"...Petersson att likna en sagens elaka styvmor. I ett brev till Rudolf Ström, kapten Ströms son, 1857 berättar Rydberg, att hon genom sin oginhet och sin grälsjuka för första gången låt honom 'smaka livets bitterhets.') Det måste därför ha känts som en befriselse, då han våren 1844 flyttade över stadsfogden som huslärare för den där inneboende sonen till komminister Lagergren och på sommaren 1845 erhöll egen bostad.2) Den av Rundbäck omtalade passionen för läsning utanför skolkurserna kunde han under dess år tillfredsställa dels genom Boklån hos representanter för den litterärt och konstnärligt intresserade hovrättssocieteten in hemstaden, dels under sommarvistelsen 1843 som informator hos ovannämnde komminister Lagergren i   ... Viktor Rydbergs brev nr 155:2, s. 2 

"...Petersson to resemble a fairy-tale's wicked stepmother. In a letter of 1857 to Rudolf Ström, Captain Ström's son, Rydberg says, she through her pettiness and her argumentative nature   let him 'taste life's bitterness' for the first time.) It must have felt like a liberation when in the spring of 1844 he moved across town as live-in tutor for the resident son of Curate Lagergren and in the summer 1845 received his own dwelling. His famous passion for reading outside of school courses mentioned by Rundbäck,  he could satisfy partly during these years via book loans from representatives of the literary and artistic interest society in his own hometown, and during his summer stay in 1843 as a tutor with the above-mentioned Curate Lagergren..."  Viktor Rydberg's letter No. 155:2, p 2
 

1960 G Löwendahl
Kärlek och svårmod hos Viktor Rydberg
 
 
1961 Jan De Vries, Forschungsgeschichte der Mythologie

“Before all others, the Swedish poet and researcher Viktor Rydberg should be awarded the honor to which he is entitled, but too long denied, of having seen with a clear view the deficiencies of the nature-mythology school. In his book Undersökningar i Germanisk Mythologi, published in 1886-1889, he effectively condemned it. He set forth the intrinsic error of the ‘folklore school’ in unmistakable words, and now one can hardly understand why his book was given so little notice at that time. Indeed, to this day, he has not experienced the appreciation, which he deserves.  “He was convinced that there had been an Indo-European mythology, and he attempted, through a detailed comparison of the Indo-Iranian and Germanic myths, to trace these back to a common basic form. One may criticize his method and doubt the conclusions at which he arrived, but one can never forget that this scholar with his gift of sympathetic poetical intuition understood more about the real character of the myths than the Nature-mythologists who embellished their basically very rationalistic interpretations with high-poetic words, yet nevertheless nowhere provide proof that they have a notion of the religious value of the myths. “At a time, when one was firmly convinced that the Old Norse myths were a late product, Rydberg’s voice resounds. At that time, he swam against the stream, but he clearly expressed that which has become an ever stronger certainty today: a large part of the myths of the Germanic tradition —and that is to say basically the Old Norse tradition—must be set back in a time when the undivided Proto-Indo-European people themselves created the vessel of their worldview in myths.”

1962 Germund Michanek
En Morgondröm

"Ordet arisk är bildat av sanskrit ärja som betyder ädel, av god familij.  Fröding har mött de ariska begreppen i första delen av Viktor Rydbergs Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi (1886). Där berättar Rydberg hur en av gudarna sändes i mänsklig gestalt till våra urfäder och blev germanfolkens lärare och präst.

 "Rig-Heimdal's syrelsetid bör uppfattas som den lyckliga urtid, om vilken nästa alla mytologier drömt" ságer Rydberg. För Fröding har det ariska folket framstått som våra äldsta förfäder i en fjärran epok för historisk tideräkning. I Rydbergs  dikt Himlens blå fastslås denna uppfattning i de bekanta raderna: Till ariskt blod, det renaste och älsta, till svensk jag vigdes av en vänlig norna. ..."
 

"The word Aryan is formed from Sanskrit arja meaning noble, of good family. Fröding has treated the Aryan concepts in the first part of Viktor Rydberg's Investigations into Germanic mythology (1886). There Rydberg relates how one of the gods was sent in human form to our forefather's and became the German peoples' teacher and priest." 

"Rig-Heimdal's time of rule should be seen as the happy primeval era, of which almost all mythologies dreamed," said Rydberg. For Fröding the Aryan people have emerged as our oldest ancestors in a distant epoch of historical chronology. In Rydberg's poem Heaven's blue this view is stated in the familiar lines: The Aryan blood, the purest and oldest, to Swedish, I was ordained by a friendly Norn. ... "

1962
Marlene Ciklamini,
"Óðinn and the Giants,"
Neophilologus 46:145-58, p. 151.
 

"Since Suttungr is unanimously declared to be the possessor of the poetic mead, it is difficult to agree with Rydberg that Hávamál 140 represents Bölþorn's son as the owner. His hypothesis is based on a misinterpretation of the stanza, since Háv. 140 represents the boast of a god who deprived his enemies of the exclusive right to magic and the ownership of the mead.... Rydberg's suggestion that Mímir is Bölþorn's son is not substantiated by any source."

 
1962 Norman Davis, Charles Leslie Wrenn
English and Medieval Studies: Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien
 on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday

p.  248 footnote: “For this view see esp. V. Rydberg Undersökningar i Germanisk Mythologi (Stockholm 1886-1889) ii 100 ff. The same view has been expressed in another form by G. Dumezil in many works e.g. Les Dieux des Germains (Paris 1959), pp. 106 ff Les Deiux des Indo-Europiens (Paris, 1952) ch. I 

1963 Stellan Ahlström
Strindberg im Zeugnis der Zeitgenossen 

Sie schildert in einer - wie es scheint - glaubhaften Weise, wie es kam, daß Viktor Rydberg sich bei einer Soiree in diesem Hause weigerte, Strindbergs Bekanntschaft zu machen. Man kann über die Gründe, weshalb Viktor Rydberg dem jüngeren Kollegen nicht vorgestellt werden wollte, geteilter Meinung sein und nach Aussage des finnlandschwedischen Schriftstellers Jacob Ahrenberg soll er über Strindberg ...

She describes in a - as it seems - credible manner how it was that Viktor Rydberg at a soiree in this House refused to make Strindberg's acquaintance. One can speculate about the reasons why Viktor Rydberg's younger colleagues did not want to be presented, and were divided, according to the Finland-Swedish writer Jacob Ahrenberg, regarding Strindberg....

 1964  Bengt Thordeman
 Medieval Wooden Sculpture in Sweden
Statens historiska museum ... -

While the young poet EA Karlfeldt of the 1890's let himself be inspired for his Virgin Mary poem by Swedish peasant art, it is interesting to note that the old Viktor Rydberg in an equally beautiful poem of 1891, Jungfru Maria

 
1964 E.O.G.Turville-Petre
Myth and Religion of the North

“The similarity between Thor and Indra is so remarkable that many have gone further than Grimm did, believing that, in origin, the two gods were one and the same. This opinion was carried far by V. Rydberg, whose views were extreme and therefore won less recognition than they deserved.”
 

1964 Kees W. Bolle
Review of "Forschungsgeschichte der Mythologie by Jan De Vries"
History of Religions, Vol. 3, No. 2 [Winter 1964] pp. 343-346.
 

All in all, the book should be welcome to all who are interested in the history of religions. It will be an excellent replacement for outdated old inadequate books used at present for the study of the history of the discipline (Pinard de la Boullaye, Mensching). Although de Vries limits himself to the history of research in myth, the subject is of central importance and thus the work is a trustworthy guide in the field as a whole. For the student devoted to the history of religions, however, the smaller book mentioned above will serve a good complement.         
It goes almost without saying that the reader will also raise questions in regard to some points in a work of such scope. No interpretation of myth is ever separate from theories on religion in general. It has already been pointed out that the author realizes this quite well. A good deal of attention is given to theories on "primitive mentality" (Leyy-Bruhl and others), even though their relevance to an understanding of myths is not alwavs obvious. It is curious, however, that no mention is made of some scholars whose work did have bearing on the problem of myth and on human behavior mythologically oriented. For Instance, van der Leeuw's name is lacking, while one could have expected at least some reference to his great phenomenological work or his essay on "Urzeit und Endzeitt"or his Der Mensch und die Religion. Neither are the works of Hubert and Mauss dealt with (Meuse's name is mentioned, but only once in passing on p. 201). The author has a peculiar concern for Germanic mythology, which is understandablc but does not always illuminate the general treatment of the history of research in myth.  In discussing the nineteenth-century Swedish poet and scholar Viktor Rydberg the author summarises Rydberg's contributiou in these words: "he expressed clearly that whieh hits home more and more certain for us today: a great many myths of the Germanic tradition-which means principally the old Nordic tradition-should be ascribed to a time in which the undivided original Indo-European people created its world-view in the receptacle of its myths" ("in der das ungeteilte indogermanische Urvolk sich in den Mythen das Gefasz seiner Weltanschauung schuf," p. 250). The problem of the undivided "indogermanisehe Urvolk" and also the question of its supposed body of myths are somewhat too complicated to- be referred to- so casually, even in the present state of Dumezilian research. It obscures as much as it illumines."

1965 Ernst Uehli
Nordisch-Germanische Mythologie als Mysteriengeschichte

Wer ist dieser Loddfafnir? Victor Rydberg gab für diesen Namen die zutreffende Umschreibung: »Langsam faul sich rührender Drache« und bemerkt hierzu, daß der Held dieses Liedes einen solchen Namen bekommen habe, weil er einen Drachen tötete.

Who is this Loddfafnir? Victor Rydberg gave the correct name for this description: "Slow- moving lazy Dragon"  and remarks on this, that the hero of this song got such a name because he killed a dragon.

      1965 Hallberg Hallmundsson
An Anthology of Scandinavian Literature  

"VIKTOR RYDBERG (1828-95) Although Rydberg had written several novels, he did not attract much attention until he published his controversial pamphlet on The Teaching of the Bible Concerning Christ. After the stir caused by this ..."

 
1965 Graham Orton
The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies
 

"RYDBERG. In an article in SvD, 31 Jan 1954, Agnes Langenskjöld discusses Rydberg's attitudes toward the religious views and atmosphere of his childhood, expressed in a kind of naive, warm-hearted pietism. She attaches much influence to his early religious influence, more than other critics have done, and she finds in this respect a striking similarity between rydberg and Lagerkvist. Her article is entitled 'Viktor Rydvberg och folkfromheten'. Dr S. Lönborg's articles are to be found in GHT, 31 July, 1 Aug. and 18 Aug, the first wto entitled 'Viktor Rydberg's svårmodskris', the third 'Skogsrået och Snöfrid'. An article by Dr D. Norrman in SvD , 18 Mar., 'Rydberg och Strindberg i Djursholm', deals with the interrealations of the two writers, the former's coldness and aloofness and the latter's consequent feelings of injured pride. The article is in fact mostly an extract from Norrman's book on Strindberg."

 
 1966 Lloyd Hustvedt 
Rasmus Bjørn Anderson, Pioneer Scholar  
 

"Quite different was his task of putting into English Viktor Rydberg's Teutonic Mythology. Rydberg had taken issue with the theories of Professor Bugge, and for that reason Anderson had a personal interest in making this work available to American readers. "   …"Viktor Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology, translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (London, 1889). ...

 
1966 David L. Miller
Light from the North
A Review Article
Journal of Bible and Religion

The theory, of course, is not new. In 1844 Jacob Grimm noted in Teutonic Mythology the relationship among Indra, Thor, and Zeus. Relational studies were continued by V. Rydberg and F. R. Schroeder, to name only two. These have recently  ...
 

1966 Edwin Oliver James
The Tree of Life: An Archaeological Study

"A few Biblical ideas and instances may have been incorporated in the final consternation, just as parallels from other cosmological and eschatological traditions exist in the Eddic cosmogony. [3]"
[3] Chap. V. pp. 159f. 4) Cf. Rydberg. (Undersokningar i germanisk Mythologi, 2 vols. Kristiania 1886-89) ; J. de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1957) vol. ii. pp. 402 ff..

 
1967 Stanley Kunitz, Vineta Colby eds.
European Authors, 1000-1900: a Biographical Dictionary

In 1877 Rydberg was awarded honorary doctor's degrees by the universities of Uppsala and Lund; the next year he was elected to the Swedish Academy. His marriage to Susen Emilia Hasselblad took place in 1879 . Five years later he accepted accepted a call to professorship in the history of culture at the university of Stockholm in 1880    .....i Germanisk Mythologi as Teutonic Mythology by R.B. Anderson (1889; new editions 1891 and 1906). ...
...As far as Iceland is concerned, we have no trace of the Hamlet story in the sagas and poems belonging to the two centuries intervening between Snæbjorn's verse and Saxo's History; but it seems probable that some account of "Amloði" was given in the lost "Scioldunga Saga," that part of it which contained the Lives of the Kings of Denmark from the earliest times. Internal evidence does not conclusively connect Saxo's story with an Icelandic source, but one statement seems to point to some original document containing a reference to Northern heathendom, such as would have been easily understood by a twelfth-century Icelander; the force of the expression has seemingly been missed by Saxo. "Fialler," he writes, "retired to a spot called Undensakre, which is unknown to our people." Surely this represents Saxo's rationalising of a poetical periphrasis for Fialler's departure from the world. "Odainsakr," the Land of the Undying, the Northern Elysium, was familiar enough to the Icelanders of the twelfth century; the Danes had evidently forgotten their pagan Paradise.†
†Vedel, in his Danish translation of Saxo, places Undensakre in Skaane, the south-west province of Sweden. I cannnot follow Olrik in his suggestion that Undensakre = Undornsakrar (i.e., the south-eastern fields), cp. Sakso Oldhistorie, p. 159. Rydberg ingeniously identifies Fialler with Falr, i.e, Balder, "the single person who by an enemy was transferred to Ódáinsacre." Cp. sections 44-53, 93: the former sections give a valuable analysis of Eric Vidforle's Saga (who, one Christmas Eve, made a vow to seek out Odainsaker), where the older pagan myth has become Christianised.

  
 1967 Sir Israel Gollancz
The Sources of Hamlet: with an Essay on the Legend‎ -p. 7

"The real difficulty in Snorri's extract from Snæbjorn is, however, in its last lines; the arrangement of the words is confusing, the interpretation of the most important of the phrases extremely doubtful. "Lið-meldr" in particular has given much trouble to the commentators: "ineldr," at present obsolete in Icelandic, signifies "flour or corn in the mill;" but the word " lið" is a veritable crux. It may be either the neuter noun "lið," meaning "a host, folk, people," or "ship;" or the masculine "liðr," "a joint of the body." The editors of the Corpus Poeticum Boreale read "meldr-lið," rendering the word "meal-vessel;" they translate the passage, "who in ages past ground Amloði's meal-vessel = the ocean;" but "mala," to grind, can hardly be synonymous with "hræra," to move, in the earlier lines, and there would be no point in the waves grinding the ocean. There seems, therefore, no reason why "meldr-lið" should be preferred to "lið-meldr," which might well stand for "ship-meal" (? " sea-meal," to be compared with the Eddaic phrase "græðis meldr," i.e., sea-flour, a poetical periphrasis for the sand of the shore). Rydberg,* bearing in mind the connection of the myth concerning the cosmic Grotti-Mill with the myth concerning the fate of Ymir and other primeval giants, more especially of Ymir's descendant Bergehner, who, according to an ingenious interpretation of a verse in Vafpruðnis-mal† "was laid under the mill-stone," advanced the theory that "lið-meldr" means "limb-grist." According to this view, it is the limbs and joints of the primeval giants, which on Amloðe's mill are transformed into meal. Allowing, for the nonce, that there is something to be said for "lið-meldr" in the sense of "limb-grist," one finds it difficult to get Rydberg's interpretation out of the words as they stand in the text. The Nine Maidens of the Ocean-Mill grinding Amloðe's limb-grist, i.e., his bones, might be plausible enough, suggestive of some story of a brave prince who sailed too near their dread abode, and received less kindly treatment than did young Macphail of Colonsay at the hands of the maiden of Corrivrekin. Snorri does not help us. The note following Snæbjorn's verse merely adds that here the sea is called "Amloðe's kvern." No explicit explanation is to be found in early Northern poetry or saga. "Hamlet's mill" may mean almost anything; if, as the editors of the Corpus state, Hamlet is here an Ocean Giant, his mill seems to be identical with the great World-Mill, unless the Ocean Giant was himself ground by the Nine Maidens. All this seems unlikely; indeed, though at first sight it looks as though some ancient seahero is alluded to in Snæbjorn's phrase, yet the later Icelandic poets were capable of such fatal ingenuity in the matter of poetical periphrases, that even so much consistency must not be expected of them. All that can be said at this point in the investigation is that the verse quoted in the Prose Edda gives us a reference to some old legend concerning "Amloði," whose name is identical with that of the hero known to us as Hamlet."

* Teutonic Mythology, pp. 388-392.
† In the poem found in the Elder Edda, the giant tells Odin that, countless ages ere the earth was shapen, Bergelmer was born : "the first thing I remember is when he d var lúdr um lagidr." The meaning, according to Rydberg, was not clear even to Snorri, who in the Gylfaginning interprets the verse with reference to the drowning of the frost-giants in Ymir's blood:—"One escaped with his household: him the giants call Bergelmer. He with his wife betook himself upon his ludr and remained there, and from them the races of giants are descended "—a sort of giant Noah. The Resenian edition of the younger Edda (Copenhagen, 1665) actually reads "fór á bát sinn " (went on to his boat) instead of "fór upp & lúðr sinn." C. P. B. translates the passage in the poem, "when this wise giant was laid in the Ark."

"It was Viktor Rydberg (q.v.) who in the middle of the century lifted Swedish literature from the mediocrity into which it had fallen."

  "Thus Earendel became a star. It happens that—according to Viktor Rydberg, an early authority on Teutonic myth— one of the very few Teutonic star names we know is Eardenel, or Orvandel, identified as  the Morning Star (the planet Venus) and called by these names by the descendents of the Saxons in Britain. Tracing the story of Earendel-Orvandel back to The Prose Edda, we find that Orvandel — or Orwandel, as it is called in this tale — figures in an amusing anecdote concerning one of Thor's expeditions into Jotunheim. He is a big, brave hunter, husband of the witch Groa, father of the hero Swipdag enemy of the giant Coller and the monster Sela, a famous giant fighter and friend of the god Thor, whom he met while Thor was on his way to giant-land and helped Orwandel cross a river by putting him in a basket and carrying him over.by putting him in a basket and carrying him over. The only portion of Orwandel's anatomy which was exposed to the frigid air of Jotunheim was his big toe which stuck out of the basket. When it froze solid, the helpful Thor snapped it off and, to honor the stoical hero who had not winced or .cried aloud, Thor threw it up in the heavens, where it became a star appropriately called "Orwandel's Toe." This name was later shortened to 'Orvandel.' Later, when the Saxons were converted to Christianity (Rydberg reports with a straight face), they came to regard this star as a symbol of Christ and Orvandel, or Earendel, gradually became in Old English an abstract word meaning "splendor."  

"Tolkien seized upon an old Germanic star name which became identified as a symbol of the Savior and also an angel and turned it into an Elvish savior-hero. But the story does not end here. I did a little more checking and found that  Orvandel can be traced back beyond The Prose Edda; as a great archer and star-hero, he is a universal divinity of ancient Aryan origin. He appears in Greek mythology as the divine hunter, Orion; under another slight name change, he also has a place in such Hindu mythological epics as the Rig-Veda. And — moving forward in time from The Prose Edda — he became a popular figure in Scandinavian story telling long after Snorri. He can be found, for example, in the work of Saxo Grammaticus, who is not only the earliest Danish historian but is considered one of the most notable historians of the Middle Ages. He lived about a.d. 1150 to around 1200, and wrote a history of his country, the celebrated (and very readable) Gesta Danorum. The first nine books of Saxo's history incorporate tales and traditions of the kings and heroes up to about the year

See Viktor Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology, vol. 1"

"... brightest shining of angels thou who over Middle-Earth art sent to men.* To this point the matter of Earendil is an interesting bit of lore, illustrating the way Tolkien seized upon an old Germanic star name which became identified as a symbol of the savior and also an angel and turned it ..."