Viktor, svensk Digter, født 28. Decbr. 1828 i Jonkoping, død 21. Septbr. 1895

…Rydberg havde fra 1876 i Gøteborg været ansat som Forelæser i Kulturhistorie og Filosofi; imidlertid giftede han sig 14. Marts 1879 med en ung Dame, som ofte havde besøgt hans Forelæsninger, Susen Emilie Hasselblad, med hvem han levede et lykkeligt Samliv. 1884 modtog han Professuren i Kulturhistorie i Stockholm, og derved ledtes han til en rig Produktion baade som Forelæser og som Skribent. En lang Række runologiske og mytologiske Arbejder stamme fra denne Tid; Bang's og Bugge's Forskninger fremkaldte Modskrifter fra R., og med den ham ejendommelige Blanding af Fantasi og Lærdom udarbejdede han sine dybsindige Skrifter »Segersvardet« [1884], »UndersOkningar i germansk mytologi«, I—II [1886—89] samt Børnebogen "Fádernas gudasaga" [1887]. Disse Arbejderere tankevækkende, og hans »Undersökningar« er et med stor Flid og Omhu samlet Værk; men deres videnskabelige Værdi i moderne Forstand er ikke stor, fordi R. over for Kilderne ikke har udøvet historisk Kritik.

  

1904 Timarat Vol. 25, p. 89
Heimskvörnin og hafsaugað í trú fornmanna
 eftir Jón prófast Jónsson

 

1904 Axel Gustav Sundbärg
Sweden: Its People and its Industry - p. 406

"To be sure, Viktor Rydberg (1828/95) had by the publication of his novel “Den siste Atenaren” (The Last Athenian) attracted general attention, but it was only gradually that he obtained his position as the spiritual leader in modern Swedish literature. The last fifteen years of his life he was recognized as the foremost among living Swedish authors. Rydberg was long known and admired as a writer on esthetics, mythology, religious philosophy, and as a champion for a noble humanity and an undogmatic Christianity. It was only late that he appeared as a lyrical poet, but his poems belong to the very jewels in the treasury of Swedish poetry. Cast in a perfect classical form and stamped with Germanic earnestness, they contain meditations upon the deepest questions of life. "

 1904 Singoalla:
A Mediaeval Legend by Viktor Rydberg
Translated by Josef Fredbärj

Viktor Rydberg, who became a really notable Swedish man of letters, was born at Jonkoping, a town on Lake Wetter in Sweden, on the 18th of December 1828. As a child he evinced a great love for reading, especially of literature of a romantic and weird type, and this colouring has very largely permeated all Rydberg's writings. When twenty-three years of age he qualified as a student at the University of Lund, and a few years later decided to take up journalism and letters as a profession.

It was not long ere his remarkable literary talent asserted itself—and what was more, attracted the notice of European litterateurs. Several minor pieces betraying his exceptional gifts soon found their way among the current literature of his country, but it was not until the '"fifties" (1850-60) that Rydberg really gave true evidence of himself. In this decade appeared a book destined to be his first great work. This was entitled The Last Athenian ("Den Siste Atenaren ").

Singoalla, of which an English version is now for the first time placed before the public, was the next important work to follow The Last Athenian. This was succeeded by a work of partly religious, partly philosophic character, entitled The Dogma of the Bible Concerning Christ. In 1877 his Roman Days appeared, and was subsequently translated into English and published by Messrs. Putnam's Sons. Then followed another important work—a species of counterpart to The Last Athenian. This novel was entitled The Armourer. It is a splendid word-picture, and depicts in glowing colour the stirring episodes of the Reformation and the controversies which led up to and were consequent upon Luther's daring battle for Religion.

It was in the year 1876 that the University of Upsala conferred upon Rydberg the degree of an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy. In the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy, an institution consisting of eighteen members only. A few years later—in 1884—Rydberg was appointed Professor of Social History in the University of Stockholm; later on he succeeded to the professorial chair of Art in the same institution. Yet greater honour awaited him. In 1887 he was made an honorary member of the Academy of Arts. All this while Rydberg was a ceaseless worker. His professorial studies and duties in no way stemmed the untiring energy of his pen, which retained all its vigour down almost to the hour when the quill was laid down and he ceased to write for ever. Rydberg, a literary luminary of no small magnitude, passed away, to the great grief of his countrymen, on the 20th September 1895, aged sixty-seven years. Shortly after his death his Lectures on Philosophy and the History of Art were published.

Rydberg is a poet as well as a writer of prose; indeed, in his compositions he is a lyrist, or, to use an obsolete title a lyric by preference. He shines out in his poetry almost as splendidly as in his more straightforward compositions.

His great gifts of feeling and imagination have led him to the expression of creations in verse possessing all the qualities of true poetry. The power of rendering in melodious words the thoughts which are the creations of feeling and imagination is not a far-removed accomplishment and possibility for the average person; but the true art of metrical composition,—the capacity to say great things in verse, and that verse of a character that will move the soul—this portion is denied to most of us. Rydberg in all his poems has given ample proof of its possession. It may be wondered why his work is practically unknown in this country. Certainly not for any lack of character, of beauty, or of many-sided sentiment and expression. Poetry is not as translatable as prose, and the translator from one tongue to another is hampered at every turn—and these usual difficulties are not lightened in the case of the Swedish language. When all is overcome, however, Rydberg will be found a delightful minor poet to whom to turn.

As a translator Rydberg has accomplished much excellent work, notably his version into Swedish of Goethe's Faust. On an extensive scale, too, are his lesser writings. These take the form of treatises on mythology—notably his Researches in Teutonic Mythology, history, philology, etc.; besides which there are a large number of essays and fugitive articles too numerous to mention.

It would be misleading to advance for Rydberg the right to a place in the foremost rank of modern men of letters; but that he claims our great attention for his services to nineteenth century literature is beyond doubt. There are some master minds—especially in literature—who dazzle by the splendour of their genius; others whose extraordinary, if not superlative intellectual gifts, shine with a gentler but often more sustained light. The latter is not infrequently the more glorious, the most appreciated light, because it is so maintained and sustaining. Amid lesser lights, a uniformly illuminative star will command the attention more surely than a fitful burst of infinitely greater brilliancy. To such a constellation Viktor Rydberg may be said to belong. Though highly esteemed and admired by the educated section of his countrymen, who mourned him deeply at his death—

(" One has only to die to be great")—

Rydberg during his lifetime was little known outside his own country. It is not improbable, however, that Rydberg's posthumous fame will be greater than that of his lifetime. Wherever his writings are translated to-day they are eagerly sought for and studied. This may be instanced of Singoalla. This legend-story appeared in book form the first time in 1865, and speedily ran into several editions. Subsequently it was translated into the Danish, German, Dutch, Finnish, French, Spanish, and Italian languages, until now it is presented to English readers in their mother tongue. It is safe to predict a fair future for Rydberg. As his works become known by means of translations, the lustre of his genius will illumine a wider range, and his literary influence must become steadily more apparent and determined.

The Last Athenian was the work which called forth the immediate approval of Rydberg's countrymen, besides attracting attention throughout Europe and America. It was translated into English by William Widgery Thomas, this edition being published at Philadelphia, U.S.A., in 1869. In The Last Athenian, the author takes us back to the dawn of Christianity. He shows us something of the inevitable struggle between heathenism and early Christianity; and if he does not sufficiently gauge the depths of pollution from which Christ and the Cross rescued the world, he yet throws much original thought on, probably, the most momentous epoch in the world's history. With that verve and picturesqueness so characteristic of the northern artistic temperament, Rydberg introduces picture after picture of most affecting character, delineating the antipathies and antagonism of the ancient mind and that of the Christian upon that all-absorbing theme—the life of the day and that of the world to come. Briefly, the author vindicates a broad acceptation of Christianity, as opposed to fanatical orthodoxy and religious compulsion.

As the title-page shows, Singoalla is a mediaeval Swedish saga. Without wishing to charm the reader in its favour, we may safely distinguish it as one of the most romantic and picturesque compositions which we know of in Scandinavian literature. Rydberg, we see, is still the medievalist —still in his favourite Middle Ages. It would be a doubtful kindness to the reader to anticipate his legitimate privilege of exploiting the story and enjoying it for himself. We will say nothing of the story itself beyond to state that Singoalla —this is the name of the heroine—is a novel occupying quite a pre-eminent place among Rydberg's prose writings. We know that its author has left a great mark upon the literature of Scandinavian mythology. In Singoalla, his romanticism is still strikingly in the foreground, and strangely tinctured with that fantastic, pantheistical philosophy which was so much a part and parcel of Rydberg. The period of the book is the Middle Ages—that slowly awakening epoch when Europe tardily revived from the black night of Roman madness to the faint dawn of Western sweetness and light; and all the peculiar mysticism and picturesqueness distinguishing that time pervade the book. Against such a background the splendid dramatis personce of the story stand out in wondrously real fashion and with vivid effect. It is, indeed, the strong contrast nature of the story which lends it so much charm. There is so much darkness and so much light. Yet, the chiaroscuro in the picture is deftly disposed, and we get a balance of light in shadow and shadow in light as perfect as could be desired. Rydberg's forte is the distinctness and variety of his characters and a power of clothing them in most attractive colours. Singoalla furnishes ample confirmation of this. In the foreground are his many living figures gorgeously treated standing out wonderfully against a background of sombre hue—well in keeping with that heart-rending, darknight despair which followed in the wake of the Great Plague, and culminated in the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Singoalla is an affecting picture of those times, told in language as charming as it is simple.

Throughout his poetry, as in his prose, Rydberg exhibits consistently a great depth of thought—reflective of a strong and noble mind. In his own country particularly Rydberg is held to be of great importance as a pioneer in the struggle for freedom of thought. He was ever bent upon an insistence of new principles in the several spheres of thought. A champion of Idealism, he never ceased to preach the crusade of the brightest and best in intellectual reasoning and deduction—a most glorious task bearing in mind the narrow-minded naturalism that marred the mind of his country a few decades back. He blew fresh breath into the fusty spiritual atmosphere of his day, and in a long struggle for truth and enlightenment he sowed seed which speedily germinated, and is—even so soon—already bearing rich fruit. The cause of the poor and weak, and the principle of right against might were as close to Rydberg's heart as life itself, as every student of his poetry will readily discover. It is to be regretted that Rydberg's poetical compositions are not translated into English. Unfortunately, as we have said, those who are bold enough to attempt the reproduction of foreign verse are constantly confronted with obstacles which present themselves in a much less degree in prose translation.

Rydberg was not a prolific writer, but he took a wide literary range. With a powerfully descriptive pen, he brought home to his readers social domestic pictures of ancient, mediaeval, and modern times. He was not as was our Dickens—a chronicler of his own times, of things as he found them. Rydberg loved plunging into the cloudy vista of the past and rescuing the beautiful from oblivion. From subjects relating to the history of civilisation he passed on to those of the antique; but in either case his style with its classical nobleness and purity was perfectly adapted. His learned works on Scandinavian mythology will constitute an undying monument of his industry and learned research ; and here many might well envy Rydberg for his splendid virility.

The superlative feature of Rydberg's labours is that his writings may be read by all—young and old. Latitudinarian as he was in breadth of thought and intellect, he was certainly a Christian—one who had far from lost his footing on the rock of Eternity. A pioneer in thought, Rydberg, with dauntless courage, prepared the way in his country for fresh ideas of thought and vision. These were of the new rationalistic order, and of course they met with opposition. Like all pioneers, he met the usual fate: he was misunderstood and decried—and that in some few instances fiercely. Rydberg, however, laboured on, unmoved and determined, his remarkable creative faculty showing no sign of wane until it stopped for ever. To all branches of literature he turned, and left an indelible mark upon each department with which he identified himself. Viktor Rydberg deserves, indeed, well of both his country and the entire literary world.

 

 1904 The Independent
Singoalla. A Romance written in Swedish
by Viktor Rydberg
and now translated into English
by Alex. Josephsson.
New York: The Grafton Press, $1.25

 

This charming romance of Viktor Rydberg, which is now presented for the first time to the English reading public in a well done translation, is a stirring tale of gypsy spells and enchantments, of monasteries pillaged by night and skirmishes by day, and of love and heroic exploits. It deals with the love and adventures of one Erland, the son of Sir Maneskold (Moonshield), who, when a young man of about eighteen, meets, in the forest surrounding his father's castle, .Singoalla, the daughter of the gypsy chieftain whose tribe has made its camp nearby, and he falls passionately in love wtih this strange maiden with the dark skin and the flashing eyes and the tangle of red beads around her neck. He asks her to meet him the next day at the same place, but she answers him that never will they meet again, and disappears in the woods. A year rolls around, when, one morning, a mighty creaking of wagons, tramping of horses and cracking of whips is heard in the forest—the gypsies have returned.

Among them Erland recognizes Singoalla, more beautiful than before. How he goes through the gypsy mariage ceremony with Singoalla which makes them man and wife; how the monastery is pillaged of its golden and silver vessels by this band of gypsies; their pursuit by Sir Maneskold and his men, who discover in the nick of time before making a charge upon the marauders that Erland is held as hostage by them for their safe conduct; how he is brought back to the castle delirious and sick unto death from a poisoned drink administered to him by the gypsies; his slow recovery and the rising hatred in his breast of Singoalla. whom the prior leads him to believe is responsible for the poisoned drink; his final reconcilation with Singoalla after her many years of wandering through many lands with Assim, the mortal enemy of Erland and the rival but unsuccessful suitor for her hand, whom she constantly spurns, now her faithful slave and protector despite her cold indifference, and how at last the golden and silver vessek of the monastery are restored to their place again; all this and more we must leave the reader to discover. It is just such a book as one loves to read on a stormy winter's eve before the open fire, with the crackling and spluttering of the logs to keep one company. The illustrator, Carl Larsson, has admirably caught the spirit of the story, and his illustrations really illustrate.

1904 Current Literature, Vol. 36
 Singoalla. By Viktor Rydberg.
Translated by Axel Josephsson.
The Grafton Press, New York. $1.25

 Mr. Josephsson has conferred a boon on the lovers of literature by giving them this translation, in itself of high literary merit, of Singoalla, a striking work of Viktor Rydberg, one of the noblest of Sweden's writers, whose life covered a large portion of the last century. The story tells how a noble of the land, in the thirteenth century, married by pagan rite a beautiful gipsy maiden, ignored his vow, perhaps in consequence of his treatment by her people; how by mysterious power he was brought to judgment for his crime, and was pardoned by the gentle one; how he passed through the terrible visitation of the Black Death, and ended his days in peace. The weird tale is permeated with that Spirit of Nature and that atmosphere of the borderland of the mysterious which characterized a class of romance but rarely met with to-day. Probably the nearest approach to it which will arise in the mind as it is being read is that equally weird romance, "Sintram," by de la Motte Fouque (1777-1843).

  1905 Rasmus B. Anderson
from the General Introduction to the
Norrœna Library contained in
THE NINE BOOKS OF THE DANISH HISTORY
of Saxo Grammaticus
IN TWO VOLUMES TRANSLATED
BY OLIVER ELTON, B.A.
 

In Rydberg's Teutonic Mythology we have a profound and at the same "time most fascinating systematic presentation of the pre-Christian religion of our fathers as found in the Eddas. Victor Rydberg was one of Sweden's greatest scholars, and he devoted the ripest years of his master mind to a research into the antiquities of the North and as F. York Powell of Oxford, in his review of this work puts it: It is the most important addition to our knowledge of early Teutonic myths since Grimm, that is to say, during the past 70 years. The work is of the greatest interest both to the scholar and to the general reader.

1905 Viking Society for Northern Research
Saga-Book of the Viking Club

-
Singoalla. A Mediaeval Legend. By Viktor Rydberg. Translated from the Swedish by Josef Fredbarj. London and Newcastle-on Tyne: the Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.

 This is the first translation into English of a novel by the great Swedish writer Viktor Rydberg, better known, perhaps, in England through his studies in mythology, history, etc., than as a novelist. Yet he was a great novelist, and a poet besides, and "Singoalla" has already been translated into most of the languages of continental Europe. The translation before us is preceded by a useful note, giving an outline, very condensed, of Swedish literature and a sketch of Rydberg and his career, in which the writer sums up the novel so vividly that we cannot do better than quote his words :—

Singoalla is a novel occupying quite a pre-eminent place among Rydberg's prose writings. In it his romanticism is still strikingly in the foreground, and strangely tinctured with that fantastic, pantheistical philosophy which was so much a part and parcel of Rydberg. The period of the book is the Middle Ages—that slowly awakening epoch when Europe tardily revived from the black night of Roman madness to the faint dawn of Western sweetness and light ; and all the peculiar mysticism and picturesqueness distinguishing that time pervade the book. Against such a background the splendid dramatis personae of the story stand out in wondrously real fashion and with vivid effect. The old mythology plays no actual part in the story, but its shadow looms darkly in the distant past, and falls threateningly across the path of the hero and his race. At the epoch of the story the heathen days were still too near to be regarded with aught but dread and aversion. The main incident of the tale reproduces, perhaps unconsciously on the author's part, the story of Sigurd turned unwittingly from his troth to Brynhild to the love of Gudrun, and the result is scarcely less tragic, though worked out on lines widely different. The heroine, the gipsy girl Singoalla, is a noble and pathetic figure, and skilfully contrasted with the young Swedish knight whose love for her was brought by inexorable fate to such a hapless end.

 

1905 Viktor Rydberg
Kulturhistoriska föreläsningar av Viktor Rydberg
Vol. 4, p. 327

This series reprints Rydberg's lectures on cultural history from the late 1880s and early 1890s. This passage further illuminates his definition of the "Aryan" and the "white" race, in which he includes both Muslims and Jews.

 Viktor Rydberg - I föregående föreläsning skildrade jag det nypersiska riket och dess strid med det östromersk-byzantinska. Jag påpekade, att i det sjette århundradet funnos tre stormakter, nämligen dessa två och det genom Klodvig och hans efterträdare upprättade frankiska väldet. Samtliga dessa välden voro grundade af folk tillhörande den ariska rasen. Den andra stora hufvudgrenen af den hvita eller s. k. kaukasiska hufvudafdelningen af människosläktet, den semitiska rasen, syntes längesedan hafva spelat ut sin politiska roll. Dess makt syntes för alltid begrafven under Babylons och Nineves ruiner. Men medan det nypersiska riket anstränger sig till döds i sin genom århundraden fortsatta kamp med det östromersk-byzantinska, uppväxer oväntadt och med häpnadsvärd hast en ny semitisk stormakt, den arabiska, som hotar att eröfra världen och lägga hela kristenheten i bojor. Men innan jag redogör för denna nya stormakts uppkomst och utveckling och dess glänsande kultur, som bildar ett af de mest viktiga och tilltalande kapitlen i kulturhistorien, bör någon uppmärksamhet ägnas åt ett annat semitiskt folk, som vid den tid jag nu skildrar väl längesedan upphört att vara ett folk i detta ords vanliga betydelse och sedan århundraden tillbaka saknade ett eget fädernesland, men som det oaktadt fortfor att äga kraf på historikerns intresse. Jag menar Judafolket.

Translation:

In a previous lecture, I described the new Persian kingdom and its fight with the East-Roman Byzantine Kingdom. I pointed out, that in the seventh century there existed three great powers, namely these two and the Frankish empire established by Klodvig and his successors. All these realms were founded by people of the Aryan race. The other large branch of the white or so-called Caucasian division of the human race, the Semitic race, seems to have long since played out their political role. Their power seems to have been forever buried beneath the ruins of Babylon and Ninev. But while the new Persian realm strains itself to death by its continued struggle through the centuries  with the East-Roman Byzantine realm, a new semitic great power grows unexpectedly and with surprising speed  the Arabic, that threatens to conquer the world and to put all of Christiendom in fetters. But before I report on this new great power's origin and development and its brilliant culture that forms one of the most important and the lively chapters in cultural history, should some attention be devoted to another Semetic race, who at the time I now describe had long ago ceased to be a people in this word's common meaning and for centuries lacked their own fatherland, but who nevertheless continued to possess claim to historical interest. I mean the Jewish people.

 

1905 Oliver Elton translator
The Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus
 

“No one has commented upon Saxo's mythology with such brilliancy, such minute consideration, and such success as the Swedish scholar, Victor Rydberg. More than occasionally he is over- ingenious and over-anxious to reduce chaos to order; sometimes he almost loses his faithful reader in the maze he treads so easily and confidently, and sometimes he stumbles badly. But he has placed the whole subject on a fresh footing, and much that is to follow will be drawn from his "Teutonic Mythology" (cited here from the English version by Rasmus B. Anderson, London, 1889, as "T.M.").

“Let us take first some of the incontestable results of his investigations that affect Saxo.

“SCIOLD is the father of Gram in Saxo, and the son of Sceaf in other older authorities. Dr. Rydberg (97-101) forms the following equations for the Sciolding patriarchs: --

     a. Scef -- Heimdal -- Rig.

     b. Sciold -- Borgar -- Jarl.

     c.  Gram -- Halfdan -- Konung.

Chief among the mythic tales that concern Saxo are the various portions of the Swipdag-Myth, which Dr. Rydberg has been able to complete with much success. They may be resumed briefly as follows: --

Swipdag, helped by the incantations of his dead mother, whom he had raised from the dead to teach him spells of protection, sets forth on his quests. He is the Odusseus of the Teutonic mythology. He desires to avenge his father on Halfdan that slew him. To this end he must have a weapon of might against Halfdan's club. The Moon-god tells him of the blade Thiasse has forged. It has been stolen by Mimer, who has gone out into the cold wilderness on the rim of the world. Swipdag achieves the sword, and defeats and slays Halfdan. He now buys a wife, Menglad, of her kinsmen the gods by the gift of the sword, which thus passes into Frey's hands.

How he established a claim upon Frey, and who Menglad was, is explained in Saxo's story of Eric, where the characters may be identified thus: --

 

     Swipdag -- Eric
     Freya -- Gunwara
     Frey -- Frode III
     Niord -- Fridlaf
     Wuldor -- Roller
     Thor -- Brac
     Giants -- The Greps
     Giants -- Coller.

 

Frey and Freya had been carried off by the giants, and Swipdag and his faithful friend resolve to get them back for the Anses, who bewail their absence. They journey to Monster-land, win back the lady, who ultimately is to become the hero's wife, and return her to her kindred; but her brother can only be rescued by his father Niord. It is by wit rather than by force that Swipdag is successful here.

“The third journey of Swipdag is undertaken on Frey's behalf; he goes under the name of Scirner to woo giant Gymer's daughter Gerth for his brother-in-law, buying her with the sword that he himself had paid to Frey as his sister's bride-price. So the sword gets back to the giants again.

“Swipdag's dead foe Halfdan left two young "avengers", Hadding and Guthorm, whom he seeks to slay. But Thor-Brache gives them in charge of two giant brothers. Wainhead took care of Hadding, Hafle of Guthorm. Swipdag made peace with Guthorm, in a way not fully explained to us, but Hadding took up the blood-feud as soon as he was old enough.

“Hadding was befriended by a woman, who took him to the Underworld -- the story is only half told in Saxo, unluckily -- and by Woden, who took him over-sea wrapt in his mantle as they rode Sleipner over the waves; but here again Saxo either had not the whole story before him, or he wished to abridge it for some reason or prejudice, and the only result of this astonishing pilgrimage is that Woden gives the young hero some useful counsels. He falls into captivity, entrapped by Loke (for what reason again we are left to guess), and is exposed to wild beasts, but he slays the wolf that attacks him, and eating its heart as Woden had bidden him, he gains wisdom and foresight.

“Prepared by these adventures, he gets Guthorm to join him (how or why the peace between him and Swipdag was broken, we know not), and they attack their father's slayer, but are defeated, though Woden sunk Asmund Swipdag's son's ship, Grio, at Hlessey, and Wainhead and Hardgrip his daughter fought for Hadding.

“Hadding wanders off to the East with his foster-sister and mistress and Hardgrip, who is slain protecting him against an angry ghost raised from the Underworld by her spells. However, helped by Heimdal and Woden (who at this time was an exile), Hadding's ultimate success is assured.

“When Woden came back to power, Swipdag, whose violence and pride grew horribly upon him, was exiled, possibly by some device of his foes, and took upon him, whether by will or doom, a sea- monster's shape. His faithful wife follows him over land and sea, but is not able to save him. He is met by Hadding and, after a fierce fight, slain. Swipdag's wife cursed the conqueror, and he was obliged to institute an annual sacrifice to Frey (her brother) at Upsale, who annuls the curse. Loke, in seal's guise, tried to steal the necklace of Freya at the Reef of Treasures, where Swipdag was slain, but Haimdal, also in seal- skin, fought him, and recovered it for the gods.

“Other myths having reference to the goddesses appear in Saxo. There is the story of "Heimdall and Sol", which Dr. Rydberg has recognised in the tale of Alf and Alfhild. The same tale of how the god won the sun for his wife appears in the mediaeval German King Ruther (in which title Dr. Rydberg sees Hrutr, a name of the ram-headed god).

“The story of "Othar" (Od) and "Syritha" (Sigrid) is obviously that of Freya and her lover. She has been stolen by the giants, owing to the wiles of her waiting-maid, Loke's helper, the evil witch Angrbode. Od seeks her, finds her, slays the evil giant who keeps her in the cave; but she is still bewitched, her hair knotted into a hard, horny mass, her eyes void of brightness. Unable to gain recognition he lets her go, and she is made by a giantess to herd her flocks. Again found by Od, and again refusing to recognise him, she is let go again. But this time she flies to the world of men, and takes service with Od's mother and father. Here, after a trial of her love, she and Od are reconciled. Sywald (Sigwald), her father, weds Od's sister.

“The tale of the vengeance of Balder is more clearly given by the Dane, and with a comic force that recalls the Aristophanic fun of Loka-senna. It appears that the story had a sequel which only Saxo gives. Woden had the giantess Angrbode, who stole Freya, punished. Frey, whose mother-in-law she was, took up her quarrel, and accusing Woden of sorcery and dressing up like a woman to betray Wrind, got him banished. While in exile Wuldor takes Woden's place and name, and Woden lives on earth, part of the time at least, with Scathe Thiasse's daughter, who had parted from Niord.

“The giants now resolved to attack Ansegard; and Woden, under the name of Yggr, warned the gods, who recall him after ten years' exile.

“But for Saxo this part of the story of the wars of the gods would be very fragmentary.

The "Hildiger story", where a father slays his son unwittingly, and then falls at his brother's hand, a tale combining the Rustam and the Balin-Balan types, is one of the Hilding tragedies, and curiously preserved in the late "Saga of Asmund the Champions' bane". It is an antithesis, as Dr. Rydberg remarks, to the Hildebrand and Hadubrand story, where father and son must fight and are reconciled.

“The "story of Orwandel" (the analogue of Orion the Hunter) must be gathered chiefly from the prose Edda. He was a huntsman, big enough and brave enough to cope with giants. He was the friend of Thor, the husband of Groa, the father of Swipdag, the enemy of giant Coller and the monster Sela. The story of his birth, and of his being blinded, are lost apparently in the Teutonic stories, unless we may suppose that the bleeding of Robin Hood till he could not see by the traitorous prioress is the last remains of the story of the great archer's death.

“Great part of the troubles which befell the gods arose from the antagonism of the sons of Iwalde and the brethren Sindre and Brokk (Cinder and Brank), rival artist families; and it was owing to the retirement of their artist foster-parents that Frey and Freya were left among the giants. The Hniflung hoard is also supposed to have consisted of the treasures of one band of primaeval artists, the Iwaldings.

“Whether we have here the phenomenon of mythological doublets belonging to different tribes, or whether we have already among these early names that descent of story which has led to an adventure of Moses being attributed to Garibaldi, given to Theodoric the king the adventures of Theodoric the god, taken Arthur to Rome, and Charles the Great to Constantinople, it is hard to say.

The skeleton-key of identification, used even as ably as Dr. Rydberg uses it, will not pick every mythologic lock, though it undoubtedly has opened many hitherto closed. The truth is that man is a finite animal; that he has a limited number of types of legend; that these legends, as long as they live and exist, are excessively prehensile; that, like the opossum, they can swing from tree to tree without falling; as one tree dies out of memory they pass on to another. When they are scared away by what is called exact intelligence from the tall forest of great personalities, they contrive to live humbly clinging to such bare plain stocks and poles (Tis and Jack and Cinderella) as enable them to find a precarious perch.

“To drop similitudes, we must be prepared, in unravelling our tangled mythology, to go through several processes. We must, of course, note the parallelisms and get back to the earliest attribution-names we can find. But all system is of late creation, it does not begin till a certain political stage, a stage where the myths of coalescing clans come into contact, and an official settlement is attempted by some school of poets or priests. Moreover, systematization is never so complete that it effaces all the earlier state of things. Behind the official systems of Homer and Hesiod lies the actual chaos of local faiths preserved for us by Pausanias and other mythographers. The common factors in the various local faiths are much the majority among the factors they each possess; and many of these common factors are exceedingly primitive, and resolve themselves into answers to the questions that children still ask, still receiving no answer but myth -- that is, poetic and subjective hypothesis, containing as much truth as they can receive or their inventors can grasp.

 

Some of the other examples given are:

 

“"Freya", the mistress of Od, the patroness of Othere the homely, the sister of Frey-Frode, and daughter of Niord-Fridlaf, appears as Gunwara Eric's love and Syritha Ottar's love and the hair- clogged maiden, as Dr. Rydberg has shown.”  

“Dr. Rydberg has shown that the "Seven Sleepers" story is an old Northern myth, alluded to here in its early pre-Christian form, and that with this is mixed other incidents from voyages of Swipdag, the Teutonic Odusseus.”

“The "Robbers of the Island", evidently comes from an Icelandic source (cf. The historic "Holmveria Saga" and Icelandic folk- tales of later date), the incident of the hero slaying his slave, that the body might be mistaken for his, is archaic in tone; the powerful horse recalls Grani, Bayard, and even Sleipner; the dog which had once belonged to Unfoot (Ofote), the giant shepherd (cf. its analogues in old Welsh tales), is not quite assimilated or properly used in this story. It seems (as Dr. Rydberg suspects) a mythical story coloured by the Icelandic relater with memory full of the robber-hands of his own land.”

 

1905
The Theosophical Review
Vol. 35, p. 258

 THE CONFLICT WITH MATERIALISM

" Nay, pious souls! seek not the devil in the exact sciences. You have him in your very midst, in practical materialism, whose most gigantic revelation is the spirit of the industrialism of the nineteenth century."

Den Nya Grottesangen.

The conflict between good and evil has many phases, many different forms. There is one fight which takes the form of single combat in the inward self of humanity, while that in the outer world rages in the shape of a ceaseless warfare between true idealism and materialism. In this conflict, no one has the right to be neutral. In this case it is a question, in the fullest meaning of the words, "He who is not with me is against me." Everyone is bound to take his part in this strife, to which may be applied that law laid down by Solon, that when conflict arises within the state no citizen has the right to declare himself neutral, to remain passive.

It was a foregone conclusion that Viktor Rydberg, in his character of idealism's chief standard-bearer, not in our land alone, but throughout the whole Scandinavian north, must of necessity play the self-assumed rdle of leader in this our warfare against materialism. During earlier periods of his life, his weapons were directed principally against the abstract forms under which the enemies of idealism appear, but the older he grew the more directly did he take part in the practical battle against materialism.

 It is against the modern race for wealth, as the medium for satisfying the lust of pleasure, first and foremost, that Viktor Rydberg in the Grottesången has turned the point of his mighty poet-sword.

 With the least amount of labour Change the muscle into gold, is the formula according to which industrialism solves the Grotto problem. This is the first commandment in the law of mammon worship ; and the second is : 

Pity for the weak one's lot Breaks the law of evolution ; and the refrain of the festal hymn in praise of mammon runs thus:

 Now Lazarus at the beam toils slow along,

 With wounded foot, until at length he falls ;

  Nor for the pauper's sake, the orgies in those halls Are vexed, nor discord jars the feasting revellers' song. Viktor Rydberg once more allows old Ahasuerus to appear upon the scene,—this time that he may, from the rich experience of his wanderings, seek points of comparison between the misery of former ages and that of our own day, and that from these he may draw his conclusions :

"If I could characterise, in a few words, the misery of the closing nineteenth century as compared with that of previous ages, I should say that it consists of systematic poverty, organised in a manner by industrialism, in contradistinction to unorganised poverty; of poverty justified by theory, instead of theory-free ; of poverty that looks hopelessly away from religion, instead of that poverty which the Church compassionately cared for, petted, increased by unwise almsgiving, but also relieved, comforted and even ennobled. And finally,—a fermenting poverty, laying plans for the complete subversion of society, in contradistinction to the poverty of former ages, which, although occasionally tempestuous, was, as a rule, patient and apathetic.

 "Previous centuries owned many small hand-mills for misery. The nineteenth century has seen the erection of one huge mill, which will soon embrace the whole humanity of our planet. The Grotto-Mill of the myth has been changed to reality. It is not the life of the workman only that it demands; it devours all alike with the same rapacity.

 "The buyer of work and the seller of work are alike hurried under its fly-wheel, fall under it and are crushed to death. There are but few who can consider themselves even to some extent safe from the devouring monster. Worry has taken possession of almost every mind. The voice of song, natural and spontaneous, inspired by calm happiness, or by its equally fair kinswoman, calm sorrow, is heard less and less frequently from the grove, the cornfield, the cottage, and the castle. Worry has driven it away. Worry begins to lay hold even of the children.

"A preacher's voice cleaves the fog-bound space. What has he to declare? Some message to the heavy-laden, or what else? Is it something that can lighten the burden of the horror that oppresses countless breasts? "

And what is the object of this ceaseless strife for wealth ? Nothing else than the possibility of satisfying the lust for material pleasures, to which money furnishes the road.

 The greed of pleasure is the great malady of the age; and it is before all else the besetting sin of the Swedish people. The democratic spirit of the age has found one of its most palpable expressions in the attempt to place the means of enjoyment within the reach of all. A universal rise in the requirements of life has kept pace with the rise of universal education, or, more properly speaking, has increased in a still greater degree. Just as every crime against the eternal laws, moral as well as physical, which govern the world and human nature, brings its own punishment with it, so have crimes against simplicity and moderation brought in their train bodily suffering and economic ruin.

 The disastrous consequences of an unnatural mode of life— amongst the higher classes through the combination of high living and much drinking, and amongst the poorer classes through much drinking and unsuitable food—are much more widely diffused than is usually believed. So soon as an individual has succeeded in gaining an income that is larger than is necessary for the absolute needs of existence, he begins at once, in full conformity with the tone prevailing in all classes of society, to convert this surplus into a means of enjoyment. As a rule, it troubles him but little that his health suffers thereby. He continues his mode of life until some fine day Nature herself cries " Stop ! "

But such a manner of living is not only destructive to the body; it is also degrading to the spirit. The man who has accustomed himself to other and more expensive habits of life than are warranted by his income, seeks the possibility of continuing them by sponging on others, either directly, or else indirectly in the form of borrowing. When eating and drinking become the chief object of friendly gatherings, hospitality loses its original significance, that of sharing with the guests the domestic atmosphere of the home, and that mental appreciation which is acquired by the companionship of its members. To do nothing but pay for the food of one's guests is hospitality of the same kind that the parish bestows on its paupers.

When the requirements of life cannot be made to keep pace with the income, a way is found to get out of the difficulty, which in Sweden is but too easily accessible to all—running into debt. To this national failing, which is one of the most evident consequences of the lust of pleasure, Viktor Rydberg was ever alive, as to all others of a like sort. He makes Svante the harper say of the offering of the church-bells in payment of Sweden's debt to Lübeck : 

"Debts must be paid, if even with labour and sorrow to the day of one's death. Debt is a warrior who will kill thy soul's honour, if thou kill not him. The consciousness of dishonour shall weigh down thy labour in field and forest, oh Swedish man ! It shall pluck the wings from the prayers thou sendest up for the increase of thy land, and the welfare of thy home."

Against this low lust of pleasure, this flat materialism, he set an all-embracing idealism, which shines out on us from all his works ; and as though he believed in a final victory in the conflict of the human heart against innate selfishness, he sang of that day when our race, after its long wanderings through the desert of materialism, should at last reach the Salem of the ideal:

 In the day's hot haze before us, see the cloudy pillar swells! 

But the cloud-wreaths are ideals, and God's spirit in them dwells.

On Mount Nebo's song-crowned summit stands the seer, and joyous calls,

Salem, Salem, in the distance! Onward to your father's halls I  Oswald Kuylenstierna.

 All things in Nature work silently. They come into being and possess nothing. They fulfil their functions and make no claim.

1905
The Theosophical Review
Vol. 35, p. 393

THE FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SWEDISH PEOPLE

 One day, during the last summer of his life, when the sky was blue over Ekeliden's green trees, Viktor Rydberg wrote the poem that was to be his last greeting to the Swedish people:

Thou wondrous, mystic cloudlessness,
Thou heavenly blue, that smilingly
Stoops down to me, and lifts my soul
To spaces cool, and holy calm.

In this poem, over which broods the wonderful transfiguring glow of prescience, the reflection of the poet's premonition that he stood at the gates of that Salem for which during his whole life he had so longed, the rhythm, through which we can hear the far-off echo of celestial bells, is broken by another, through which thunders the jubilant echo of the triumphal song, to whose sound the warrior hopes to die :

 I know myself your kinsman, sons of heaven
  With Aryan blood, the purest and the oldest,
Ordained a Swede, by some kind Norna given.
My race, for symbol of their fathers' story,
 Have heaven's blue in the fair eyes of childhood,
And heaven's blue in standards crowned with glory.

With these words, among the proudest and most beautiful ever penned by Swedish hand, has Viktor Rydberg—he, who during the latter half of last century has been, of all others, the one to point our people to the road that leads to the Jordan of the ideal—told us, what we ought never to forget: that every race, in its desert wanderings, has its own road to travel; that the ideal striving must also be the national striving; that our race belongs to the nobility of humanity, and that it must be faithful to its lofty lineage, so that the true-hearted, blue childish eyes may ever be able to look up with the same unfailing pride to Svea's "standards crowned with glory."

 No parting words of more deep and significant meaning have ever been uttered to the people of Sweden by any seer. For we had half forgotten that a people, like an individual, must learn to listen to the inward voices, if it is ever to reach that lofty goal which for the nation, as well as for the individual, glitters on far-off golden pinnacles.

The inward cohesion of a nation, the significance of blood, lineage, and mutual ideals, has been long enough relegated to the category of those truths which the strife of the hour, and the material hubbub of the day, have caused us to forget. It is time that we should listen to the words of the seer, that we should seek to make the truths he has taught us bear fruit. For Viktor Rydberg is a seer, a prophet, an educator, for his people ; he is the Armourer who has forged for us weapons against materialism, the Bard who has for us seen heavenly visions. We are still too near him to be able rightly to appreciate him; the visual angle is still too great. But when comes that day in which we are able to survey the mighty work he has wrought, in which we shall fully comprehend the war he waged, and the victories he won, then it will be clear to us all that he was, in veriest truth, a real educator, one of those prophets whom the Lord in all ages has sent to His chosen peoples. It is thus that we should seek to understand him. But in order rightly to understand what manner of man he was, who is perhaps the choicest expression which the Swedish national spirit has ever assumed in the history of the civilisation of the North, we must first endeavour to form a conception of the character of this people, of its formation and its development, before it could give itself such an expression as Viktor Rydberg.

 

* * * *

 At an early date, among the people who inhabited the country between the North Sea and the Baltic, that trait was prominent which, of all others, is the sign of nobility among the Aryan races,—the perception that there is another world than that of the senses, a higher goal for which to strive than the earthly goal,—the religious feeling, which from a dim natural mysticism developes into ever-increasing brightness. That this feature, even at the very earliest dawning of the Swedish national feeling, was for our race the over-mastering sentiment, is evident from the manner in which Olaf Trygvason—although abusively—characterised his Swedish adversaries in the fight at Svoldern, according to Snorre Sturloson ; but in later history, this feature was expressed in a clearer and better fashion. It is seen in our ancient laws. It was this indwelling conviction in our race—that there is something which is right, and something which is wrong, that there are laws according to which mankind is commanded by God to live—which made our forefathers regard a code of laws as the first necessity of society, and which made them devote their highest mental powers to legislation and administration. The circumstance that Sweden possesses more numerous and better regulated codes of law than Denmark, Norway and Iceland all put together, is only an expression of a sense of justice, arising from a living feeling of religion—a feature which, at an early date, distinguished the Swedish people from the other Northern races.

 

But law-giving was not the only expression of this feeling. There was a wealth of legends, songs, and stories, now lost, but which we can still plainly trace. We had no Snorre Sturloson or Saemund, and so these treasures were not preserved, and the myths of our fathers have crumbled into ruins. But doubtless, in Svithiod also, songs were sung in honour of the gods, songs which had their own peculiar Swedish ring. It was the natural features of the country which gave birth to the singers. It was the eternal mystery of nature, the thunder of the cataract, and the sighing of the fir-tree, in the " great, wide forest, wide for sixty miles," which gave to the character of the Swedish people that mysterious leaning towards the supernatural which ever afterwards—even in the days of over-powering spiritual indifference —distinguished its foremost typical figures.

But ancient Sweden was not merely a vast inland forest; it possessed also extensive coast-lines, where the free, boundless, blue sea rushed up into the deep bays, and where the roar of the strong winds made ceaseless music for the heart of mankind. And here, nature brought forth another type, of equal primeval antiquity in the character of the Swedish race. This was " derringdo "—the longing for brave ventures, for fields for brilliant exploits; and it found an early expression in the Viking cruises—the voyages to Holmgard, Gardarike, and Miklagard, to the Sarkland of romance—the country of the Saracens. It was not alone by visible means, as on the old marble lion at the Piraeus, that these Swedes graved their runes. They graved them in their actions as well. The stories of the Vararger dominion in Novgorod and Kijev, of the Varinger in Byzantium, preserve in history the memory of these early manifestations of Swedish power of action. When the introduction of Christianity put an end to these expeditions this characteristic found expression in other ways. The Swede was not slow to act when it was a question of defending what was dear to him. Engelbrekt took up the sword for right and freedom. In this, the warfare of the Swedish peasants, the goal of the ideal—the country's freedom— bestowed for the first time on the outward expression of the national fundamental character a gleam of spiritual brightness. Its two chief characteristics are no longer opposed to each other. During the strife for the existence of a political Sweden, the Swedish national spirit increases its internal unity.

 

If, during the days of the Vikings, the lust of action was the overmastering feature of our race, in the Middle Ages it was the mystical, religious characteristic that was most prominent. The spirit of the age was first and foremost a spirit of a religious feeling ; and it was therefore natural that the bent of the Swedish people in this direction should at this period reach its highest pitch of development. The first time that the Swedish name arrested the attention of the whole of Europe was by means of a woman widely renowned for her piety and her visions, Saint Birgitta. But we had already had before her a mystic of the purest type in Petrus de Dacia.

 Our own time, which is animated by the same spirit of enquiry that distinguished the Renaissance, has called forth the saintly Gotland Dominican from the tomb of parchment in which, for six hundred years, !in the church at Jtilich, had been preserved the work whereby he—as Dante for Beatrice—idealised the heavenly bride of his heart, the maiden from Stumbelen, Saint Kristina. The pure, simple tale of love—if, indeed, such words may be applied to it—which was told in the little German village about the year 1266, has touched us all. We have seen, as on the canvas of some Pre-Raphaelite master, the youthful, dreaming, innocent, affectionate Petrus de Dacia, by the glow of the evening fire, or in the tender light of the spring evening, conversing with the visionary, wondrous peasant-maiden concerning God and the Saints, and the innermost essence of love; and when we have read his letters, from which breathes a mystic flame, our thoughts have been irresistibly drawn to that almost contemporaneous work, so near akin, the Vita Nuova of Dante. But only the most clear-sighted of us have seen, in the dreamer's labours, the first distinct expression of one of the choicest features of the soul of the Swedish people.

And this feature was even more distinctly marked in the personality of Saint Birgitta ; but it developed itself in a practical direction, that of working for the good of humanity. In her case, the religious feeling is combined with the love of labour, the tremendous energy which aroused the admiration of the time. She makes a pilgrimage to Spain, to the tomb of San Diego at Compostella; she sternly reproves Magnus Erikson, King of Sweden ; and in spite of every difficulty, she organises a crusade against the Russians. Not content with influencing the politics of Sweden, she attacks, with her fearless tongue and the whole force of her revelations, no less a person than the head of the Christian Church, the Pope himself, now the tool of the French Kings at Avignon. In order to persuade him to quit his ignominious position and return to Rome, and with the view of obtaining the consent of the Holy Father to her favourite plan, a new Swedish conventual system, she sets off for Rome, to which, after seventeen years of waiting, she at last sees Urban V. return. Two years later she receives his consent to her conventual system ; and finally, at the age of seventy, she undertakes a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

....No Swedish king, also, has so thoroughly understood the Swedish people as Gustaf Adolf. He knew the faults of the nation ; but he knew also its brilliant gifts. He knew that under the indifference of daily life, under the grey ashes of inertness, there ever glows an unquenched fire, which only needs a powerful blast to make it once more burst forth in full flame. He knew there is nothing the Swede dreads so much as " wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at "; and that under cover of spiritual indifference lies hidden a ceaseless longing for eternal beauty and endless truth. He knew—so it has been said—that the passion for adventure of the old Viking days has never entirely disappeared fiom the blood of our people; that the Swede, when he is reduced to passive idleness, becomes timid and indifferent, and that he is first restored to himself again when he hears the roar of the storm and the whistling of the winds, which tell of swelling sails, of bent bows, and of drawn swords.

Gustaf Adolf called Sweden to a Viking cruise, the greatest in its history—a Viking cruise for the spiritual freedom of the people. With him begins that wonderful period of our history, which has been called the time of Sweden's greatness—that age when the poor northern country, which did not contain one-fifth of the inhabitants of the Sweden of the present day, was in truth a great power—a remarkable circumstance, capable only of explanation in one way. Sweden possessed an inward greatness, a spiritual greatness, a wealth of men of great minds. It was the most brilliant epoch of the true Swedish nature, when the people's power of action found no aim too lofty for it, when a deep religious feeling permeated our whole nation, from the King and his councillors to the soldier and the peasant.

To have possessed a greatness, founded upon other factors than mere numbers, and material resources, is not only the proudest memory of our race, but also a hostage for great possibilities in the future; for our people are at heart still the same to-day as in the days of Gustaf Adolf II. Centuries no more change the character of a race than do years change that of an individual. Viktor Rydberg, indeed, goes so far as to say that he considers it unreasonable " to apply the Darwinian idea of evolution to so short a period of time as a thousand years, and to imagine, for example, that the nature of our Swedish people could during that time be changed to anything essentially different and more lofty." 

When we study the life-histories of the Swedes of that great time, we feel that they are " flesh of our flesh," even if it is our best qualities that predominate in them, and this in a manner hardly conceivable in our day.

The consuming desire for activity, the tireless power of labour, with a background of true religion, are the characteristics of the great men of that age.

 Where shall we find an iron zeal like that of Axel Oxenstierna, a man who bore alone upon his own shoulders such a load of government, able to grasp the smallest details of administration, without losing one iota of the statesman's world-embracing glance? Or where shall we find a man of more tireless, manysided nature than Olaus Rudbeck? he who at the age of twentytwo was already one of the foremost anatomists of the day, and who, after becoming a technic of the highest rank, became the natural philosopher whose wisdom succeeding ages must admire equally with his imagination—and all this, one may say, during the time he was mastering as good as all the learning of his day, while, as an engineer, he was a Swedish Leonardo da Vinci.

 It was being rich in such men that made great the Sweden of the great age.

But the second innate Swedish characteristic—the religious, the mystic—had also its representatives during this period, which, before all else, was a time of action. The greater number of these is to be found within the boundaries of the State Church.

But there were other men besides Churchmen—men such as Burens and his disciple Stjernhjelm—who hearkened to the wondrous mystic tones that a true Swedish nature has always recognised in the natural features of our country, and in the memorials of our people.

 But it was not until the sunset hour of the day of Swedish greatness, that these fundamental characteristics of the Swedish people—the nature of the Viking, and the nature of the seer— were destined to attain their highest development in two different personalities.

 In the one, the Swedish people joyfully recognised from the very first that trait which, before all others, they desire to find in their bannermen; in the other, the representative of the deeper, more mysterious features of the national character still remains not understood.

 Once did their two paths cross each other. It was in Lund, in 1716, that Karl XII. met Svedenborg. It was a memorable day when Sweden's most renowned son, the hero-king, in whose guise the Swedish Viking nature dazzled the world, as never heretofore, encountered the man in whom all that our race has within itself of wondrous mysticism, of prescient dream-life, found its world-renowned expression !

 1906 Oliver Elton

Frederick York Powell: a Life and Selection from his Letters and Occasional Writings Volume 1

: Memoirs and Letters

p. 114 "Powell caused the Folklore Society to put the translating of the mythical books into my hands. He wrote the bulk of the introduction, 'some considerations on Saxo's sources, historical method, and folklore,' extending to more than a hundred closely packed pages, and costing much labour. The book came out in 1894: his commentary was kept on the stocks during the interval, and is fastidiously done. He uses his favourite procedure, drawing up classified lists, under many headings, of Saxo's references. He ranges beside these the parallel matter from the vernacular, and from folklore and history at large. He reviews the conclusions of specialists like Rydberg and Olrik, and indicates his own. "

p. 142 (in a letter to Oliver Elton dated 18 June 1892):

"Mogk I have read and Symons. I don't think them at all good: they don't understand what the myth is. It is all unhistorical and subjective, their system, save in a few points. Rydberg has instinct and imagination, but he is a little too apt to see identities. However, he has grasped the fact that we have parallel myths in our records—as we should a priori expect from the fact that the Teutonic nations and federacies are made up of many different tribes and clans with their different sacra and traditions."

 

1906  J. G. R. Forlong
Encyclopedia of Religions or Faiths of Man, Part 2‎ - p. 10

Eddas. These embody ancient Skandinavian traditions, or "mothers' tales." The Elder Edda, consisting of 39 poems, was written out for the first time by priests in Iceland (Ari Frode, and Saemund Frode) about 1120 A.C. The Younger Edda, a century later, was so written by the Christian bishop Snorri Sturlassen (1178 to 1241). Neither was known to Europe before 1643. The hymns in this Younger Edda are called sagas (" saws" or " sayings"), but are not to be confounded with the Norse sagas, which arose in the Vickiu (Viking) ages (see ^rik). In the Elder Edda we begin with the creation of gods, giants, men, dwarfs, and other creatures, and proceed to the "Last Battle "—the destruction and renewal of the world, as related in the divine " Song of Volva"—a sibyl. Other hymns are devoted to particular gods and heroes, to the Niflungs, and to Sigurd who slew the dragon Fafnir. The Volva, seated on a throne, addresses Odin and other gods, telling them about the world before their existence, and of the dread day of Ragnarok, when all will end and Chaos rule supreme. A god Heimdal, disguised as a man, named Rig (or " king "), finds a pair of dwarfs, Ai and Edda (" father and mother"), by the seashore, and gives them power to produce Thralls who dig and burn peat, herd swine, and farm land. Rig then finds An and Amma (also a " father and mother "), who produce Churls, who plough, use carts, and build houses. Lastly, he comes to Fadir and Moder, who produce the Jarl or free man, who hunts, and uses swords, and runes or writings (which the Norse got from Greek traders, as Dr Isaac Taylor shows), about our 5th century (see Runes). In the "Song of Thrym " we learn how Thor lost his hammer, which the giant refused to return unless Freya was given to him. Thor feigned (see Freya) to be a maiden, in whose lap his hammer is found (a phallic tale). The Younger Edda is in prose, and is Christianised by its author. It consists of five parts. The first begins with an Adam and Eve. The second is about "the delusion of King Gylfi and the giantess Gefion" : also as to the miraculous rise of the island of Zealand, and how Odin led the Aesir (or gods) to settle in Gylfi's land, that is in Sweden. Minute details as to the poetry of Skalds are here given, with lists of their names, and even a philological treatise with rules of grammar for their guidance.

The three oldest MSS. of this work—of which that of Upsala is the most important—date from about 1300 A.C. Hence, perhaps, the allusion to baptism; for Fadir and Moder baptise their child Jarl. The spirit of a dead father, in one tale, appears and urges his son to "righteousness of life." The Elder Edda contains a "Lay of the Sun." Rydberg (Teutonic Mythology) holds that the Younger Edda is not reliable as a key to the Elder, and that neither are true records of the religion of Odin. But they rescue from oblivion many ancient fragments of poetry; and he believes the myths to have a historic foundation.

 
1906 Albert Shaw
Atlantic Monthly

 "VICTOR RYDBERG, REFORMER, THE "DANTE OF SWEDEN."

 







In order to uplift mankind socially, the work of the philosopher and poet is as much needed as that of the practical man of affairs. The poet is the bearer of high ideals, and the closer he stands to the masses of the people the more fruitful will his work be. Victor Rydberg Is such a leading spirit and a captain among the Swedish people. In a recent number of the Social Tidskrifl (Stockholm), Mr. E. Liljedahl points out the significance of this remarkable man as a social reformer. In picturing the "inferno of industrialism," Rydberg has indeed deserved the name of the " Dante of Sweden."

Gifted with an immense brain power, enabling him to be at once philosopher, author, historian, parliamentarian, and journalist, the secret of Rydberg's popularity lies in the fact that his writings are attractive to all classes,—to the workman, to the school, to the university, and to the library. Nine years after liis death, his lectures on Roman culture are still coming from the press.

 What are the prominent teachings of Rydberg as a social reformer? First of all, he taught freedom of individual conscience. It was this that inspired him in the fight against the state church, which claimed to be a higher court over good and evil than ■• the voice of God in the inner man." With Rydberg religion was a living reality, only needing the support of dogma and ceremonies when it lacked the inner stability. In connection with faith in the conscience thoughts led Rydberg on to his successful battle against dogmatism and tradition, the fruit of which is his great work, "The Teaching of the Bible as to Christ."

 In his attitude on the labor question Rydberg was the uncompromising champion of the workingman, and his writings on this subject, in both prose and verse, are part of the "treasury of this class." Recognizing the mission of industry, his chief purpose was to picture that society, which was not governed by the laws of law for humanity. An enemy of the upper house of the Riksdag, owing to its slow work in social reform, the liberalism of Rydberg was, on the other hand, too genuine to be chained to socialism. He warns against the idealizing of a future state by the working classes, proving that the ideal is beyond all human realization. In a movement of such magnitude as the labor movement, he fully realized that frictions must ensue.

The testament which Rydberg has given humanity is too great to be fully estimated at the present time. The seed planted by the author will bring forth fruit in coming generations. The idea at the bottom of the author's thoughts is eternal. Rejecting the dream of the preist, that of eternal reward for a good earthly life, he declared that the founder of Christianity never taught any such material thing. Victor Rydberg's idea is the one of Paul the Apostle, or the social one,—we are all members of one body. The member who advances facilitates the progress of all others, while the one who falls behind retards the whole in coming to the full stature of man.

 

1906 Erik Bråte
"Nyare Forskning i Nordisk Mytologi"
in Svensk Humanistiska Förbundets Skrifter 11

Samtidigt med Bugge uppträdde V. Rydberg, med Undersökn. i germ. mytologi I, 2, Sthlm 1886—89, som utgör en lärobyggnad i jämförande mytologi, uppförd med den mest glänsande kombinationsförmåga. Nordiska mytiska personer identifieras inbördes och med andra indoeuropeiska folks, de vandringssagor, som de olika germanska stammarna utgifva för sin äldsta historia, tolkas äfvenledes mytologiskt, och en gudasaga diktas, som är det skaldesnille värdig, som varit dess upphofsman, men den har icke kunnat vinna någon anslutning i vetenskapliga kretsar. På enskildheterna i det digra verket kan här icke ingås, en kortare sammanfattning af sina undersökningars resultat för den germanska mytologien har förf. gifvit uti Fädernas gudasaga, berättad för ungdomen, Sthlm 1887. I företalet till detta lämnas följande redogörelse för den vunna uppfattningen: »En närmare undersökning har visat, att vår folkstams myter bildat en fortlöpande saga, hvari hvarje myt, äfven om den i sin uppkomst var fristående, blifvit införlifvad som länk i en kedja, hvilken börjar med världens, gudarnes och människosläktets upphof och ändar med ragnarök och världsförnyelsen. Dessa kedjans yttersta länkar sammanknytas genom myterna om världens lefnadsåldrar, om urfäderna och de händelser, som i deras dagar timade. Det första människoparet och de närmaste släktleden efter det lefva i en kulturlös oskulds- och fridsålder. En af vanagudarne sändes förmänskligad till Midgard för att undervisa människorna. Han blir germanfolkets förste präst och lärare. Han efterträdes af den förste domaren (Sköld-Borgar) och denne af den förste konungen (Halfdan-Mannus). Dennes tre söner åter varda de nu i tre grenar sig skiljande germanfolkens första stamkonungar. Med deras öden afslutas den mytiska urhistorien men för att fortsättas i hjältedikter om deras afkomlingar, hvilka dikter utlöpa i den egentliga historien.»

V. Rydbergs forskning har på ett träffande sätt karakteriserats som poetisk skapelse af A. Noreen, Fornnordisk religion, mytologi och teologi, s. 35 f., i Spridda studier, s. 19 f. Denne förf. framställer där tillika en originell, i många fall säkert högst beaktansvärd åsikt om mytiska bildningars uppkomst ur missförstådda språkliga uttryck. Då Tor kallades »styrkans och kraftens fader» (yfader priiäar ok magna), så gaf detta upphof åt hans dotter Trud (isl. prudr f.) och sonen Magne (gen. pl. magna togs för gen. sing. mask. Magna). I fråga om åtskilliga detaljer hänvisar Noreen till den närmare motiveringen i sin afhandling Mytiska beståndsdelar i Ynglingatal i Uppsalastudier, tillägnade Sophus Bugge, Uppsala 1892.

Den forskning, för hvars viktigaste verk hittills redogjorts, har som hufvudföremål sysselsatt sig med den mytologi, som är framställd i Eddorna, skaldedikterna och här och där annars i fornlitteraturen.

Men det finnes ock en annan källa, där man sökt mytologiskt vetande, nämligen i folksagan och folktron. De äldre mytologerna tolkade folksagorna som förbleknade myter: blef handen af biten på en jägare af ett lejon, erinrade man sig Tyr, slogos jättar ihjäl, var Tor åsyftad uti deras baneman. Hela folksagan ansågs alltså urgammal och hednisk. Denna ståndpunkt representerar Simrock, Handbuch der deutschen Mythologie, Bonn 1853, 6:e aufl. 1887. Metoden blef misstänkt genom Benfeys undersökningar om Pantschatantra 1859, 1 hvilka ådagalades, att en stor del af Tysklands folksagor först under medeltiden öfverflyttades frän Indien till Europa.

Folktron framträdde som mytologiskt material framför allt i arbeten af Mannhardt, som förut varit en jämförande mytolog och slutligen som det enda gemensamma för de indoeuropeiska folken fann de enkla föreställningarna om andar, som härskade i träd, i skog och på åkerfältet; ur denna primitiva mytologi hade de högre mytologiska gestalterna utvecklat sig, t. ex. ur folktrons stormdämon YVode hade guden Wodan uppstått. För denna utveckling uppställdes en relativ kronologi af E. H. Meyer, hvilken som folktrons första utvecklingsstadium antog föreställningen om spöken, de dödas andar, framkallad framför allt genom drömmen. Sedan föreställningen om andars tillvaro sålunda trängt sig på människorna, låg det nära att ock förklara naturens företeelser genom sådana. Den högre dämontron utvecklade den tredje graden: tron på gudar och hjältar.

1907 Hans Emil Larsson
"Swedish Literature between
the Period 1865-1890" 
JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology,
Vol. VI,  p. 683-699

 Bostrom's philosophy left an imperishable monument in Swedish literature in Viktor Rydberg. Rydberg, to be sure, was not Bostrom's pupil, but he embraced his ideas and, in several respects, developed them independently. A man of great power and versatility, he exerted an influence in philosophy, the history of religion and mythology, and in the history of art and culture, and he left works in all these fields which bear the stamp of profound and comprehensive studies and of independent views; they are characterized by an ideal spirit and masterly form.

He is everywhere the thinker who wishes to see the casual relation in the changing phenomena of life and the times, the enduring element in these changes, the power in the evolution and the goal towards which it is leading. But above all, he is the poet who knows how to formulate his profoundest thoughts into living images, eloquent in their appeal to fancy and feeling, be it in prose or poetry. And he is everywhere the master of language who fashions and moulds his sentences into an adequate, resonant and beautiful expression of the thought and image. No Swedisli poet has better than he been able, in poetic form, to mould the Swedish language into such exquisite harmony and artistic expression.

 Born in 1828 in Jonkoping of poor parents, whom he lost early, he was forced to struggle against need throughout all his childhood and youth. He entered Lund University in 1851 but on account of poverty he was soon obliged to give up his studies in order to earn his living as a private tutor and by occasional contributions to literary publications. In 1855 he received employment with Goteborg's Handels och Sjbfartstidning, the publisher of which, S. A. Hedlund, became to him a valuable friend and helper. For more than twenty years he worked here as a newspaper man. In the meantime, however, he had carried on extensive private studies. Viktor Rydberg was therefore a self-educated man, a fact which will help to explain his way of differing from writers who had had academic training, and of looking at so many things from his own point of view.

It was as a journalist that he published his first work. In A Freebooter in the Baltic (1857) he gives a picture from the 17th century and in Singoalla, sketches from the 13th century.

In 1859 appeared his most noted novel, The Last Athenian, a picture of the age of Julian the Apostate, portraying the struggles between ancient religion and philosophy on the one hand and Christianity and the christian church on the other. Rydberg had made extensive studies in the culture of the classical world and the early history of the christian church. In plastic figures and scenes he reproduces the decay of the old world, the severely formal faith of the christian sects, their violent civil strifes over dogmas and forms, which no one understood, together with the persecutions practised against each other and against the pagans, prompted by differences in faith and the desire for power. Over and above them towers the neo-platonic philosopher Krysanteus, and his noble daughter Hermione, who have embodied in themselves that which was best in the ancient life and teachings, and in an exalted worldconception combined the teachings of the Greek philosophers with the myths of the pagan religion. The idea intended to be conveyed is not, however, that Christianity as such is a retrograde step in history. What Rydberg attacks is only the blind faith in the letter, that intolerance and the spirit of persecution which has obscured recognition of the fact that Christianity is life as well as doctrines, and that above all it is the religion of love. For there even appears in his work a representative of the genuine Christianity, a christian minister, and lie and the philosopher understand one another perfectly, respect each other, and are able to work together. But both suffer a tragic defeat before the victorious barbarians of the church. The fundamental idea of the book is that tragedy of history, that an advance such as was the victory of Christianity, was only gained by the rejection of that which was good in antiquity as well as that which was base, by the destruction of that noble humanism, which antiquity had created and which was not to rise again until a thousand years after its destruction, when in and through the Renaissance it was restored to humanity.

 A result of Rydberg's studies in ancient philosophy and the earliest history of the christian church was likewise the treatise on The Teachings of the Bible Relative to Christ, published in 1862. In this work he sought to show that the teachings of the church relative to Christ such as they had been developed at the ekumenical church diets was not that of the Bible. According to the Bible Christ is not God, but man's idea in God, the perfect man, as conceived by God, the ideal man, logos, " the word," which had " become flesh." In conformity with this Rydberg denies that the doctrine of the trinity is found in the Bible. It was an ingenious attempt on the basis of the words of the Bible itself to unite Christianity with Bostrom's philosophy. This was made possible by its kinship with neo-platonism, which also had left its impress upon the Bible. The book called forth a violent opposition, in which Rydberg maintained with great ability his right as a protestant to interpret the Bible for himself independently of church diets and confessions of faith, and in several later pamphlets he developed his views more in detail.

In the year 1873, Rydberg made a journey to Italy, where he himself beheld the remains of the old world, which he had loved so much and pictured so brilliantly, and the early christian world, which he had studied so profoundly. He devoted himself particularly to the Etudy of art, and he published several articles on the history of art which were later issued in his Roman Days. Among those may be ranked particularly The Emperors of Rome in Marble, in which the author attempts to determine the character of those emperors from the images of them which have been preserved in sculpture, and through investigating the written sources of their history, which in many cases he finds are not impartial, he succeeds in giving an interesting and artistic character drawing of them.

 In 1876, Rydberg was appointed lecturer in Goteborg, and he then gave up his occupation as a journalist. He was now able to devote all his time to his studies and to his literary work.  ... Here he presents often in the figures of myths, the sagas and history, the eternal question of the mission and the goal of the human race and of the individual.

In 1881 he received a call to the professorship in the History of Culture in Stockholm Academy, and in 1889 he was made professor of the Theory and History of the Fine Arts, a position which he filled until his death in 1895.

 During the seventies, Rydberg had published in periodical publications several poems. These were characterized by beauty of form and depth of thought, together with classical clearness of expression. They showed that the versatile scientist and writer of novels was also a poet of high rank. In 1882 he published his first collection of Poems. Here he presents often in the figures of myths, the sagas and history, the eternal question of the mission and the goal of the human race and of the individual. Dissimilar world-conceptions as in Ahasverus and Prometheus are pitted against one another, and the answer he gives to these questions is that the ultimate goal is a more and more complete attainment of the eternal ideals, the true, the good, and the beautiful, a more and more sublime development of the image of God in man through the ages. This may take place through the struggle of the individual against everything that tends to suppress the ideal, the thirst for gold, self-indulgence, violence and oppression. In his second volume of poems Rydberg gives evidence of being influenced somewhat by the new movement which asserted itself in Sweden in the eighties, according to which poetry should concern itself more directly with real life. In The New Song of the Grotto, based on the legend of the mill Grotti, which ground gold for King Frode, he represents this mill as an image of industrialism which without regard to the sacrifice of blood and tears, of higher humanity, merely seeks to transform society into a gold-mill and men into slaves who drive it, and in the process trample one another under foot.

Rydberg returned to the novel in The Sword-Smith, Visions from the Termd -of the Reformation (1891), which deals with ideas closely related to those ke had embodied in The Last Athenian. The slavish belief in the letter of "the confession of faith, with its narrow, intolerant love of power marches on victoriously, treading underfoot far-sighted humanism, true christian piety, the love of what the fore-fathers had loved and venerated ; and thereby the principal mission of the Reformation is forgotten, that of creating spiritual liberty. The underlying idea is again that an advance in history such as the Reformation was, could not be accomplished except by the loss of so much that was good, and which had been accomplished by the cultural work of preceding ages; that, together with abuses and evils, there was rejected and destroyed so much of the best cultural fruits of the Middle Ages, that it would require the labor of centuries again to regain it.

Viktor Rydberg possessed a marked historical sense. The Old Norse asa-faith viewed the world in the image of a tree, the ash Yggdrasil, and on many of Sweden's farm-steads there stood guardian trees from generation to generation as a symbol of the life of the family, within which the estate descends by inheritance from father to son. The guardian tree and the familytree are pictures, which the poet often employs, and he would have the human race and the family grow and develop like a tree. He is a liberal progressionist, but he desires continuity in the development, he desires evolution not revolution.

During the latter part of his life, Ryberg devoted himself to mythological investigations and published a large work under the title Inquiries into Germanic Mythology, in which he attempted to gather the scattered accounts of primitive Germanic myths into one grand and harmonious whole. The results at which he arrived have, however, not been accepted by other mythologists.

Viktor Rydberg exercised a profound influence on the intellectual life of Sweden. His collected works, together with his biography, have been issued by Karl Warburg ; his lectures on philosophy and the history of culture have also been published since the author's death.

  

1907 Gudmund Schütte
Oldsaga om godtjod: bidrag til etnisk kildeforsknings metode -p. 29

Viktor Rydberg har i sine »Undersökninger i germanisk mythologi«, I (1886) helliget hele første Hovedafsnit (232 S.) til Spørgsmålet »Vandringssagorna och mythen om urtiden«. Underafsnit II omhandler »Vandringssagorna under medeltiden«, nemlig A) »Den lärda sagan om utvandringen från Troja-Asgard«, B) »Minnen i medeltidens folksägner af den hedniska vandringssagan«; Underafsnit III omhandler »Mythen om den germaniska urtiden och utflyttningarna från Norden«. Resultaterne af II sammenfatter Rydberg S. 90 således: »De vandringssagor jag nu genomgått. . hafva härflutit ur olika stammars sagominnen; de omfatta ostgother, västgother, longobarder, gepider, burgunder, heruler, franker, saksare, schwabare och alamanner; och vill man dertill lägga vittnesbordet af Hrabanus Maurus, så skulle de i sjelfva verket omfatta alla tyska folk. Samtliga vittnesborden äro enhalliga i den foreställning, att i Norden var det germaniska ur1andet. Till dessa intyg b6r slutligen läggas ett det älsta af alla: vittnesbordet af Tacitus' källor från tiden omkring Kristi fodelse och forstå århundradet af vår tideräkning« (dvs. Mannung-Stamtavlen). Første Paragraf af III, med Overskriften »Människoskapelsen. Ur1andet. Scef kulturbringaren«, indleder Rydberg således: »Människoslägtet eller åtminstone den germaniske manskligheten härstammar enligt mythen från ett enda par och har således haft ett centrum, från hvilket dess afkomlingar utbredt sig Sfver den värld, som låg inom germanisk synskrets. Sagan om detta pars skapelse har sin rot i en myth af forn-arisk bord, enligt hvilken stamforäldrarne tillhorde växtverlden, innan de vordo till människor.« (Iranisk sagovariant i Bundehesh kap. 15).

 

Endnu mere Stof til etnologiske Enkelt-Drøftelser giver det Digt, der sædvanlig går under Navnet »Vidsid«. Dets Plads i Literaturhistorien er hidtil ikke nøje fastslået; Korting sætter det udenfor Nummer, men de fleste Forskere turde vel være så nogenlunde enige om at kendemærke eller bruge det som et »Register over Heltesagn«. Vi skal nu gennemgå de vigtigste Udtalelser.

 

 1907 Nils Herlitz
Svensk Social litteratur, 1882-1907 - Page 9

Viktor Rydberg och Benjamin Kidd om den sociala utvecklingen och den hvita rasens framtid. NEFF: 2, s. 31—47. 187 .  

 

1908 Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics:
Vol. II edited by James Hastings 1910

John Alexander Selbie, Louis Herbert Gray - Philosophy - 1910 

Page 703
... vara has been sought, as common property of the Indo-Germanic peoples, by Rydberg (Teutonic Mythology, Eng. (r., London, 1906, pp. 306-390, esp. pp. ...

Page 708
Urd is possibly the equivalent of the goddess Hel (Rydberg, 308 ; Simrock, 340). The third root is in Niflheim, the place of punishment; the second, ...

Page 709
A series of more elaborate tales, analyzed by Rydberg, are certainly reminiscent of earlier pagan belief, and preserve many of the aspects of the under ... ... Finally, they reached a place where they saw cisterns of mead, a vast decorated horn, and other treasures.

Page 710
V. Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology, tr. by B. Anderson, London, 1889 ; de la Saussaye, Religion of tM ...

1910  James Hastings, John Alexander Selbie, Louis ... -

"A series of more elaborate tales, analyzed by Rydberg, are certainly reminiscent of earlier pagan belief, and preserve many..."

 1908 Richard Steffen

Svensk litteraturhistoria för den högre elementarundervisningen

 

"Såsom den främste representanten för den idealistiska diktningen märkes en författare, som ej tillhörde den ovannämnda kretsen, nämligen Viktor Rydberg. Han föddes i Jönköping 1828, studerade först i Växjö skola och sedan vid Lunds universitet, varpå han 1855 bosatte sig i Göteborg såsom medarbetare i Göteborgs Handelsoch Sjöfartstidning. För denna författade han artiklar av olikartat innehåll samt noveller och romaner, som intogos i följetongsavdelningen och sedermera utkommo i bokform. Romanerna Fribytaren på Östersjön (l857), Singoalla (1858) och Den siste atenaren (1859) äro ej vad man brukar beteckna som »historiska» men äga dock alla en historisk bakgrund. »Singoalla» är en romantisk medeltidsberättelse från Magnus Erikssons och digerdödens tid och behandlar i en vemodig och innerlig anda en riddarsons kärlek till en zigenarflicka. »Den siste atenaren», som behandlar ett ämne från brytningstiden mellan hedendom och kristendom i den antika världen, anses som ett av vår litteraturs klassiska verk. Långt senare (189l) offentliggjorde Rydberg ännu en historisk roman, Vapensmeden, som framställer bilder från reformationstiden i Sverige. I dessa båda romaner, vilkas grundtanke är densamma: skildringen av striden mellan humanitet och dogmatik, har författaren föga eftersträvat historisk kostym utan snarare velat framställa sann och ädel mänsklighet och ge uttryck åt sin egen harmoniska skönhetskänsla. Under 1860-talet ägnade sig Rydberg huvudsakligen åt religions- och kulturhistoriska forskningar. Genom sitt verk Bibelns lära om Kristus (1862) väckte han första gången större uppmärksamhet i vidare kretsar och förvärvade sig en ansedd ställning som målsman för den fria forskningen. Efter en resa till Italien utgav han Romerska sägner om Paulus och Petrus (1874) samt Romerska dagar (1876—77), vilket senare arbete innehåller huvudsakligen konsthistoriska utkast och skildringar. I sina prosaverk hade Rydberg här och där inlagt stycken på vers och även annorstädes offentliggjort dikter, som likväl ej fullt visat, vilken betydande skald gömde sig i honom. Detta började bliva klart från och med 1875, då hans egentliga glansperiod som diktare begynner. En samling Dikter utkom 1882, och denna följdes av ännu en 1891. A.v dessas innehåll märkas Kantat (vid jubelfestpromotionen i Uppsala 1877), Dexippos, Snöfrid, Prometeus och Ahasverus, Barndomspoesien, Grubblaren och Den nya Grottesången. Dessutom har Rydberg på ett vackert sätt tolkat första delen av Goethes Faust. Rydbergs lyrik är nästan uteslutande tankediktning. Han är en »siare», som i upphöjda ordalag tolkar sina syner och sina djupsinniga reflexioner över mänsklighetens stora spörsmål. Vad han förkunnar, är en harmonisk förening av hellenisk skönhet och kristlig mildhet. Hela hans författarskap präglas av nitälskan för forskningens frihet, av en ädel harm över det lunipna och låga, som han på ett gripande sätt kan gissla (Grottesången), under det han likväl i det hela har en ljus och förhoppningsfull syn på mänskligheten, åt vars evighetslängtan och evighetshopp han i profetiska syner ger ett mäktigt uttryck. Hans konstnärliga form äger både i vers och prosa en klar och fulländad skönhet, l språkligt avseende ivrar han särskilt för utrensning ur språket av de många främmande lånorden (»purism»), ett strävande vari han kanske gick något långt. Rydberg, som sedan 1884 var professor vid Stockholms högskola, dog i sitt hem på Djursholm 1895. 1908 Hermannsson Halld Bibliography of the Icelandic Sagas and Minor Tales, p. 41   Sagan om Gunnlög Ormtunga och Skald-Ram, på svenska tolkad af P. Aug. Gödecke. Stockholm 1872  ...Review: Götesborg Handelstidning, Dec 30, 1872, by Viktor Rydberg, reprinted under the heading “Fornmnordiskt” in his Skrifter. Stockholm 1899 XIV pp. 524-532.  

 

1908 E. Mogk
Eleus Sophus Bugge
 JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology - Page 110

In diesem Werke behandelte Bugge vor allem die Mythenkreise: die Baldermythe, die Mythe von Odin am Galgen, und die von der weltesche Yggdrasill. Keine von diesen Mythen, nimmt er an, ist ein nordisches Gewächs. Nordländer haben vielmehr im Verkehr mit den Völkern der Westmeerinseln, den Iren und den Angelsachsen, die Legenden vom Christus und Sagen des klassischen Altertums kennen gelernt und diese in nordgermanisch-poetischem Gewande wiedergegeben. Bei dieser Wiedergabe hat die Uebertragung der fremden Namen eine bedeutende Rolle gespielt: die einen sind Namen der Vorlage in nordischem Gewande, andre Uebersetzungen, die nicht selten auf falsches Verständnis des ursprünglichen Namens hinauslaufen. Mit der ihm eignen Belesenheit, Phantasie und Kombinationsgabe suchte Bugge diese Tatsache zu stützen. Die Studien riefen eine Flut wissenschaftlicher Streitschriften hervor—als eine revolutionäre Idee bezeichnete man das ganze Werk. Besonders arg griffen Rydberg und Müllenhoff seinen Verfasser an, während K. Maurer, E. H. Meyer u. a. sich alsbald auf seine Seite schlugen. Nur allmählich hat sich der Sturm gelegt, und auch heute ist die Forschung noch nicht einig. Doch ein wichtiges Ergebnis hat das Werk gehabt; man mag sich Bugges Ideen gegenüber verhalten wie man will: man nimmt heute nicht mehr die eddische Ueberlieferung so schlechthin auf Treu und Glauben hin, sondern prüft jedes Zeugnis auf seinen literargeschichtlichen und mythischen Wert.