Swedish Literature
SWEDISH LITERATURE Swedish literature, as distinguished from compositions in the common norraena tunga of old Scandinavia, cannot be said to exist earlier than the 13th century. Nor until the period of the Reformation was its development in any degree rapid or copious. The oldest form in which Swedish exists as a written language (see SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGE) is the series of manuscripts known as Landskapslagarne, or " The Common Laws." These are supposed to be the relics of a still earlier age, and it is hardly believed that we even possess the first that was put down in writing. The most important and the most ancient of these codes is the " Elder West Gota Law," reduced to its present form by the law-man Eskil about 1230. Another of great interest is Magnus Eriksson's " General Common Law," which was written in 1347. These ancient codes have been collected and edited by the learned jurist, K. J. Schlyter (1795-1888) as Corpus juris Sveo-Gotorum antiqui (4 vols., 1827-1869). The chief ornament of medieval Swedish literature is Um slyrilse kununga ok hofdinga (" On the Conduct of Kings and Princes "), first printed by command of Gustavus II. Adolphus, in 1634. The writer is not known; it has been conjecturally dated 1325. It is a handbook of moral and political teaching, expressed in terse and vigorous language. St Bridget, or Birgitta (1303-1373), an historical figure of extraordinary interest, has left her name attached to several important religious works, in particular to a collection of U ppenbarelser (" Revelations ") , in which her visions and ecstatic meditations are recorded, and a version, the first into Swedish, of the five books of Moses. This latter was undertaken, at her desire, by her father-confessor Mattias (d. 1350), a priest at Linkoping. The translation of the Bible was continued a century later by a monk named Johannes Budde (d. 1484).
In verse the earliest Swedish productions were probably the folk-song. 1 The age of these, however, has been commonly exaggerated. It is doubtful whether any still exist which are as old, in their present form, as the 13th century. The bulk are now attributed to the isth, and many are doubtless much later still. The last, such as " Axel och Valborg," " Liten Karin," " Kampen Grimborg," and " Habor och Signild," deal with the adventures of romantic medieval romance. Almost the only positive clue we hold to the date of these poems is the fact that one of the most characteristic of them, " Engelbrekt," was written by Thomas, bishop of Strengnas, who died in 1443. Thomas, who left other poetical pieces, is usually called the first Swedish poet. There are three rhyming chronicles in medieval Swedish, all anonymous. The earliest, Erikskronikan, 2 is attributed to 1320; the romance of Karl Magnus, Nya Karlskronikan, describing the period between 1387 and 1452, which is sometimes added to the earlier work, dates from the middle of the 15th century; and the third, Sturekronikorna, was probably written about 1500. The collection of rhymed romances which bears the name of Queen Euphemia's Songs must have been written before the death of the Norwegian queen in 1312. They are versions of three medieval stories taken from French and German sources, and dealt with the Chevalier au lion, of Chrestien de Troyes, with Duke Frederick of Normandy, and with Flores and Blancheflor. They possess very slight poetic merit in their Swedish form. A little later the romance of King Alexander 3 was translated by, or at the command of, Bo Jonsson Grip; this is more meritorious. Bishop Thomas, who died in 1443, wrote many political songs; and a number of narrative poems date from the close of the century. A brilliant and pathetic relic of the close of the medieval period exists in the Love Letters addressed in 1498 by Ingrid Persdotter, a nun of Vadstena, to the young knight Axel Nilsson. The first book printed in the Swedish language appeared in 1495.
The 16th century added but little to Swedish literature, and that little is mostly connected with the newly-founded university of Upsala. The Renaissance scarcely made itself felt in Scandinavia, and even the Reformation failed to waken the genius of the country. Psalms and didactic spiritual poems were the main products of Swedish letters in the 16th century. Two writers, the brothers Petri, sons of a smith at Orebro, take an easy prominence in so barren a period. Olaus Petri (1493-1552) and The Petri Laurentius Petri (1499-1573) were Carmelite monks who adopted the Lutheran doctrine while studying at Wittenberg, and came back to Sweden in 1518 as the apostles of the new faith. Olaus, who is one of the noblest figures in Swedish annals, was of the executive rather than the meditative class. He became chancellor to Gustavus Vasa, but his reforming zeal soon brought him into disgrace, and in 1540 he was condemned to death. Two years later he was pardoned, and allowed to resume his preaching in Stockholm. He found time, however, to write a Swedish Chronicle, which is the earliest prose history of Sweden, a mystery-play, Tobiae comedia, which is the first Swedish drama, and three psalm-books, the best known being published in 1530 under the title of Nagre gudhelige vijsor (" Certain Divine Songs "). His Chronicle was based on a number of sources, in the treatment of which he showed a discrimination which makes the work still useful. Laurentius Petri, who was a man of calmer temperament, was archbishop of all Sweden, and edited or superintended the translation of the 1 Skanska folkvisor, edited by E. G. Geijer and A. A. Afzelius (3 vols., Stockholm, 1879).
2 See Cederschiold, Om Erikskronikan (1899).
3 Editions of these chronicles and romances have been issued by the " Svenska Fornskrift Sallskapet " (Stockholm): Ivan Lejonriddaren (ed. Stephens), Hertig Fredrik of Normandie (ed. Ahlstrand) Flores och Blancheflor (ed. G. E. Klemming), Alexander (ed. Klemming), Carl Magnus (ed. Klemming, in Prosadikter fran medeltiden).
Baraeus.
Bible published at Upsala in 1 540. He also wrote many psalms. Laurentius Andreae, 1552, had previously prepared a translation of the New Testament, which appeared in 1526. He was a polemical writer of prominence on the side of the Reformers. Finally, Petrus Niger (Peder Svart), bishop of Vesteris (d. 1562), wrote a chronicle of the life of Gustavus I. up to 1533, in excellent prose. The same writer left unpublished a history of the bishops of Vesteris,' his predecessors. The latter half of the 16th century is a blank in Swedish literature.
With the accession of Charles IX., and the consequent development of Swedish greatness, literature began to assert itself in more vigorous forms. The long life of the royal librarian, Johannes Bure or Buraeus (1568-1652), formed a link between the age of the Petri and that of Stjernhjelm. Buraeus studied all the sciences then known to mankind, and confounded them all in a sort of Rabbinical cultus of his own invention, a universal philosophy in a multitude of unreadable volumes. 4 But he was a patient antiquary, and advanced the knowledge of ancient Scandinavian mythology and language very considerably. He awakened curiosity and roused a public sympathy with letters; nor was it without significance that two of the greatest Swedes of the century, Gustavus Adolphus and the poet Stjernhjelm, were his pupils. The reign of Charles IX. saw the rise of secular drama in Sweden. The first comedy was the Tisbe of Magnus Olai Asteropherus (d. 1647), a coarse but witty piece on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, acted by the schoolboys of the college of Arboga in 1610. This play is the Ralph Roister Doister of Swedish literature. A greater dramatist was Johannes Messenius (1579-1636), who was the son of a miller near Vadstena and had been carefully educated abroad by the Jesuits. Being discovered plotting against the government during the absence of Gustavus in Russia, he was condemned to imprisonment for life that is, for twenty years. Before this disaster he had been professor of jurisprudence in Upsala, where his first historical comedy Disa was performed in 1611 and the tragedy of Signill in 1612. The design of Messenius was to write the history of his country in fifty plays; he completed and produced six. These dramas 6 are not particularly well arranged, but they form a little body of theatrical literature of singular interest and value. Messenius was a genuine poet; the lyrics he introduces have something of the charm of the old ballads. He wrote abundantly in prison ; his magnum opus was a history of Sweden in Latin, but he has also left, in Swedish, two important rhyme-chronicles. Messenius was imitated by a little crowd of playwrights. Nikolaus Holgeri Catonius (d. 1655) wrote a fine tragedy on the Trojan War, Troijenborgh, in which he excelled Messenius as a dramatist. Andreas Prytz, who died in 1655 as bishop of Linkoping, produced several religious chronicle plays from Swedish history. Jacobus Rondeletius (d. 1662) wrote a curious " Christian tragi-comedy " of Judas redivivus, which contains some amusing scenes from daily Swedish life. Another good play was an anonymous Holofernes and Judith (edited at Upsala, 1895, by O. Sylwan). These plays were all acted by schoolboys and university youths, and when they went out of fashion among these classes the drama in Sweden almost entirely ceased to exist. Two historians of the reign of Charles IX., Erik Goransson Tegel (d. 1636) and Aegidius Girs (d. 1639), deserve mention. The chancellor Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (1622- 1686) did much to promote the study of Swedish antiquities. He founded the College of Antiquities at Upsala in 1667, and bought back the Gothic Codex argenteus which he presented to the university library.
The reign of Gustavus Adolphus was adorned by one great writer, the most considerable in all the early history of Sweden. The title of " the Father of Swedish poetry " has s</ero/ye/;o) been universally! awarded to Goran Lilja, better known by his adopted name of Georg Stjernhjelm (q.v.; 1598- 1672). Stjernhjelm was a man of almost universal attainment, but it is mainly in verse that he has left his stamp upon 4 Selections from his writings were edited by G. E. Klemming, (Upsala, 1883-1885).
5 Edited for a learned society (Upsala, 1886, etc.) by H. Schiick.
the literature of his country. He found the language rough and halting, and he moulded it into perfect smoothness and elasticity. His master, Buraeus, had written a few Swedish hexameters by way of experiment. Stjernhjelm took the form and made it national.
The claim of Stjernhjelm to be the first Swedish poet may be contested by a younger man, but a slightly earlier writer, Gustaf Rosenhane (1610-1684), who was a reformer B *'on quite other lines. If Stjernhjelm studied Opitz, Rosenhane took the French poets of the Renaissance for his models, and in 1650 wrote a cycle of one hundred sonnets, the earliest in the language; these were published under the title Venerid in 1680. Rosenhane printed in 1658 a " Complaint of the Swedish Language " in thirteen hundred rattling rhyming lines, and in 1682 a collection of eighty songs. He was a metrist of the artistic order, skilful, learned and unimpassioned. His zeal for the improvement of the literature of his country was beyond question. Most of the young poets, however, followed Stjernhjelm rather than Rosenhane. As personal friends and pupils of the former, the brothers Columbus deserve special attention. They were sons of a musician and poet, Jonas Columbus (1586-1663). Each wrote copiously in verse, but Johan (1640-1684), who was professor of poetry at Upsala, almost entirely m Latin, while Samuel (1642-1679), especially in his Odae sveticae, showed himself an apt and fervid imitator of the Swedish hexameters of Stjernhjelm, to whom he was at one time secretary, and whose Hercules he dramatized. His works were included by P. Hanselli in vol. ii. of Samlade vitterhets arbeten, etc.
Of a rhyming family of Hjarne, it is enough to mention one member, Urban Hjarne (1641-1724), who introduced the new form of classical tragedy from France, in a species of transition from the masques of Stjernhjelm to the later regular rhymed dramas. His best play was a Rosimunda. Lars Johansson (1642-1674), who called himself " Lucidor the Unfortunate," has been the subject of a whole tissue of romance, most of which is fabulous. It is true, however, that he was stabbed, like Marlowe, in a midnight brawl at a tavern. His poems were posthumously collected as Flowers of Helicon, Plucked and Distributed on various occasions by Lucidor the Unfortunate. Stripped of the myth which had attracted so much attention to his name, Lucidor proves to be an occasional rhymester of a very low order. Haquin Spegel (1645-1714), the famous archbishop of Upsala, wrote a long didactic epic in alexandrines, God's Labour and Rest, with an introductory ode to the Deity in rhymed hexameters. He was also a good writer of hymns. Another ecclesiastic, the bishop of Skara, Jesper Svedberg (1653-1735), wrote sacred verses, but is better remembered as the father of Swedenborg. Peter Lagerlof (1648-1699) cultivated a pastoral vein in his ingenious lyrics Elisandra and LycUlis; he was professor of poetry, that is to say, of the art of writing Latin verses, at Upsala. Olof Wexionius (1656-1690?) published his Sinne-Afvel, a collection of graceful miscellaneous pieces, in 1684, in an edition of only 100 copies. Its existence was presently forgotten, and the name of Wexionius had dropped out of the history of literature, when Hanselli recovered a copy and reprinted its contents in 1863.
We have hitherto considered only the followers of Stjernhjelm; we have now to speak of an important writer who followed in DaWs< . erea the footsteps of Rosenhane. Gunno Eurelius, 'afterwards ennobled with the name of Dahlstjerna (q.v.; 1661-1709), early showed an interest in the poetry of Italy. In 1690 he translated Guarini's Pastor Fido, and in or just after 1697 published, in a folio volume without a date, his Kunga-Skald, the first original poem in ottava rima produced in Swedish. This is a bombastic and vainglorious epic in honour of Charles XL, whom Eurelius adored; it is not, however, without great merits, richness of language, flowing metre, and the breadth of a genuine poetic enthusiasm. He published a little collection of lamentable sonnets when his great master died. Johan Paulinus Liljenstedt (1655-1732), a Finn, was a graceful imitator of Ronsard and Guarini. Johan Runius (1670-1713), called the " Prince of Poets," published a collection entitled Dudaim, in which there is nothing to praise, and with him the generation of the 17th century closes. Talent had been shown by certain individuals, but no healthy school of Swedish poetry had been founded, and the latest imitators of Stjernhjelm had lost every vestige of taste and independence.
In prose the 17th century produced but little of importance in Sweden. Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632) was the most polished writer of its earlier half, and his speeches take an important place in the development of the language. The most original mind of the next age was Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702), the famous author of Atland eller Manhem. He spent nearly all his life in Upsala, building anatomical laboratories, conducting musical concerts, laying out botanical gardens, arranging medical lecture rooms in a word, expending ceaseless energy on the practical improvement of the university. He was a genius in all the known branches of learning; at twenty-three his physiological discoveries had made him famous throughout Europe. His Atland (or Atlantika) appeared in four folio volumes, in Latin and Swedish, in 1675-1698; it was an attempt to summon all the authority of the past, all the sages of Greece and the bards of Iceland, to prove the inherent and indisputable greatness of the Swedish nation, in which the fabulous Atlantis had been at last discovered. It was the literary expression of the majesty of Charles XL, and of his autocratical dreams for the destiny of Sweden. From another point of view it is a monstrous hoard or cairn of rough-hewn antiquarian learning, now often praised, sometimes quoted from, and never read. Olof Verelius (1618- 1682) had led the way for Rudbeck, by his translations of Icelandic sagas, a work which was carried on with greater intelligence by Johan Peringskjold (1654-1720), the editor of the Heimskringla (1697), and J. Hadorph (1630-1693). The French philosopher Descartes, who died at Christina's court at Stockholm in 1650, found his chief, though posthumous, disciple in Andreas Rydelius (1671-1738), bishop of Lund, who was the master of Dah'n, and thus connects us with the next epoch. His chief work, Nodiga fornuftsb'fningar ... (5 vols.) appeared in 1718. Charles XII., under whose special patronage Rydelius wrote, was himself a metaphysician and physiologist of merit.
A much more brilliant period followed the death of Charles XII. The influence of France and England took the place of that of Germany and Italy. The taste of Louis XIV., tempered by the study of Addison and Pope, gave its tone to the academical court of Queen Louise Ulrica, who founded in 1758 the academy of literature, which developed later into the academy of literature, history and antiquities.
Sweden became completely a slave to the periwigs of literature, to the unities and graces of classical France. Nevertheless this was a period of great intellectual stimulus and activity, and Swedish literature took a solid shape for the first time. This Augustan period in Sweden closed somewhat abruptly about 1765. Two writers in verse connect it with the school of the preceding century. Jacob Frese (1692 7-1728 ?), a Finn, whose poems were published in 1726, was an elegiacal writer of much grace, who foreshadowed the idyllic manner of Creutz. Atterbom pronounces Frese the best Swedish poet between Stjernhjelm and Dalin. Samuel von Triewald (1688-1743) played a very imperfect Dry den to Dalin 's Pope. He was the first Swedish satirist, and introduced Boileau to his countrymen. His Satire upon our Stupid Poets may still be read with entertainment. 1 Both in verse and prose Olof von Dah'n (q.v.; 1708-1763) takes a higher place than any writer since Stjernhjelm. He was inspired by the study of his great English contemporaries. His Swedish Argus (1733-1734) was modelled on Addison's Spectator, his Thoughts about Critics (1736) on Pope's Essay on Criticism, his Tale of a Horse on Swift's Tale of a Tub. Dalin's style, 1 The works of the chief writers between Sternhjelm and Dalin were edited by P. Hanselli (Upsala, 1856, etc.) as Samlade vitterhetsarbeten-af svenska forfattare.
whether in prose or verse, was of a finished elegance. As a prose writer Dalin is chiefly memorable for his History of the Swedish Kingdom (4vols., 1746-1762). His great epic, Swedish Freedom (1742) was written in alexandrines of far greater smoothness and vigour than had previously been attempted. When in 1737 the new Royal Swedish Theatre was opened, Dalin led the way to a new school of dramatists with his Brynhilda, a regular tragedy in the style of Crebillon pere. In his comedy of The Envious Man he introduced the manner of Moliere, or more properly that of Holberg. His songs, his satires, his occasional pieces, without displaying any real originality, show Dalin's tact and skill as a workman with the pen. He stole from England and France, but with the plagiarism of a man of genius; and his multifarious labours raised Sweden to a level with the other literary countries of Europe. They formed a basis upon which more national and more scrupulous writers could build their various structures. A foreign critic, especially an English one, will never be able to give Dalin so much credit as the Swedes do; but he was certainly an unsurpassable master of pastiche. His works were collected in 6 vols., 1767.
The only poet of importance who contested the laurels of Dalin was a woman. Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht (1718- 1763) was the centre of a society which took the tiych n '""name of Tankebyggare Orden and ventured to rival that which Queen Louise Ulrica created and Dalin adorned. Both groups were classical in taste, both worshipped the new lights in England and France. Fru Nordenflycht wrote with facility and grace; her collection of lyrics, The Sorrowing Turtledove (1743), in spite of its affectation, enjoyed and merited a great success; it was the expression of a deep and genuine sorrow the death of her husband after a very brief and happy married life. It was in 1744 that she settled in Stockholm and opened her famous literary salon. She was called " The Swedish Sappho," and scandal has been needlessly busy in giving point to the allusion. It was to Fru Nordenflycht's credit that she discovered and encouraged the talent of two very distinguished poets younger than herself, Creutz and Gyllenbcrg, who published volumes of poetry in collaboration. Count Gustaf Philip Creutz (q.v.; 1731-1785) was a Finlander who achieved an extraordinary success with his idyllic poems, and in particular with the beautiful pastoral of Atis och Camilla, long the most popular of all Swedish poems. His friend Count Gustaf Fredrik Gyllenborg (1731-1808) was a less accomplished * poet, less delicate and touching, more rhetorical and artificial. His epic Taget o'fver Bait (" The Expedition across the Belt ") (1785) is an imitation, in twelve books, of Voltaire's Henriade, and deals with the prowess of Charles X. He wrote fables, allegories, satires, and a successful comedy of manners, The Swedish Fop. He outlived his chief contemporaries so long that the new generation addressed him as " Father Gyllenborg." Anders Odel (1718-1773) wrote in 1739 the famous " Song of Malcolm Sinclair," the Sinclair svisa. The writers of verse in this period were also exceedingly numerous.
In prose, as was to be expected, the first half of the 18th century was rich in Sweden as elsewhere. The first Swedish novelist was Jakob Henrik Mork (1714-1763). His Writers. romances have some likeness to those of Richardson; they are moral, long-winded, and slow in evolution, but written in an exquisite style, and with much knowledge of human nature. Adalrik och Gothilda, which went on appearing from 1742 to 1745, is the best known; it was followed, between 1748 and 1758, by Thecla. Jakob Wallenberg (1746-1778) described a voyage he took to the East Indies and China under the very odd title of M in son pa galejan (" My Son at the Galleys "), a work full of humour and originality.
Johan Ihre (1707-1780), a professor at Upsala, edited the Codex argenteus of Ulfilas, and produced the valuable Siienskt Dialect Lexicon (1766) based on an earlier learned work, the Dialectologia of Archbishop Erik Benzelius (d. 1743). He settled for some time at Oxford. Ihre's masterpiece is the Creutz.
Glossarium sueogothicum (1769), a historical dictionary with many valuable examples from the ancient monuments of the language. In doing this he was assisted by the labours of two other grammarians, Sven Hof (d. 1786) and Abraham Sahlstedt (d. 1776). The chief historians were Sven Lagerbring (1707-1787), author of a still valuable history of Sweden down to 1457 (Svea Rikes historia, 4 vols., 1769-1783); Olof Celsius (1716-1794), bishop of Lund, who wrote histories of Gustavus I. (1746-1753) and of Eric XIV. (1774); and Karl Gustaf Tessin (1695-1770) who wrote on politics and on aesthetics. Tessin's Old Man's Letters to a young Prince were addressed to his pupil, afterwards Gustavus III. Count Anders Johan von Hopken (1712-1789), the friend of Louise Ulrica, was a master of rhetorical compliment in addresses and funeral orations.
In spite of all the encouragement of the court, drama did not flourish in Sweden. Among the tragic writers of the age we may mention Dalin, Gyllenborg, and Erik Wrangel (1686- 1765). In comedy Reinhold Gustaf Modee (d. 1752) wrote three good plays in rivalry of Holberg.
In science Linnaeus, or Karl von Linne (1707-1778), was the name of greatest genius in the whole century; but he wrote almost entirely in Latin. The two great Swedish chemists, Torbern Olof Bergman (1735-1784) and Karl Vilhelm Scheele (1742-1786), flourished at this time. In pathology a great name was left by Nils Rosen von Rosenstein (1706-1773), in navigation by Admiral Fredrik Henrik af Chapman (d. 1808), in philology by Karl Aurivillius (d. 1786). But these and other distinguished savants whose names might be enumerated scarcely belong to the history of Swedish literature. The same may be said about that marvellous and many-sided genius, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), who, though the son of a Swedish poet, preferred to prophesy to the world in Latin.
What is called the Gustavian period is supposed to commence with the reign of Gustavus III. in 1771 and to close with the abdication of Gustavus IV. in 1809. This The period of less than forty years was particularly Guntavian rich in literary talent, and the taste of the people P* 1 ** in literary matters widened to a remarkable extent. Journalism began to develop; the Swedish Academy was founded; the drama first learned to flourish in Stockholm; and literature began to take a characteristically national shape. This fruitful period naturally divides itself into two divisions, equivalent to the reigns of the two kings. The royal personages of Sweden have commonly been protectors of literature; they have strangely often been able men of letters themselves. Gustavus III. (1746-1792), the founder of the Swedish Academy and of the Swedish theatre, was himself a playwright of no mean ability. One of his prose dramas, Siri Brake och Johan Gyllenstjerna, held the stage for many years. But his best work was his national drama of Gustaf Vasa (1783), written by the king in prose, and afterwards versified by Kellgren. In 1773 the king opened the national theatre in Stockholm, and on that occasion an opera of Thetis och Pelee was performed, written by himself. In 1786 Gustavus created the Swedish Academy, on the lines of the French Academy, but with eighteen members instead of forty. The first list of immortals, which included the survivors of a previous age and such young celebrities as Kellgren and Leopold, embraced all that was most brilliant in the best society of Stockholm; the king himself presided, and won the first prize for an oration. The works of Gustavus III. in six volumes were printed at Stockholm in 1802-1806.
The principal writers of the reign of Gustavus III. bear the name of the academical school. But Karl Mikael Bellman (q.v.; 1740-1795), the most original and one of the most able of all Swedish writers, an improvisatore of the first order, had nothing academical in his composition. The riot of his dithyrambic hymns sounded a strange note of nature amid the conventional music of the Gustavians. Of the academical poets Johan Gabriel Oxenstjerna (1750-1818), the nephew of Gyllenborg, was a descriptive idyllist of grace.
Bellman.
Leopold, LUaer.
He translated Paradise Lost. A writer of far more power and versatility was Johan Henrik Kellgren (q.v.; 1751-1795), the leader of taste in his time. He was the first writer of the end of the century in Sweden, and the second undoubtedly was Karl Gustaf af Leopold 1 (1756-1829), " the blind seer Tiresias-Leopold," who lived on to represent the old school in the midst of romantic times. Leopold attracted the notice of Gustavus III. by a volume of Erotic Odes (1785). The king gave him a pension and rooms in the palace, admitting him on intimate terms. He was not equal to Kellgren in general poetical ability, but he is great in didactic and satiric writing. He wrote a satire, the Enebomiad, against a certain luckless Per Enebom, and a classic tragedy of Virginia. Gudmund Goran Adlerbeth (1751- 1818) made translations from the classics and from the Norse, and was the author of a successful tragic opera, Cora och Alonzo (1782). Anna Maria Lenngren (1754-1817) was a very popular sentimental writer of graceful domestic verse, chiefly between 1792 and 1798. She was less French and more national than most of her contemporaries; she is a Swedish Mrs Hemans. Much of her work appeared anonymously, and was generally attributed to her contemporaries Kellgren and Leopold.
Two writers of the academic period, besides Bellman, and a generation later than he, kept apart, and served to lead up to the romantic revival. Bengt Lidner (1759-1793), a melancholy and professedly elegiacal writer, had analogies with Novalis. He interrupted his studies at the university by a voyage to the East Indies, and only returned to Stockholm after many adventures. In spite of the patronage of Gustavus III. he continued to lead a disordered, wandering life, and died in poverty. A short narrative poem, The Death of the Countess Spastara (1783), has retained its popularity. Lidner was a genuine poet, and his lack of durable success must be set down to faults of character, not to lack of inspiration. His poems appeared in 1788. Thomas Thorild (1750-1808) was a much stronger nature, and led the revolt against prevailing taste with far more vigour. But he is an irregular and inartistic versifier, and it is mainly as a prose writer, and especially as a very original and courageous critic, that he is now mainly remembered. He settled in Germany and died as a professor in Greifswald. Karl August Ehrensvard (1745-1800) may be mentioned here as a critic whose aims somewhat resembled those of Thorild. The creation of the Academy led to a great production of aesthetic and philosophical writing. Among critics of taste may be mentioned Nils Rosen von Rosenstein (1752-1824); the rhetorical bishop of Linkoping, Magnus Lehnberg (1758-1808); and Count Georg Adlersparre (1760-1809). Rosen von Rosenstein embraced the principles of the encyclopaedists while he was attached to the Swedish embassy in Paris. On his return to Sweden he became tutor to the crown prince, and held in succession a number of important offices. As the first secretary of the Swedish Academy he exercised great influence over Swedish literature and thought. His prose writings, which include prefaces to , the works of Kellgren and Lidner, and an eloquent argument against Rousseau's theory of the injurious influence of art and letters, rank with the best of the period. Kellgren and Leopold were both of them important prose writers.
The excellent lyrical poet Frans Mikael Franzen (q.v.; 1772- 1847) and a belated academician Johan David Valerius (1776- 1852), fill up the space between the Gustavian period and the domination of romantic ideas from Germany. It was Lorenzo Hammarskold (1785-1827) who in 1803 introduced the views of Tieck and Schelling by founding the society in Upsala called " Vitterhetens Vanner," and by numerous critical essays. His chief work was Svenska uiUerheten (1818, etc.) a history of Swedish literature. Hammarskold's society was succeeded in 1807 by the famous " Aurora Atterbom f r bundet," founded by two youths of genius, Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom (1790-1855) and Vilhelm Fredrik Palmblad (1788-1852). These young men had at 1 His works were edited by C. R. Nyblom (2 vols., 1873).
ThorllJ.
first to endure bitter opposition and ridicule from the academic writers then in power, but they supported this with cheerfulness, and answered back in their magazines Polyfem and Fosforos (1810-1813). They were named " Fosforisterna " (" Phosphorists ") from the latter. Another principal member of the school was Karl Frederik Dahlgren (q.v.; 1791-1844), a humorist who owed much to the example of Bellman. Fru Julia Nyberg (1785-1854), under the title of Euphrosyne, was their tenth Muse, and wrote agreeable lyrics. Among the Phosphorists Atterbom was the man of most genius. On the side of the Academy they were vigorously attacked by Per Adam Wallmark (1777-1858), to whom they replied in a satire which was the joint work of several of the romanticists, MarkaWs Sleepless Nights. One of the innovators, Atterbom, eventually forced the doors of the Academy itself.
In 1811 certain young men in Stockholm founded a society for the elevation of society by means of the study of Scandinavian antiquity. This was the Gothic Society, which began to issue the magazine called Iduna as its organ. Of its patriotic editors the most prominent was Erik Gustaf Geijer (q.v.; 1783-1847), but he was presently joined by a young man slightly older than himself, Esaias Tegner (q.v.; 1782-1846), afterwards bishop of Vexio, the greatest of Swedish writers. Even more enthusiastic than either in pushing to its last extreme the ' worship of ancient myths and manners was Per Henrik Ling (1776-1839), now better remembered as the father of gymnastic science than as a poet. The Gothic Society eventually included certain younger men than these Arvid August Afzelius (1785-1871), the first editor of the Swedish folk-songs; Gustaf Vilhelm Gumaelius (1789- 1877), who has been somewhat pretentiously styled " The Swedish Walter Scott," author of the historical novel of Tord Bonde; Baron Bernhard von Beskow (q.v.; 1796-1868), lyrist and dramatist; and Karl August Nicander (1799-1839), a lyric poet who approached the Phosphorists in manner. The two great lights of the Gothic school are Geijer, mainly in prose, and Tegner, in his splendid and copious verse. Johan Olof Wallin (1779-1839) may be mentioned in the same category, although he is really distinct from all the schools. He was archbishop of Upsala, and in 1819 he published the national hymn-book of Sweden ; of the hymns in this collection, 1 26 are written by Wallin himself.
From 1810 to 1840 was the blossoming-time in Swedish poetry, and there were several writers of distinguished merit who could not be included in either of the groups enumerated above. Second only to Tegner in genius, the brief *"' life and mysterious death of Erik Johan Stagnelius (1793- 1823) have given a romantic interest to all that is connected with his name. His first publication was the epic of Vladimir the Great (1817); to this succeeded the romantic poem Blanda. His singular dramas, The Bacchantes (1822), Sigurd Ring, which was posthumous, and The Martyrs (1821), are esteemed by many critics to be his most original productions. His mystical lyrics, entitled Liljor i Saron (" Lilies in Sharon "; 1820), and his sonnets, which are the best in Swedish, may be recommended as among the most delicate products of the Scandinavian mind. Stagnelius has been compared, and not improperly, to Shelley. 2 Erik Sjoberg, who called himself " Vitalis " (1794-1828), was another gifted poet whose career was short and wretched. A volume of his poems appeared in 1820; they are few in number and all brief. His work divides itself into two classes the one profoundly melancholy, the other witty or boisterous. Two humorous poets of the same period who deserve mention are Johan Anders Wadman (1777-1837), an improvisatore of the same class as Bellman, and Christian Erik Fahlcrantz (q.v.; 1790-1866).
Among the poets who have been mentioned above, the ! His collected works were edited by C. Eichhorn (2 vols., Stockholm, 1867-1868). Several of Stagnelius' poems were translated into English by Edmund Gosse 1886).
majority distinguished themselves also in prose. But the period was not one in which Swedish prose shone with any special lustre. The first prosaist of the time was, without question, the novelist, Karl Jonas Ludvig Almqvist, (q.v.; 1793-1866), around whose extraordinary personal character and career a mythical romance has already collected (see ALMQVIST). He was encyclopaedic in his range, although his stories preserve most charm; on whatever subject he wrote his style was always exquisite. Fredrik Cederborgh (1784-1835) revived the comic novel in his Una von Trasenberg and Ottar Trailing. The historical novels of Gumaelius have already been alluded to. Swedish history supplied themes for the romances of Count Per Georg Sparre (1790-1871) and of Gustaf Henrik Mellin (1803-1876). But all these writers sink before the sustained popularity of the Finnish poet Fredrika Bremer (q.v.; 1801-1865), whose stories reached farther into the distant provinces of the world of letters than the writings of any other Swede except Tegner. She was preceded by Sofia Margareta Zelow, afterwards Baroness von Knorring (1797-1848), who wrote a long series of aristocratic novels.
A polemical writer of great talent was Magnus Jakob Crusenstople (1795-1865), of whose work it has been said that " it is not history and it is not fiction, but something brilliant between the one and the other." As an historian of Swedish literature Per Wieselgren (1800-1877) composed a valuable work, and made other valuable contributions to history and bibliography. In history we meet again with the great name of Geijer, with that of Jonas Hallenberg (1748-1834), and with that of Anders Magnus Strinnholm (1786-1862), whose labours in the field of Swedish history were extremely valuable. Geijer and Strinnholm prepared the way for the most popular of all Swedish historians, Anders Fryxell (1795-1881), whose famous Berattelser ur svenska historien appeared in parts during a space of nearly sixty years, and awakened a great interest in Swedish history and legend.
In 1850 the first poet of Sweden, without a rival, was Johan Ludvig Runeberg (q.v.; 1804-1877), whose reputation rivals that of Tegner. Bernhard Elis Malmstrom (1816- 1865), who was a professor of aesthetics at the university of Upsala, was the author of many important books on artistic and literary history, notably a monograph on Franzen. His poetry, although small in volume, gives him a place beside Runeberg. A volume of elegies, Angelika (1840), established his fame, and two volumes of poems published in 1845 and 1847 contain a number of ballads, romances and lyrics which keep their hold on Swedish literature. He was an exact and discriminating critic, and inclined to severity in his strictures on the romanticists. The other leading verse-writers were Karl Vilhelm Bottiger (1807-1878), the son-in-law and biographer of Tegner, who, in addition to his lyrical poetry, chiefly of the sentimental kind, wrote an admirable series of monographs on Swedish men of letters; Johan Borjesson (1790-1866), the last of the Phosphorists, author of various romantic dramas; Vilhelm August Detlof von Braun (1813-1860), a humorous lyrist; " Talis Qualis," whose real name was Karl Vilhelm August Strandberg (1818-1877); Oscar Patrick Sturzen-Becker (1811- 1869), better known as " Orvar Odd," a lyrical poet who was also the author of a series of amusing sketches of everyday life; and August Teodor Blanche (1811-1868), the popular dramatist. Blanche produced a number of farces and comedies which were announced as pictures from real life. His pieces abound in comic situations, and some of them, Magistfr Bliickstadius (1844), Rika Morbror (1845), En tragedi i Vimmerby (1848) and others, maintain their reputation. Fredrik August Dahlgren (1816-1895) gained a great reputation as a dramatist by his national opera, Vermlandingarne (1846). He is also the author of translations from Shakespeare and Calderon, and of considerable historical works. Other notable plays of the period were the En Komedi of J. C. Jolin (1818-1884) and the Brollopft pa Ulfdsa (1865) of Frans Hedberg (1828-1908). But Runeberg is the only great poetic name of this period.
In prose there was not even a Runeberg. The best novelist of the time was Emilie Flygare-Carlen (1807-1892). The art was sustained by Karl Anton Wetterbergh (1804-1889), who called himself " Onkel Adam," by August Blanche the dramatist, and by Marie Sofie Schwartz (1819-1892). Fru Schwartz (nee Birat) wrote novels demonstrating the rights of the poor against the rich, of which The Man of Birth and the Woman of the People (Eng. trans., 1868) is a good example. Lars Johan Hierta (1801-1872) was the leading journalist, Johan Henrik Thomander, bishop of Lund (1798-1865), the greatest orator, Matthias Alexander Castren (1813-1852) a prominent man of science, and Karl Gustaf af Forsell (1783- 1848), the principal statistician of this not very brilliant period. Elias Lonnrot (q.v.; 1802-1884) is distinguished as the Finnish professor who discovered and edited the Kalevala.
The most popular poet at the close of the 19th century was the patriotic Finn, Zakris Topelius (q.v.; 1818-1898). Of less importance were Karl Herman Satherberg (1812-1897), a romantic poet who was also a practising physician of distinction; the elegiac poet Johan Nybom (1815-1889); and the poet, novelist, and dramatist Frans Hedberg (d. 1908), who in his old age made many concessions to the modern taste. The posthumous poems of the bishop of Strangnas, Adam Teodor Stromberg (1820-1889), were collected by Wirsen, and created some sensation. A typical academician was the poet, antiquary and connoisseur, Nils Fredrik Sander (1828-1900). The improvisator of Gluntarne, Gunnar Wennerberg (q.v.; 1817-1901) survived as a romantic figure of the past. Still older was the poetess Wilhelmina Nordstrom (1815-1902), long a schoolmistress in Finland. The aesthetic critic and poet, Carl Rupert Nyblom (1832-1907), continued the studies, translations and original pieces which had created him a reputation as one of the most accomplished general writers of Sweden. His wife, Helene Nyblom, was well known as a novelist. A. T. Gellerstedt (b. 1836), an architect of position, was known as a poet of small range but of very fine quality. Among writers of the earlier generation were Achatius Johan Kahl (1794-1888), the biographer of Tegner; Per Erik Bergfalk (1798-1890), the critic and supporter of Geijer; the distinguished historian and academician, Karl Johan Schlyter (1795-1888) and'the historical writers, Fredrik Ferdinand Carlson (1811-1887), Vilhelm Erik Svedelius (1816-1889), and Martin Weibull (1835-1902). The work of King Oscar II. (q.v.) himself had given him a worthy place among the intellectuals of the country. But the interest of such veteran reputations is eclipsed by the more modern school.
The serenity of Swedish literature was rudely shaken about 1884 by an incursion of realism and by a stream of novel and violent imaginative impulse. The controversy between the old and the new schools raged so fiercely, and the victory has remained so obviously in the hands of the latter, that it is difficult, especially for a foreigner, to hold the balance perfectly even. It will therefore be best in this brief sketch to say that the leader of the elder school was Viktor Rydberg (q.v.; 1828-1895) and that he was ably supported by Carl Snoilsky (q.v.; 1841-1904) who at the beginning of the 20th century was the principal living poet of the bygone generation in Sweden. Snoilsky was prominent for the richness of his lyrical style, his cosmopolitan interests and his great width of culture. Carl David af Wirsen (b. 1842) distinguished himself, and made himself very unhappy, by his dogged resistance to every species of renaissance in Swedish thought, or art, or literature. A man of great talent, he was a violent reactionary, and suffered from the consequences of an attitude so unpopular. He found a vehicle for his criticism in the Post och Innkes Tidningar, of which he was editor. He published his Lyrical Poems in 1876; New Lyrical Poems in 1880; Songs and Sketches in 1885.
Four influences may be mentioned as having acted upon young Sweden, and as having combined to release its literature from the old hard-bound conventions. These are English philosophy in the writings of Herbert Spencer, French realism in the practice and the preaching of Zola, Norwegian drama mainly through Ibsen, and Danish criticism in the essays and monographs of Georg Brandes. Unquestionably the greatest name in recent Swedish literature is that of Johan August Strindberg (q.v.; b. 1849). His drama of Master Olof in 1878 began the revolutionary movement. In 1879 the success of his realistic novel, The Red Room, fixed universal attention upon his talent. It was the sensation caused in 1884 by the lawsuit brought against Strindberg's Married (a collection of short stories dealing realistically with some of the seamy sides of marriage) which brought to a head the rebellion against the elegant and superficial conventions which were strangling Swedish literature. He affronts every canon of taste, more by a radical absence, it would seem, of the sense of proportion than by any desire to shock. His diatribes against woman suggest a touch of madness, and he was in fact at one time seized with an attack of insanity. He writes like a man whose view is distorted by physical or mental pain. His phraseology and his turns of invention are too empirically pseudoscientific for the simplicity of nature. With all these faults, and in spite of a terrible vulgarity of mind, an absence of humour, and a boundless confidence in the philosophy of Nietzsche, Strindberg is a writer of very remarkable power and unquestionable originality. His mind underwent singular transformations. After devoting himself wholly to realism of the coarsest kind, he began in 1889 his series of mystico-pathological novels about life in the archipelago of Stockholm. This led him to a culte du moi, of which the strangest result was an autobiography of crude invective, A Fool's Confession (1893), the printing of which in Swedish was forbidden. He rapidly passed on, through books like Inferno (1897), the diary of a semi-lunatic, up into the sheer mysticism of To Damascus (1898), where he reconciles himself at last to Christianity. His best work is classic in its breadth of style, exquisite in local colour and fidelity to the national characteristics of Sweden.
A curious antidote to the harsh pessimism of Strindberg was offered by the delicate and fantastic temperament of Ola Hansson (b. 1860), whose poems came prominently before the public in 1884, and who, in Sensitiva amorosa (1887), preached a gospel of austere self-restraint. Hansson has been as ardent in the idolatry of woman as Strindberg has been in his hostility to the sex. Of those who have worked side by side with Strindberg, the most prominent and active was Gustaf af Geijerstam (b. 1858), in his curious and severely realistic studies of country life in his Poor People (1884) and other books. In 1885 he produced a gloomy sketch of student life at Upsala, Erik Gram, which made a great sensation. Since then Geijerstam has published more than forty volumes, and has become one of the most popular writers of the north of Europe. A melancholy interest surrounds the name of Victoria Benedictsson (Ernst Ahlgren, 1850-1889), who committed suicide in Copenhagen after achieving marked success with her sketches of humble life in Fran Sk&ne, and with the more ambitious works Money and Marianne. She was perhaps the most original of the many women writers of modern Sweden, and Money was hailed by Swedish critics as the most important work of fiction since Strindberg's Red Room. Her biography, a most affecting narrative, was published by Ellen Key, and her autobiography by Axel Lundegard (b. 1861), who, after some miscellaneous writing, produced in 1889 a curious novel of analysis called The Red Prince, and who, becoming a devout clerical, published a number of popular stories in a neo-romantic manner. In 1898-1900 he produced a historical trilogy, Struensee, tracing the career of the minister from his early years as a doctor in Altona to his final downfall. In 1904 appeared the first volume of a second historical trilogy, The Story of Queen Philippa. Fru Alfhild Agrell (nee Martin), who was born in 1849, produced a series of plays dealing with the woman question, Rescued (1883) and others. She also showed great ability as a novelist, among the best of her books being a series of sketches of country life (1884-1887). An historical novelist of unequal powers, but great occasional merit, is Matilda Mailing, nee Kruse (b. 1864), whose romance about Napoleon (1894) enjoyed a huge success. Tor Hedberg (b. 1861) also began as a decided realist, and turned to a more psychological and idealist treatment of life. His most striking work was Judas (1886); he has written some excellent dramas. Late successes in the novel has been those of Hilma Angered-Strandberg (On the Prairie, 1898) and Gustaf Janson (Paradise, 1900). The most remarkable of the novelists of the latest group is Selma Lagerlof (b. 1858), who achieved a great success with Costa Berlings Saga in 1891- 1892. She employs the Swedish language with an extraordinary richness and variety, and stands in the front rank of Swedish novelists. But perhaps the most cosmopolitan recent novelist of Sweden is Per Hallstrom (b. 1866), who spent much of his youth in America, and appeared as an imaginative writer first in 1891. He has published volumes of ballads, short stories and sketches, fantastic and humoristic, all admirable in style. His play, A Venetian Comedy, enjoyed a substantial success in 1904.
Among the recent lyrical poets of Sweden, the first to adopt the naturalistic manner was Albert Ulrik Baath (b. 1853), whose earliest poems appeared in 1879. In his rebellion against the sweetness of Swedish convention he proved himself somewhat indifferent to beauty of form, returned to " early national " types of versification, and concentrated his attention on dismal and distressing conditions of life. He is a resolute, but, in his early volumes, harsh and rocky writer. From 1882 onwards Baath was steadily productive. Karl Alfred Melin (b. 1849) has described in verse the life in the islands of the Stockholm archipelago. Among lyrists who have attracted attention in their various fields are Oskar Levertin (1862-1906) and Emil Kleen (1868-1898). Of these Levertin is the more highly coloured and perfumed, with an almost Oriental richness; Kleen has not been surpassed in the velvety softness of his language. But by far the most original and enjoyable lyrical genius of the later period is that of Gustaf Eroding (b. 1860), whose collection of poems, called Guitar and Accordion, humorous, amatory and pathetic, produced a great sensation in 1891. Three other volumes followed in 1894, 1895 and 1897, each displaying to further advantage the versatility and sensuous splendour of Froding's talent, as well as its somewhat scandalous recklessness. In 1897 he was struck down with insanity, and after three months' confinement in the asylum at Upsala, although he recovered his senses, all his joyousness and wildness had left him. He became gloomily religious, and in a new volume of poems he denounced all that he valued and enjoyed before his conversion. A younger poet is K. G. Ossian-Nilssen (b. 1875), the author of several volumes of vigorous dramatic and satiric verse.
The writer who was exercising most influence in Sweden at the opening of the 20th century was Verner von Heidenstam (b. 1859). He started authorship with a book of verse in 1888, after which time he led a reaction against realism and pessimism, and has turned back to a rich romantic idealism in his novels of Endymion (1889) and Hans Alienus (1892), and in his stories (1897) of the time of Charles XII. Heidenstam also published interesting volumes of literary criticism, and he is a lyrical poet of very high attainment. Miss Ellen Key (b. 1849), a secularist lecturer of great fervour, became an author in biographical and critical studies of remarkable originality. She is distinguished from Selma Lagerlof, who is simply an artist, by her exercise of pure intellect; she is a moral leader; she has been called " the Pallas of Sweden." She published in 1897 a biography of the Swedish author, Almqvist; in 1899 she collected her finest essays in the volume called Thought Pictures; in 1900 appeared, under the title Human Beings, studies of the Brownings and of Goethe; but the finest of Ellen Key's books is The Century of Childhood (1901), a philosophical survey of the progress of elementary education in the last hundred years. She exercises a very remarkable power over the minds of the latest generation in Sweden. A polemical essayist of elaborate delicacy of style is Hjalmar Soderberg (b. 1869), who has been influenced by Strindberg and by Anatole France. His ironic romance, Martin Birck's Youth, created a sensation in 1901. Karl Johan Warburg (b. 1852) has done good work both as an essayist and as an historian of literature. But in this latter field by far the most eminent recent name in Swedish literature is that of Professor Johan Henrik Schiick (b. 1855), who has made great discoveries in the 16th and lyth centuries, and who has published, besides a good book about Shakespeare, studies in which a profound learning is relieved by elegance of delivery. Warburg and Schiick have written an excellent history of Swedish literature down to 1888. The poet Levertin, who was also a distinguished critic, wrote a good book about the Swedish theatre. Drama has rarely flourished in Sweden, but several of the poets mentioned above have written important plays, and, somewhat earlier, the socialistic problempieces of Anne Charlotte Edgren-LefHer, duchess of Cajanello (1840-1893), possessed considerable dramatic talent, working under a direct impulse from Ibsen; but her greatest gift was as a novelist. The plays of Harald Johan Molander (1858-1900) have been popular in the theatres of Sweden and Finland since his first success with Rococo in 1880. Altogether a remarkable revival of belles-lettres has taken place in Sweden after a long period of inertness and conventionality. It is regrettable, for its own sake, that the Swedish Academy, which in earlier generations had identified itself with the manifestations of original literary genius, has closed its doors to the new writers with an almost vindictive pertinacity.
Swedish Philosophy. Swedish philosophy proper began in the 17th century with the introduction of Cartesiamsm. The protagonist of the movement was J. Bilberg (1646-M7I7), who, in various theses and discussions, defended the new ideas against the scholastic Aristotelianism of the orthodox churchmen. A. Rydelius (1671- 1738), an intimate friend of Charles XII., endeavoured to find a common ground for the opposing schools, and the LeibnitzioWolffian philosophy was maintained by N. Wallerius (1706-1764). Towards the close of the 18th century, a number of thinkers began to expound the philosophy of the Enlightenment under the influence of English and French ideas J. H. Kellgren (1751-1795), K. G. af Leopold (1756-1829), T. Thorild (1759-1808), K. A. Ehrensvard (' 745-1 800); while the Kantian dialectic was worthily defended by p. Boethius (1751-1810), whose work paved the way for a great idealistic speculative movement headed by B. Hoijer (1767-1812), the poet P. D. A. Atterbom (1790-1855), a follower of Schelling, and J. J. Borelius (b. 1823), the great Swedish exponent of Hegelianism.
All the above thinkers reflected the general development of European thought. There exists, however, a body of thought which is the product of the peculiar genius of the Swedish people, namely, the development of the individual soul in accordance with a coherent social order and a strong religious spirit. This Personal Philosophy owes its development to K. J. Bostrom (g.f.), and, though traceable ultimately to Schelling's idealism, received its distinctive character from the investigations of N. F. Biberg (1776- 1827), S. Grubbe (1786-1853) and E. G. Geijer (q.v.) (1783-1847), all professors at Upsala. Bostrom's philosophy is logically expressed and based on the one great conception of a spiritual, eternal, immutable Being, whose existence is absolute, above and external to the finite world of time and space. It has for a long time exercised almost unquestioned authority over Swedish thought, religious and philosophical. It is strong in its unequivocal insistence on personal purity and responsibility, and in the uncompromising simplicity of its fundamental principle. Bostrom wrote little, but his views are to be found in the works of two groups of thinkers. The older group includes S. Ribbing (1816-1899), C. Y. Sahlin (b. 1824), K. Claeson (1827-1859), H. Edfeldt (b. 1836), the editor of Bostrom's works, A. Nyblaeus (1821-1899) and P. J. H. Leander (b. 1831); the younger writers, less in agreement with one another, but adhering in the main to the same tradition, are E. O. Burman (b. 1845), K. R. Geijer (b. 1849), L. H. Aberg (1851- 1895), F. v. Scheele (b. 1853), J- V. A. Norstrom (b. 1856), of Gothenburg, and P. E. Liljeqvist (b. 1865), of Lund. Of these, Nyblaeus compiled a lucid account of Swedish philosophy from the beginning of the 18th century up to and including Bostrom ; Ribbing (Plains Ideeldra and Socratische Studien) showed how closely Swedish idealism is allied to Greek. P. Wikner (1837-1888) broke away from the Bostrcmian tradition and followed out a path of his own in a more essentially religious spirit. V. Rydberg (q.v.) (1828-1895) closely followed Bostrom, and in his numerous and varied writings did "much to crystallize and extend the principles of idealism. Among prominent modern writers may also be mentioned H. Larrson and A. Herrlin at Lund, and A. Vannerus in Stockholm.
AUTHORITIES. The Svecia litterata (1680) of J. Schefferus (1621- 1679) is the first serious attempt at a bibliography of Swedish literature. The Svenska stare och skalder (Upsala, 1841-1855) contains an admirable series of portraits of Swedish writers up to the end of the reign of Gustavus III.; many of Atterbom's judgments are reversed in the Grunddragen af Svenska vitterhetens historia (1866- 1868) of B. E. Malmstrom; and a body of excellent criticism of the subsequent period was supplied by G. Ljunggren in his Svenska vilterhetens hdfder frdn Gustaf do'd (1818-1819; new ed. by SondSn III.'s. 1833), which remains a classic exposition of the views of the romanticists. The history of Swedish letters as it reflects the life of the nation is dealt with by C. R. Nyblom, Estetiska studier ( Stockholm, 1873-1884). Among general works on the subject, see H. Schuck, Svensk literaturhistoria (1885, etc.) Schiick and Warburg, Illustrerad Svensk literatur historia (1896); H. Paul, Grundriss der germanischen Philologie (new ed., Strassburg, 1901, etc.). The official handbook of Sweden prepared by the Swedish Central Bureau of Statistics for the Paris Exhibition (English ed., Stockholm, 1904); Ph. Schweitzer, Geschichte der skandinavischen Litteratur, forming vol. viii. of Geschichte der Welt Litteratur in Einzeldarstellungen (Leipzig, 3 pts., 1886-1889); Oscar Levertin, Svenska Gestalter 1904- (E. G.)
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
