Complete Index to
Veratis: The Journal of the Viktor Rydberg Society
1987 to present

1990 Tore Ahlbäck
Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place-Names

"This revival of interest in myths and fairy tales in general is pointed out in the preface of a small, popular textbook. It can be confirmed by an older generation with memories from the first school years immediately after the First World War: "During the post-war period, the Old Norse myths and sagas gradually disappeared from school teaching, where they earlier quite naturally belonged to general education.  In later times this has changed," (Eriksson & Svantesson 1984, 4). The demands of the young public were met by reprints of Scandinavian mythology books from the 1880's, written by such diverse authors as Victor Rydberg, poet, cultural historian and specialist in Germanic Religions (Rydberg 1887) and Kata Dalstrom, the subsequent socialist activist but one time teacher of her own children at home (Dalström 1887, Dalström 1889)."

1991 Bruce Lincoln
Death, War, and Sacrifice, p. 47

1991
The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Micropædia
 Encyclopaedia Britannica

"He had to break off his studies for lack of money. In 1855 he began to work for the liberal newspaper Goteborgs ... In the 1870s Rydberg entered the Swedish Parliament for a short time. He advocated linguistic reform, particularly to ..."

 

  
         "In 1879 the theological A.C. Bang argued that Völuspá was a 'Norse Christian Sibylline Oracle': a Norse Christian poet's imitation of Greek sibylline texts— the only sibylline texts then known to Bang— in which the Norse poet has substituted his native mythological and religious themes for the classical and Biblical themes of the learned sibylline tradition. Bang asserted that, by following the Norse poem step by step, at virtually every point he had found parallels with the Greek Oracles; a two-fold structure ('All Sibylline Oracles of any  significance fall into two main parts, the one concerned witht he past, the  other with the future'); a climax prophesying the world's future; an oracular ambiguity of style; alternation of factual and ecstatic statement, reflecting the sibyl's own psychic changes; the combining of Christian and pagan elements, and the use of the pagan sibyl as the chosen instrument of Christian revelation.' I believe,' Bang concludes 'that it is quite unthinkable that likenesses of such a kind and extent could have arisen unless the author of Völuspá had had the Oracles as sourtce and model.' And he makes a wide-reaching inference: 'I believe that Völuspá is wholly unfit to serve as evidence that Norse heatehenism was capable of producing deep insights and elevated thoughts.' Bang's thesis was warmly accepted by some scholars. Hugo Gering, for instance, declared that as a result of Bang's discovery of the dependence of Völuspá upon the Sibylline Oracles, the Norse poem 'naturally loses all its  value as a source for our knowledge of ancient Germanic mythology'. Clearly, much is at stake in the solving of this problem.  Fortunately, Viktor Ryderg knew the sibylline texts better than Bang. In 1881, he replied to Bang's arguments with over one hundred pages (as against Bang's twenty-three!) of marvellously intelligent, masterly criticism of the errors, imprecise thinking and failure of scholarly imagination that underlay Bang's claim, and while Bang concentrated on the likenesses between Völuspá and the Greek Sibylline Oracles, Rydberg demonstrated what was dissimilar in all the parallels that Bang had drawn.  Above all, he sharply derided Bang's notion that the ill-put-together Oracles could have inspired the structure of Völuspá: this is no more likely than 'an aesthetically and practically well-ordered home should have as its model a chaotic auction-room.'  As to the likenesses that Bang had emphasized, Rydberg was content to suppose them of very archaic origin: 'That an age-old kinship should be found between concepts in Aryan myth and comparable concepts in Biblical tradition is wholly probable."    

1993 Lars Krumlinde
Viktor Rydberg's Sagan om svärdet:
Grunddragen av ett mytologiskt epos
från den germaniska hedendomens sista årtusende

In Swedish literature, above all other, Victor Rydberg has dealt with the subject of Prometheus..... 

The Swedish poet Rydberg's (1828-1895) Prometheus is very much unlike both Goethe's and Shelley's. He is neither rebellious nor defiant, nor is he a preacher of the glorification of man. The Prometheus theme of the enlightenment romantics:  the contradiction between god and man is transformed by Rydberg into an antithesis between power and justice, between the is of the selfish arbitrariness and the timelessly viable ought. This is a remarkable reverasl of the situation.  With Rydberg, Prometheus becomes in actual fact the spokesman for 'the Eternal God' against an inadequate 'naturalistic' man.

But Rydberg's Prometheus is not only a champion of justice. He is also a martyr. In quite a different way from that of the romantics of enlightenment, for the Swedish poet, the suffereing of the Titan is a painful reality. While in Rydberg the idea of justice is central to the myth, the injustice of Prometheus' punishment also becomes more tangible. Rydberg is alien to the idea that the punishment the Titan endures because of his love of humanity was to some extent deserved. His Prometheus is guiltless— and he has to be that if the struggle between him and Zeus really is a struggle between justice and violence.

Although Rydberg is not able to admit that Prometheus bears any moral guilt, he implies in an extremely interesting way the exact circumstance that has caused us to bring the value of Prometheus' gifts under discussion. This occurs when the Titan describes to Ahasverus what he has done for man:

  The core of these poetic-rhetorical flourishes is approximately the same as what Aeschylus says in his more direct way in the quoted words translated from his drama. The 'he' Rydberg mentions in the quote is the scholar, the scientist, whom Rydberg gives a double role: with enlightenment he saves human souls from false  ideas, and he improves man's external conditions of life with inventions. Rydberg's Promethean man is both a theorist and a technician rolled into one. But what is most interesting to us in this context are the 'Cabiri'. This is Rydberg's  poetic clothing for the machine, the soul-less servant of man, which does not have to be ashamed of its slavery and frees human energy for higher purposes, what the poet calls 'to think and dream.' In that, man realizes his highest potenials in his nature.

It is no trivialization of the poet's idea if we express it in sober prose, as follows: for Rydberg, the break-through of industrialism was the greatest event of the time as follows: for Rydberg the break-through of industrialism was the greatest event of the time, a result of the Promethean aptitude in man. That idea is utterly correct, but Rydberg probably had no inkling that this was where the obscure point in Prometheus' mission lay. On the other hand, it could be said that one of the poet's creations did have an inkling — Ahasverus, the 'naturalist', who gave up his faith in the binding power of duty and was resigned when faced with the necessity of what was fact. Ahasverus replies to Prometheus:

1994 Stephen A. Mitchell and Alf Tergel
William R. Hutchinson and Hartmut Lehman, editors
Many Are Chosen: Divine Election and Western Nationalism, pp. 334-336

   
 In the five hundred year history of Swedish chosenness, however, few examples are more pronounced than the sense of national mission that emerged around the turn of this century, when cultural, political, and religious nationalism came together in a frenzied symbiosis. At that time, Sweden was particularly prone to relish her vaunted past. She had long since been stripped of her once far-flung Baltic empire, and now the union with Norway, the last vestige of her former status as a European power, was under increasing stress. Rapid industrialization, together with large-scale emigration to America, had radically altered the character of traditional provincial life, and the threat of war-especially against Russia, the traditional enemy-seemed very real, particularly as this threat was often manipulated in popular culture.[4]    

Representative works in the early period would include Ludwig Douglas's inflammatory brochure "Hur vi forlorade Norrland" ("How we lost Norrland," [1889; 3d ed.; Stockholm: Nordin & Josephon i Kommission, 1890]), which portrayed a Russian invasion of the province, and in the later period, Sven Hedin's two brochures, "Ett varningsord" ("A Word of Warning," [Stockholm: Bonniers, 1912]) and "Andra varningen" ("Another Warning,"[Stockholm: Kungl. Boktryckeriet, P. A. Norsted & E- saner, 1914]), which likewise promoted the idea of Russian designs on Sweden. The question of Russian sågofilare ("saw sharpeners"), in which large numbers of itinerant Russian tradesmen were portrayed as spies, offers particularly clear instances of the near hysteria that prevailed at the time. See Sten Carlsson and Jerker Rosen, Svensk Histor.ia, vol. 2: Tiden efter 1718 (Stockholm: Svenska Bokforlaget, 1961) 577, 617, 619. Few books give a clearer view of the nationalist frenzy that reigned than Sven Hedin's own retrospective, Forsvarsstriden 1912-14 (Stockholm: Fahlcrantz och Guma lius, 1951).  Of the many elements of Swedish intellectual life involved in the chosenness debate of the prewar period, several interrelated spheres— literature, politics, and religion—are useful areas for exploring the rhetoric of chosenness. In the case of Sweden's literary establishment, it is particularly illuminating to examine works by two of its most ardent nationalists, Viktor Rydberg (1828-1895) and Werner von Heidenstam (1859-1940), whose works exhibit sentiments that strongly parallel those found among the religious nationalists affiliated with the Young Church Movement. Typically, although not uniformly, these visions of Sweden's special status were packaged in the pseudohistorical guise of early Germanic culture, Viking Age Scandinavia, or Sweden's period as a great power (Stormaktstiden). To a lesser degree, presentations of Sweden's elect character allude to biblical notions of chosenness. The Literature of Chosenness As journalist, author, and professor of cultural history, Yiktor Rydberg set the parameters of the Swedish chosenness discussion with his writings on the question of national defense. Inspired by his studies of the Swedish Middle Ages, Rydberg saw the issue of guaranteeing Sweden's independence in highly romantic terms. Sweden's military might, he contended, depended upon her peasants. Against the rising power of well-equipped European armies, he envisioned the Swedish peasantry armed as a militia that he frequently compared to the Swiss pikesmen of the late medieval and early modern periods.[6] One of the most prominent exponents of latter-day "Gothicism," Rydberg drew images from Nordic mythological materials, as well as from the nation's real and imagined history, in order to bolster his pleas for the defense of the motherland. For example, in 1888 Rydberg published "Vårdträdet," an alliterative poem composed in conscious imitation of Old Norse poetry; in it he combines the image of Yggdrasill, the world- tree of Scandinavian mythology, with that of a familial tree. [7]  When a storm blows the tree down, the family gathers around and the father calls for the tree, a symbol of the family's strength and durability, to be turned into weapons for the defense of the motherland, law, and freedom, traits associated with the imagined democratic yeomen society of the Swedish Middle Ages:      Ditt virke skall slöjdas   till varnande sköldar   att lyftas framför lag och frihet; med jarnet spetsas till spjutstänger att foras i fejd for fosterjorden av mina söners modige söner  i Svealandens kampars led.      "Your timber shall be carved into protective shields to be lifted before law and freedom; with iron are sharpened the spear-shafts to be carried into the fray for the native soil by my sons' bold sons in the ranks of Sweden's warriors"      Such expressions, along with Rydberg's other romantic mythological and cultural-historical writings-for example, Undersökningar i germansk mythologi ("Investigations into Germanic Mythology", translated into English as Teutonic Mythology [1906])—exerted a great impact on the Swedish public, especially after 1887. In that year he published Fädernas gudasaga ("Our Fathers' Mythology"), which the Swedish school system used well into the twentieth century as the standard introduction to native mythological traditions. That the conservative student association to which many of the Young Churchmen belonged named itself after the watchman of the ancient Nordic gods, Heimdal, surely betokens the influence of this handbook and of the larger "Nordic revival." Rydberg characterized Heimdal as a god whose tasks demanded "strength, wisdom, and hardiness" ("styrka, visdom, och hardighet"). Such a description was undoubtedly congenial to the students of the Conservative Party. Nor can it be coincidental that the same text maintained that the great eschatological event of Nordic mythology, Ragnarok, would begin when "Heimdall's horn-blast, ringing throughout the world, awakens [the gods] to the final battle between good and evil" ("Heimdallslurens varldsgenomtrangande klang vacker dem till den sista striden mellan det goda och det onda"), a concept of obvious relevance tot he Young Conservatives' view of themselves.      When Rydberg died in 1895, the foremost neoromatic and nationalist figure in Swedish belles lettres, especially with respect to the theme of chosenness and the country's connections to its glorious past was Werner von Heidenstam.       [6] Rydberg articulated this view both in his literary works (for example, Vapensmeden: hdringar fran reformationstiden [Stockholm: Bonniers, 1~91]) and in his political tracts (for example, "Huru kan Sverige bevara sin sjalfstä nðdighet?" ["How can Sweden maintain its, independence?"] 1859). [7] "Viktor Rydberg, "Vardtradet," in Viktor Rydbergs Skrifter: Dikter (14 vols.; ed. Karl Warburg; Stockholm: Bonniers, 1919) I. 275-86.    

1994 Tor Höckerfelt
Träden och dess mytologi
i den svenska folktron

 Träden i den nordiska mytologin: Av sentida uppteckningar och nutida etnografi vet vi att träden måste ha gjort ett djupare intryck på de första människorna än något annat fenomen.

 
I rymdens avgrund, där den skapande visdomens källa upprinner, låg fröet till Yggdrasil, världsträdet. Det spirade och sände ut rötter genom de tre krafternas källor, och dess sammanflätade oräkneliga rottrådar vordo stommen till den grund, varpå underjorden vilar. Under långa världsåldrar lyfte sig trädets stam allt högre och sköt grenknippen över varandra. på olika de olika världarna, allt eftersom de skapades,jingo sitt underlag. För mänskliga ögon är Yggdrasil osynligt. Det kallas även Mimerträdet.

Stycket ovan är ett citat ur Viktor Rydbergs bok Fädernas gudasaga och ger en tolkning av asatrons syn på världens skapelse och uppbyggnad. Det är emellertid inte bara världen som har sitt ursprung i trädet utan även människan. När gudarna Oden, Höner och Lodur en dag vandrade omkring på sin skapelse Midgård - människornas senare boning - tyckte de att denna saknade någonting. Nämligen något eller någon som kunde njuta av skönheten och känna tacksamhet mot upphovsmännen. Därför började gudarna närmast omedelbart tillverka människor av två trädstammar. Mannen (Ask) skapades ur en ask och kvinnan (Embla) ur en alm eller möjligen en rönn, som ibland nämns som askens kvinnliga motsvarighet. I den kult som omgav asatron spelade träden en viktig roll. Offerfester och tingsmöten avhölls ofta under stora träd och i heliga lundar hängdes offren ofta upp till gudarna. Många ortsnamn härör från denna tid såsom Torslunda, Fröslunda, Närlunda osv.  Bruket att hänga upp döda djur i offerlundar levde kvar långt efter det att Sverige blivit kristnat. Ända i på 1800 -talets början så förekom det att småländska jägare hängde upp döda rovdjur i någon gammal ansedd offerlund.

English translation:
 
"The Tree in Norse mythology. From more recent writings and contemporary ethnography, we know that the trees must have made a deeper impression on the first humans than any other phenomenon.

'In the abyss of Space, where the spring of Creative Wisdom originated, lay the seed of Yggdrasil, the world-tree. It sprouted and sent out roots through the springs of the three forces, and these countless, intertwined root-threads became the framework on which the underworld rests. During long ages of the world, the Tree's trunk grew ever higher and extended branches, one above the other, on which the various worlds, as they were created, found their support. To mankind's eyes, Yggdrasil is invisible. It is also called Mimir's Tree.'
 
"The above passage is a quote from Viktor Rydberg's book Our Fathers' Godsaga and provides an interpretation from the Aesir's view of the world's creation and deployment. However, it is not only the world that originated in the tree, but also humans. When the gods Odin, Höner and Lodur one day wandering around on their creation Midgard - the later habitation of people - they felt that something was missing. Namely something or someone who could enjoy the beauty and express gratitude to its creators. Thus the gods almost immediately began to create people from two tree trunks. The man (Ash) was created out of an Ash and the woman (Embla) from an elm or possibly a mountain Ash, which is sometimes referred to as the Ash's female counterpart. In the cult that surrounded Asatru, trees played an important role. Sacrificial Victims and assemblies of the Thing were often held under large trees and sacred groves, where victims were often hung up for the gods. Many place names derive from this period, such as Torslunda/Thor's Grove, Fröslunda/Frey's Grove, Närlunda etc.. The practice of suspending dead animals in sacrificial groves survived long after Sweden became Christianized. Right at the beginning of the 1800s it was the Småland hunters hung dead predators in an old reputable sacrificial grove. "
 
 

"Fädernas Gudasaga berättad för Ungdomen (Ancestral Myths: Retold for Children) by Viktor Rydberg (1828- 1895) was first published in Stockholm in 1887. Rydberg gives there a detailed account of the role played  by Fenrir. The epigraph to Sundman's 1965 novel Två dagar, två nätter is a translation into Swedish of strophe 53 of the Eddic poem Hávamál (although the source is not given in the novel). In an interview with me in Stockholm, 15 October 1990, Per Olof Sundman said that it was translated by Professor Sven B. F. Jansson."

"Sept. 21, 1895, Djursholm) Author of the Romantic school who, with his broad range of achievements, greatly influenced Swedish cultural life. In 1855 Rydberg began to work for the liberal newspaper Goteborgs Handels- och ..."

Ater a lengthy discussion of the supporting evidence, Clive Tolley, like Rydberg, proposes the existence of a cosmic mill churning at the bottom of the sea. He summarizes his argument in part:

    
"It is clear that the cosmic mill was not, in extant Norse sources, a widely developed mythologem. Nonetheless, the myth of Mundilfæri connects the turning of the cosmos via a 'mill-handle' with the regulation of the seasons, and the myth of Bergelmir suggests the concept of a creative milling of a giant's body, associated in some way with the sea. Grotti was a legendary mill sunk into the depths, regarded at as a one-time producer of a golden age: the myths about it allude to the concept of a milling on a supernatural scale, such as the Bergelmir myth may (in a different context) have exemplified.”
  
  Tolley briefly mentions Rydberg in the article (p. 73):
   
"The word lúðr has, rather unnecessarily, given rise to a good many interpretations bearing at most a tenuous relation to the recorded meaning of the word in Old Norse, namely 'mill-frame'. If Bergelmir was placed on a mill-frame, he was clearly ground up: Rydberg (1886, I 431-32) long ago suggested that after the world was formed from the body of the first giant Ymir the act of creation continued with the milling up of Bergelmir to produce the soil and sand of the beaches."
    

While Tolley acknowledges that the concept of a cosmic mill grinding in the depths of the sea was first suggested by Viktor Rydberg in Undersökningar i Germanisk Mytologi I (1886), the authors of the German language series, Die Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, accurately assess Rydberg's and Tolley's views on the subject. Regarding this article, Die Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, bd. 3, 2000, p. 839, says:
    
"Rydberg postuliert zwei ursprünglich getrennte Mytheme von einer grossen und einer kleinen Grotti-Mühle. Die grosse Mühle sei jene, die im Wasser mahle und Sturm, Brandung und Strudel erzeuge. Ausgehend von der Strophe des Skalden Snæbjorn (s. 4c) rekonstruiert er einen umfassenden Mythos von einer ‘kosmichen Mühle.’, die die  gesamte Natur und den Sternenhimmel bewege (so stellt er z.B. eine Verbindung her zwischen der Bezeichnung der Mühl kurbel, möndull, und der Bezeichnung für den Vater des Mondes, Mundilfæri, in Vm. 23). In christlicher Zeit sei die kosmische Mühle dann weitgehend in Vergessenheit geraten, während die ursprünglich der Heldendichtung entstammende ‘kleine Mühle’ durch die Aufnahme des Grt. in Skskm. der Nachwelt bewahrt worden sei (1886. 425-451). Diese Deutung Rydberg’s greift in jüngster Zeit noch Tolley auf (1995). Er vergleicht die Mühle in Grt mit dem finnischen Sampo, einem nirgends genau beschreiben, von ihm aber als ‘kosmische Mühle’ identifizierten Gerät, das mit der Fruchtbarkeit des Landes und dem Ablauf der Jahrezeiten verknüpft ist; dieses Gerät zerbricht schliesslich ebenfalls und setzt dem Reichtum und der Fruchtbarkeit Grenzen."
 
"Rydberg postulates two originally distinct mythemes of a large and a small Grotti mill. The large mill is that which grinds in the sea, producing storms, tides and whirlpools. On the basis of the strophe by the skald Snæbjorn (s. 4c) he reconstructs a comprehensive myth of a 'cosmic mill,'  by which all of  Nature and the Starry-heavens move (in such a way it places a connection between the designation of the mill-handle, möndull, and the name of the father of the moon, Mundilfæri, in Vm. 23). In Christian times the cosmic mill was then largely forgotten, whereas in the earliest heroic poems originated the small mill with the assimilation of the Grottosöngr into Skaldskaparmal where future generations retained it (1886. 425-451). In recent times, this theory of Rydberg’s was taken up by Tolley (1995). He compares the mill in Grottosöngr with the Finnish Sampo, never accurately described as a ‘cosmic mill', but identified as an implement, linked with the fertility of the land and the change of the seasons; this equipment also finally breaks and sets limits for wealth and fertility.”
                                                                            
The Kommentar plainly states that Tolley “took up” Rydberg’s interpretation.  A comparsion of statements from Rydberg's Undersökningar i Germanisk Mytologi alongside statements from Tolley's article demonstrates that Tolley mirrored Rydberg’s evidence and argument, point for point. Using Tolley’s own words and section headings, the “fragmentary myths”  that preserve “the image of a cosmic mill” in Old Norse mythology are:
               
1. Grotti in Grottasöngr and Snorri’s Edda  
Tolley: "The myth of the mill Grotti is told by Snorri in Skáldskaparmál (SnE 135-38) and in the poem Gröttosöngr, which he quotes."
 
Rydberg, Undersökningar i Germanisk Mytologi, Vol. I, ch. 81: “After the introduction of Christianity, the details of the myth concerning the greater, the cosmological mill, were forgotten, and there remained only the memory of the existence of such a mill on the bottom of the sea. The recollection of the lesser Grotti-mill was, on the other hand, at least in part preserved as to its details in a song which continued to flourish, and which was recorded in Skáldskaparmál.”
    Rydberg in UGM 1, ch. 81:
“But the colossal mill in the ocean has also served other purposes than that of grinding the nourishing mould from the limbs of the primeval giants. The Teutons, like all people of antiquity, and like most men of the present time, regarded the earth as stationary. …With the countless stars the case was different. They always keep at the same distance and always present the same figures on the canopy of the nocturnal heavens. They looked like glistening heads of nails driven into a movable ceiling. Hence the starlit sky was thought to be in motion. …The motion of the starry firmament is defined, always the same, ….It seems to be caused by a mechanism operating evenly and regularly. The mill was for a long time the only kind of mechanism on a large scale known to the Teutons. Its motion was a rotating one. The movable mill-stone was turned by a handle or sweep which was called möndull.”
  2. The Mælström  
Tolley: “Purportedly factual reports of the Mælström, the whirlpool off Lofoten in northern Norway, lie very close to the more imaginative concept of a mill in the depths, grinding everything in its stones and causing a whirlpool in the depths.”
 
Tolley: “The Mælström is first mentioned in the eight century by Paulus Diaconus (1878, 55-56); he sites the ‘navel of the ocean’ near the Scritobini (northern Lapps), i.e. ‘on the edge of the world.,’ like Grotti in Snænbjörn.”
 
Rydberg: “Charlemagne's contemporary, Paul Varnefrid (Diaconus), relates in his history of the Longobardians that he had talked with men who had been in Scandinavia. Among remarkable reports which they gave him of the regions of the far north was also that of a maelstrom, which swallows ships, and sometimes even casts them up again (see Nos. 15, 79, 80, 81).
 
Rydberg: “Of the mill it is said that it is dangerous to men, dangerous to fleets and to crews, and that it causes the maelstrom (svelgr) when the water of the ocean rushes down through the eye of the mill-stone.”
   3. Snæbjörn’s Verse on Grotti.   Tolley: "A lausavísa attributed to a certain Snæbjörn ...alludes to a mighty water-mill turned by nine women (Skj B I 201)."
Tolley: "'The nine brides of the island quern-frame' are the waves of the ocean (the daughters of Ægir); lúðr is the frame of a hand-mill; that which frames the islands is the sea. ...There is the additional implication of the action taking place 'out at the edge of the world' where it is to be surmised, the mythological ocean mill was to be encountered."
 
Rydberg: “The greater mill is mentioned in a strophe by the skald Snæbjörn (Skáldskaparmál 33). The strophe appears to have belonged to a poem describing a voyage. "It is said," we read in this strophe, "that Eylúður's nine women violently turn the Grotti of the skerry dangerous to man out near the edge of the earth,”
 
Rydberg: “The handle extends to the edge of the world, and the nine giantesses, who are compelled to turn the mill, pushing the sweep before them, march along the outer edge of the universe. Thus we get an intelligible idea of what Snæbjörn means when he says that Eyludur's nine women turn the Grotti "along the edge of the earth" (hræra Grótta út fyrir jarðar skauti). In the name Eylúðr the first part is ey, and the second part is lúðr. The name means the "island-mill". Eyludur's nine women are the "nine women of the island-mill". The mill is in the same strophe called skerja Grótti, the Grotti of the skerries. These expressions refer to each other and designate with different words the same idea - the mill that grinds islands and skerries.”
  4. Bergelmir  
Tolley:  “From Snorri’s statements that the frost giants were drowned in Ymir’s blood and that Bergelmir and his family were the only ones to escape to re-establish the frost giants, it is evident that he is identifying Bergelmir’s situation with that of Noah (Genesis 6-8).”
 
Tolley: “In accordance with his interpretation of Bergelmir’s situation, Snorri refers to the lúðr (‘mill frame) as if it was already a possession of the giant (it is sinn, ‘his’), into which he and his family could step, as if into a sea vessel which could surmount the waves of blood. In following this tradition, Snorri has ignored the text of Vm 35, which states that Bergelmir ‘was laid on a lúðr.’ Snorri’s tale of Bergelmir therefore does not go far towards explaining the myth of Vafþrúðnismál.”
 
Rydberg: “This expression was misunderstood by the author of Gylfaginning [Snorri] himself, and the misunderstanding has continued to develop into the theory that Bergelmir was changed into a sort of Noah, who with his household saved himself in an ark when Bur's sons drowned the primeval giants in the blood of their progenitor. Of such a counterpart to the Biblical account of Noah and his ark our Teutonic mythical fragments have no knowledge whatever.”
   
Tolley: "The word lúðr has, rather unnecessarily, given rise to a good many interpretations bearing at most a tenuous relation to the recorded meaning of the word in Old Norse, namely 'mill-frame."
Tolley: "If Bergelmir was placed on a mill-frame, he was clearly ground up: Rydberg (1886, I 431-32) long ago suggested that after the world was formed from the body of the first giant Ymir, the act of creation continued with the milling up of Bergelmir."
 
Rydberg: “When Odin asks the wise giant Vafþrúðnir how far back he can remember, and which is the oldest event of which he has any knowledge from personal experience, the giant answers: "Countless ages ere the earth was shapen Bergelmir was born. The first thing I remember is when he var á lúður um lagður. ….“Vafþrúðnismál tells us expressly that Bergelmir, Aurgelmir's grandson, was "laid on a mill" or "on the supporting timbers of a mill". We may be sure that the myth would not have laid Bergelmir on "a mill" if the intention was not that he was to be ground. The kind of meal thus produced has already been explained. It is the mould and sand which the sea since time's earliest dawn has cast upon the shores of Midgard, and with which the bays and strands have been filled, to become sooner or later green fields.”
 
Tolley: "Thus in the reference to Bergelmir being laid on lúðr may possibly lie an allusion to a cosmic mill."
 
Tolley: "If the term lúðr is accepted as 'mill', then Bergelmir may emerge as a being who furthers the fecundity of the earth through being ground up in a mill."
 
Rydberg: “The myth concerning the cosmic Grotti-mill was intimately connected partly with the myth concerning the fate of Ymir and the other primeval giants. … Vafþrúðnismál 21 and Grímnismál 40 tell us that the earth was made out of Ymir's flesh, the rocks out of his bones, and the sea from his blood. With earth is here meant, as distinguished from rocks, the mould, the sand, which cover the solid ground. Vafþrúðnismál calls Ymir Aurgelmir, Clay-gelmir or Moldgelmir;  ….Ymir's descendants, the primeval giants, Þrúðgelmir and Bergelmir perished with him, and the "flesh" of their bodies cast into the primeval sea also became mould. Of this we are assured, so far as Bergelmir is concerned, by strophe 35 in Vafþrúðnismál, which also informs us that Bergelmir was laid under the mill-stone.”
 
Tolley: "In Norse too there is found the idea of a divinity, and more over a divinity of barley, being ground": in Lokasenna 44, Loki says to Byggvir (a nomen agentis from bygg, 'barley'): at eyrom Freys mundu æ vera ok und kvernom klaka, 'you shall ever be at Freyr's ears and twitter beneath the quern.'"
Rydberg: “After Njord's son, Frey, had been fostered in Asgard and had acquired the dignity of lord of the harvests, he was the one who became the master of the great Grotti. It is attended on his behalf by one of his servants, who in the mythology is called Byggvir, a name related both to byggja, settle, cultivate, and to bygg, barley, a kind of grain, and by his kinswoman and helpmate Beyla. So important is the calling of Byggvir and Beyla that they are permitted to attend the feasts of the gods with their master (Frey). Consequently they are present at the banquet to which Ægir, according to Lokasenna, invited the gods. When Loki uninvited made his appearance there to mix harm in the mead of the gods, and to embitter their pleasure
 
Tolley: "The image of a cosmic mill may lie behind Váfþruðnismál 23."
 
Rydberg: “…The mythology knew a person by name Mundilföri (Vafþrúðnismál 23, Gylfaginning). The word mundill is related to möndull, and is presumably only another form of the same word. ….Of Mundilfori we learn, on the other hand, that he is the father of the personal Sol and the personal Mani (Vafþrúðnismál 23). This, again, shows that the mythology conceived him as intimately associated with the heavens and with the heavenly bodies."
 
Tolley: "Cleasby and Vigfusson (1957, s.v.Mundil-föri) suggest that the name is ‘akin to möndull [mill-handle], referring to a veering round or revolution of the heavens.' If Cleasby and Vigfusson are right, the name Mundilfæri has been designed to signify  a mill-like device that turns the heavens by means of a 'handle'. Sun and Moon are, according to this genealogical fiction, his children who operate the device for him or by means of him. This turning of the cosmos, pictured as a mill, is the diurnal and yearly movement of the heavens."
 

 Citing an earlier version of the same dictionary, Rydberg says:

 “Vigfusson (Dict., 437) has, therefore, with good reason remarked that mundill in Mundilfori refers to the veering round or the revolution of the heavens.  …The latter part of the name, föri, refers to the verb færa, to conduct, to move. Thus he is that power who has to take charge of the revolutions of the starry vault of heaven, and these must be produced by the great möndull, the mill-handle or mill-sweep, since he is called Mundilföri."
 
Rydberg: “Mundilfori and Byggvir thus each has his task to perform in connection with the same vast machinery. The one attends to the regular motion of the möndull, the other looks after the mill-stones and the grist.”
    
 In a side-by-side comparison of the two authors' own arguments, Tolley's conclusions support and further expand upon Rydberg's theory of a great world-mill.

"Though well established as a novelist, Rydberg had yet to publish any poetry of significance. In his poems he often combines a classical rhetorical language to depict (melo)dramtic motifs from myth, as in "Prometheus and Ahasverus"; from folklore, as in "Tomten" (the goblin); or from his own childhood, as in "Träsnittet i psalmboken" (The woodcut in the hymnal). Though no pioneer and experimenter in terms of poetic form, Rydberg is nevertheless one of the foremost creators of philosophical poetry in Swedish literature and, in his idealistic verse, a worthy descendent of Tegnér. His themes frequently center on metaphysical quests, as in "Den flygande holländaren" (The Flying Dutchman), "Grubblaren" (The Brooder) and Vaden och vardthän (Wherefrom and whereto?). Rydberg projects a vision of an egnimatic universe but finds solace in a belief in an idealistic and indestructible human spirit. His philosophical views reach their poetic apogee in the grandoise cantata he wrote for the four-hundreth anniversery of the University of Upsala in 1977. Sketching the spiritual history of mankind by using the Exodus myth in the Old Testament, Rydberg followed the children of Isreal as they are guided by Moses toward the Promised Land, depicted as both a Platonic realm of ideas and an earthly utopia.
     "Rydberg's most remarkable poem in his second collection of poetry (1891) is 'Den nya Grottesången' (The New Grotti Song). Choosing his dramatic motif from the Old Norse Poetic Edda, Rydberg transforms the mythic gold-making mill of Grotti into a metaphor for the plight of the contemporary laboring class. In the treadmill of capitolism, men, women and children become victims of greed, profit making, and egotism. Though more radical in his vision than anything his younger contemporaries in Swedish literature produced, 'Den nya Grottesången'  did not become a political clarion call. August Strindberg had already shouldered the role of social iconoclast. Rydberg, now professor of history at the University of Stockholm and no longer a journalist in the liberal press, was viewed as part of the establishment. Still rooted in post-romatic idealism, he seemed out of date despite the social indignation of 'Den nya Grottesången'. "

I dig själv levde en moder, som, när Midgard var tusen år yngre än nu, sköt upp ur dess mull och skänkte svalka åt fäder, ...funktion som garant för släktens kontinuitet och styrka. Att trädet är av kvinnligt kön och »moder« bör särskilt observeras. Det har ingen motsvarighet i Eddan, där Yggdrasil är av maskulint kön, men hos Rydberg är moderstemat av central betydelse genom hela författarskapet  och inte minst i just denna dikt. ..

Review of "GESCHICHTEN AUS THULE: ÍSLENDINGASÖGUR IN ÜBERSETZUNGEN DEUTSCHER GERMANISTEN. By JULIA ZERNACK. "

"On page 365, where she points out that the Eddic domr um daudan hvern, often translated as 'fame', actually has the neutral meaning 'judgement', her footnote tells us that this observation 'was already made by Ernst Walter' in an essay of 1987. If Zernack wants to use the word already, how about mentioning Viktor Rydberg, who made the same point in 1886 (Undersokningar i germansk Mythologi, I 373)?"

National Romantics felt that physical immersion in nature fostered the prim- itiveness they considered essential to the Swedish habitus.  In the 1870s the physiologist Fritihof Holmgren, the balneologist Carl Curman, and the writer Viktor Rydberg promoted health through gymnastics, physical culture, and outdoor bathing. Their ideas anticipated by twenty years the German biologist Ernst Haeckel's theory of monism recorded in his Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century (1899). In an essay entitled "On Nudity and Ways of Dressing," Rydberg constructed an elaborate hypothesis based on his belief that Greeks exercised in the nude, a notion circulated more than a century earlier by the German aesthetician J. J Winckelmann. Rydberg began by attributing nudity in ancient Greek art to that culture's concern with fitness: "The Hellenic states were small city societies whose citizens needed the greatest possible bodily strength, toughness, and facility with weapons for  for their defense. As a result, gymnastics evolved. With gymnastics came nudity during exercise, and with that came nudity in art. Rydberg proffered the example of classical Greece as a model for contemporary Sweden. He suggested that a society civilized to the point of wearing clothing was weak; it could be strengthened if its citizens adopted the primitive habit of nudity."

1997. Rydberg, Viktor. Undersökningar i Germanisk Mythology. 2 volumes, Stockholm, 1886-89.  Trans. Rasmus B. Anderson, Teutonic Mythology Gods and Goddesses of the Northland London, Sonnenschein, 1889.
  
         "Among the 'investigations' in this book is a discussion of Ing with reference to the 'Ing' strophe in the rune poem.  The strophe is explained as an episode from a lost Scandinavian epic poem. The 'wæn' mentioned in the strophe (line 69) is to be construed as a proper name cognate with the Danish name Vagn. This Vagn would be the foster-father of Hadding, the eponymous founder of the 'Heardings" mentioned in the rune poem (English edn. 180)." 
                          

  1999 Lars Lönnroth, Sven Delblanc, Sverker Göransson               
Den Svenska Litteraturen: Volume 2

Vapensmeden var redan vid publiceringen 1889 i ett fossil, tekniskt och stilistiskt. Rydberg gav inte ut boken som följetong, ändå kände han sig bunden vid sin gamla genres konventioner, som han lyder i egenartat trött och förströdd stämning.