1980 John Albert Bede, William Benbow Edgerton
Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature,
 p. 703

"Rydberg, Viktor (1828-95), Swedish poet and novelist, was born in Jönköping. His studies were seriously hindered by his poverty. In 1855 he began working as a journalist on the liberal newspaper..."

1982 Paul Bauschatz

The Well and the Tree

"This cosmic structure expresses much about the nature of the time-space continuum in which events occur, and it is important to try to discover how this continuum might be configured. Most attempts to do this have come to grief not, it would seem, because the essential structure has not been seen but
because too much of the repeated incidental detail has not been eliminated. Thus, figure 1, reproduced from Gordon ( 1957: 196 ), presents a typical but by no means exhaustive accounting of many of the most striking details of the Norse cosmos. It remains, however, essentially detail and readily demonstrates the kinds of problems that most graphic representations express. Figure 2, adapted from Rydberg (1906:402), is more schematic, less detailed, but still does not eliminate the multiplicity of roots and wells. Assuming that the many wells are but multiple aspects of a single well, we can reduce both of these figures to one."

 

p. 139 "This is to say nothing of Rydberg's concern about the orientation of the well and tree. He places. Urth's Well at the top of the configuration because the root with which it is associated is said to lie á himni 'in heaven'. This leads him to a dilemma concerning the tree's apparent horizontal orientation in space. The problem is a result of trying to reconcile one kind of orientation in space (that of the well and tree) with another (our own). It clearly will not work, as Rydberg's own discussion ( 1906: 395-406) makes abundantly clear. If the representation is to define space, it cannot be held accountable to other definition."

This is a complete misunderstanding and reversal of Rydberg's theory. Rydberg does not support this view, he presents it merely as a logical conclusion if one were to take Snorri's cosmological statements literally and attempt to draw a map of the cosmos from them. Only then does one arrive at the picture Bauschatz provides. After drawing it in UGM1 ch. 53, Rydberg immediately discards it and presents his own theory which locates all three wells below the earth, as subterranean fountains (UGM1 ch 66, etc). In Rydberg's schema Urd's well is located in the warm southern part of Hel, Mimir's in the middle "where Ginungagap once was" and Hvergelmir in the frozen far north. Out of these three wells together Yggdrassil grows.

As a reminder for the reader, this is the cosmology that Viktor Rydberg, in fact, advocated:

 

1982 Harry Gilbert Carlson
Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth

“Favorite mythic reference sources for Strindberg both during and after the Inferno Crisis were books by Viktor Rydberg, a Swedish poet, novelist, and comparative mythologist. In an August 1896 letter Strindberg wrote: “In [Rydberg’s Teutonic Mythology] is everything I had been groping for. The World Tree…the creation of the first people out of wood (Ovid’s metamorphisis!)” In an Occult Diary entry made the same day, Strindberg stated that he had read Rydberg’s book and felt liberated. "

1985 Elsa-Brita Titchenell
The Masks of Odin, Wisdom of the Ancient Norse

[This book is unreliable when it comes to myth. It promotes a philosophy, and interprets the poems of the Elder Edda through its lens. The author mentions Rydberg in the Preface of the book, as she discusses her method. Tichenell mentions the godsaga, speaks of Rydberg by name, and later misspells the title of his book. In the preface, she writes:


"To find the information the Edda contains we must examine the etymology of names and their connotations, which in some cases are numerous. For this Cleasby's Icelandic Dictionary, completed by Gudbrand Vigfusson in 1869, has proved of inestimable value for it contains copious quotations from the original manuscripts and sometimes presents a strikingly intuitive perception. Undersökningar i Germansk Mitologi (Teutonic Mythology) by Viktor Rydberg also contains scrupulous examination of terms and much information.”

1986 Anatoly Liebermann "Beowulf-Grettir" in Germanic Dialects: Linguistic and Philological Investigations, Edited by Bela Brogyanyi, ‎Thomas Krömmelbein

Viktor Rydberg (1886, 607-10) connected the inscription on the hilt with Óðinn's fight against the primeval giants drowned in Ymir's blood and the sword itself with Völundr's sword, a treasure greatly coveted by the Teutons.

1986 Eric J. Sharpe
Comparative Religion: A History

"Secondly, by his reading of the novelist, Christian Platonist and scholar Viktor Rydberg, whose influence on Uppsala students was then at its peak. Rydberg was treated with almost unqualified reverence by Soderblom, Fries and their circle of friends; his monumental Undersökningar i germanisk mytologi, with all its many comparisons between ancient Scandinavian and ancient Iranian ..."

1987 Peter Foote
Runes in Sweden

"The word occurs nowhere else in Runic or early Swedish. In the seventeenth century it was borrowed for purist reasons (Stiernhielm) and dyrd was then used by a number of later authors, Viktor Rydberg and Karlfeldt among them."

1987 Hans-Olof Bostrma
Heimdall som kulturbringare i norden
Nils asplunds aulafresk i göteborgs högskola
1987 Konsthistorisk Tidskrift/Journal of Art History
Volume 56, Issue 2, pp. 72 - 81

Abstract
 
The main edifice of the University of Gothenburg was opened in 1907. The apse of the great hall is adorned with a monumental fresco by Nils Asplund (1874-1958), who chose a motif from Nordic mythology: the god Heimdall presents man with the gift of fire and teaches him to till the soil, forge metal and trade, but also gives him literature (runes) and art (here represented by a harp-playing bard). Above Heimdall's throne, on which is carved a quotation from the Eddas in runic script, rises Yggdrasil, the ash that binds earth, heaven and hell together with its roots and branches, while in the foreground the waters of Mimer's spring, the source of wisdom, pour forth. In his capacity as giver of knowledge, Heimdall is the Scandinavian equivalent of Prometheus.

Gothenburg is unique among universities in its choice of motif. The concept is taken from the studies in Nordic mythology carried out by the poet and polyhistor Viktor Rydberg (1828-95), who was active as a journalist and educationalist in Gothenburg between the 1850's and the 1880's. He belonged to the influential and radical circle of Gothenburg liberals that wished to found in the city a free academy in which no grades or examinations were awarded and where even free thinkers and intellectual pioneers could work in freedom and equality.


 To view a film of the interior of hall at Götesberg University, click here.

The fresco in the great hall may be regarded as the ultimate expression of this utopia which, though it was never realized in the radical form its originators had dreamt of, was nevertheless embodied in the foundation of the university in 1891. Asplund's painting is based on the concept of a harmonic prehistoric society in which each individual is free and equal and can devote himself to the best of his ability to the furthering of material and spiritual culture without fear of envy or competition.

As far as form is concerned, Asplund's fresco is in agreement with the precepts of monumental painting as formulated by his fellow-artist Georg Pauli, one of the most important writers on art in Sweden at the beginning of this century. Pauli was an advocate of a decorative art characterized by respect for the two-dimensional quality of a wall and by the rhythmic grouping of the pictorial elements. The occasional and illusionist aspects of Impressionism and Realism were to be replaced by static murals with larger-than-life figures in relief giving a plastic effect, and a subdued, well-balanced colour-scale. The ideal was to be found in the work of Puvis de Chavannes, whose influence, particularly via his large mural in the Amphitheatre at the Sorbonne, is visible in the Gothenburg fresco. The influence of Ferdinand Hodler may perhaps also be discerned in the emphasis on line and in the strictly symmetrical, rhythmic grouping.

1988 John Lindow

Scandinavian Mythology

An Annotated Bibliography

2338. Rydberg, Viktor, Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of the Northland. London: S. Sonnenschein, 1889, xii 706pp. translated by Rasmus B. Anderson."As the title of the Swedish original of this work indicates (Undersökningar i germansk mytologi, 1889-89) Rydberg offers 'investigations' rather than strictly speaking, a handbook. The organization of the lengthy work thus seems rather loose. Despite its philosophical emphasis and broad sweep, the work now commands little mor than historical interest—and this largely because of Rydberg's status as a poet.

 

1988 Hilda R. Ellis Davidson

Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe

“Another approach is the fundamentalist one, illustrated by the 19th century scholar Rydberg. He accepted every detail in Old Norse mythological literature as reliable, and showed much ingenuity in building up a complex mythological scheme to include it all, smoothing over apparent contradictions. Such approaches arise from an assumption that the mythology was once complete and rational, so that it would prove satisfactory to a modern observer. It was felt to be something which could be decoded, once one discovered the meaning of the different symbols which formed part of it. However we are dealing here with many different levels of belief, and also with confused traditions which may have been worked on by earlier antiquarians before modern scholars began their reconstructions. Tales and poems about the gods may also have been influenced by outside traditions and suffered considerable changes by the time they came to be recorded.”

“We cannot hope to get evidence at first hand and even if we could, it is all too likely that we would find it confused and contradictory. Men are capable of holding concepts about the supernatural world which, from our modern viewpoint, seem to be opposed to one another, but which nevertheless worked reasonably satisfactorily for them. Hastrup has shown how this could happen in the case of the measurement of time. As long as traditions were passed on orally, those which no longer fitted could be given up while those which could develop along with changing ways of life were retained. Once recorded however, new confusions were created as it became essential to make a choice between the old and the new. Yet while all this must be borne in mind, it hardly justifies a refusal to search for an overall picture of the gods of Celtic and Germanic tradition from such evidence as is available. There is after all a considerable amount of information, complex and uneven although it may be, while the iconographical material, ignored by earlier scholars like O’Rahilly and Rydberg, may help to correct the picture.”

p. 173 "There is additional mention in the poems of Niflheim or Niflhel, a place of mist and darkness below Hel, which seems to have been the realm of utter stagnation and sterility. But it is hopeless to expect this to fit into a precise and orderly plan, as the Swedish Rydberg hoped to prove in the last century."

(Although crticial of his work, Davidson only refers to the English translation of Volume 1 titled "Teutonic Mythology" and incorrectly gives the date of publication as 1880!).

 

1988 Scandinavian Studies, Vol 60, p. 461

Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study-

Another portal figure, who like Victor Rydberg, was never associated directly with the movement, but whose name is venerated among the Theosophists was none other than King Oscar II. In 1891 he attended a lecture by Colonel Olcott on Stockholm. No doubt encouraged by this attendance, Katherine Tingley in 1898, in the New Century, paid a glowing tribute to the king, "our 'master' and 'brother.'" When she lectured in Stockholm the following year, on her first visit to Sweden. She stated on the same occasion that, several thousand years before, there had existed in Sweden"...a great civilization with a real knowledge of life and its laws, and that this knowledge is still in the blood of the Swedish people." Here was an idea that could well have come from Rydberg, whose later years were largely devoted to Germanic mythology and religion and who considered the Swedes to be of the "purest and most ancient" Aryan blood. His views quite evidently combined the current racial theories inspired by Count Arthur de Gobineau with the venerable Swedish tradition of "Gothicist' patriotism (Göticism), stretching back to Olaf Rudbeck in the seventeenth century, for whom Sweden was the lost Atlantis and to his medieval predecessors."

1989 Bengt-Göran Martinsson

Tradition och betydelse: om selektion, legitimering och ...

Genom sitt liv får Rydberg svar på de stora frågorna: "Men svaret [på frågan om livets mening] finns hos Viktor Rydberg själv. När han drömde sig tillbaka till sin moders famn och till hennes kärlek, fann han svaret på alla sina och alla hjärnors frågor: Det är kärleken som är alltings början och slut" (2-1964:2). Det faller sig naturligt att Rydbergs författarskap inte målas i lika mörka färger som Lagerkvists, dock befinner vi oss här ganska långt ifrån de uppburne nationalskalden."

"Through his life Rydberg sought to answer to the big questions: "But the answer [to the question of the meaning of life] was found by Rydberg himself. When he dreamt himself back in his mother's arms and her love, he found the answer to his and all souls' questions: It is love that is the beginning and the end "(2-1964:2). It is only natural that the Rydberg authorship is not painted in the same dark colors as Lagerkvist's, however, here we are quite far from the cherished national poet."

1889 Peter Kivisto

The Ethnic Enigma

"In 1886, P. A. Godecke's Swedish translation of the Edda made its appearance in the Augustana Swedish curriculum. Together with this book, a number of texts dealing with the Viking age, Old Norse mythology, and the Icelandic sagas were used in the Swedish classes after 1890. In that year, Sunden's Oversikt av nordisk mytologi (A survey of nordic mythology), Viktor Rydberg's Fadernas Gudasagor (Ancient sagas about the Gods) , and the sagas of Volupsa, Heimskringla, and Havamal found their way into the Swedish classes. The extenson backwards did not, however, mean that the 19th century romantics were dropped..."

 

Complete Index to

Veratis: The Journal of the Viktor Rydberg Society

1987 to present