Viktor Rydberg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Abraham Viktor Rydberg (Jönköping, December 18, 1828 - September 22, 1895) was a Swedish author, publicist, translator and poet. For a period of 20 years, he was the most notable cultural person in Sweden.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
The son of a prison guard and ex-soldier, and midwife, Rydberg had two brothers and three sisters. In 1834 his mother died from a cholera epidemic. Alcoholism contributed towards his father's loss of employment and the family's apartment, forcing authorities to board Rydberg out to various poor households. Despite his poor economic status, Rydberg was recognized for his talents.
From 1838 to 1847, Rydberg attended grammar school, eventually moving on to the University in Lund from 1851 to 1852. Poverty once again affected his life, and his university studies ended without a degree.
Working as a private tutor and at several liberal newspapers, he continued to work on his poetry and literature. His work paid off, and he would become a central figure of late Romanticism in Sweden. His first book was Fribytaren på Östersjön (The Freebooter of the Baltic; 1857), a historical romance set in the 17th century, exploring piracy, witch-hunts, and nautical excursions.
Early in his life, Rydberg was active in liberal politics of the time. Liberals were strong advocates of a separation of church and state, which particularly resonated with Rydberg’s passionate feelings for Germanic heathendom. His dedication to liberalism was further strained by his apprehension of capitalism, the economic system that free trade liberals advocated. In the long poem Den nya Grottesången he delivered a fierce attack on capitalism. Representing the traditional peasant economic system of Sweden, from 1870 to 1872, Rydberg was a member of the Swedish Parliament as a supporter of the Peasant's Party. In 1870, through his newspaper the "Handelstidningen", Rydberg took a very controversial pro-German stance during the Franco-Prussian War. His disdain for modernism and left-wing politics was evident in his 1884 refusal to support anarchist writer August Strindberg, in his blasphemy case. As a juror in an 1888 trial of socialist leader Hjalmar Branting, Rydberg voted to send him to jail for blasphemy.
During his lifetime Rydberg was a lecturer at the Göteborg University (1876), an Honorary doctor at the University of Uppsala (1877), elected to the Swedish academy (1877), a History of Culture professor and eventual chair to History of Art at Stockholm (1884 - 1888).
His life came to an end in 1895, from diabetes and arteriosclerosis. A national mourning would ensue all over Sweden, and his grave is a national monument to this day. Many of his works have been translated, and remain widely read in schools throughout Sweden. A group of three charter High schools and one middleschool school in Stockholm Sweden carries his name.
[edit] Publications
His first major success, and one of his most popular novels, Singoalla (1858) is a dark and romantic tale set in a Medieval landscape. The hero of the novel is a young knight named Erland, who meets Love, symbolized by a gypsy girl Singoalla. His society does not permit his relationship, so he must repress his true feelings. The sin he commits by repressing his true nature, results in his death by a plague. Rydberg rewrites the book throughout his life, and the fourth and final edition of 1894, concludes with Erland dying as a hermit monk; his ending represented Rydberg's future attacks on Christianity.
Den siste Atenaren (The Last Athenian, 1859), his best-known novel, offers a contrast between the toleration of the Hellenic viewpoint with Christian bigotry. His attack on the 19th century Church is portrayed in the novel set in Athens, during the reign of the last pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate. The dogmatic and fanatic Christianity is victorious over the sensual, natural, and noble civilization of classical Greece.
In 1862 he wrote and published “Bibelns lära om Kristus” (‘Christ According to the Bible”), a book of contemporary religious criticism, which was hugely successful. Continuing with his liberal attacks on the Church of Sweden, he uses the New Testament to deny the divineness of Christ. The long term effects of the book, would be the weakening of the authority of the Church over the educated elite class of Sweden. However, this book did not find favor with the religious orthodoxy and it is said that this largely accounted for his exclusion from the Swedish Academy until as late as 1877.
"Medeltidens Magi" ("The Magic of the Middle Ages", 1865) was based on the magical practices and beliefs of the Medieval Period. The contemporary Church was still living according to the ideas of the Dark Ages, and that the dualistic notions of good and evil, represented in God and the Devil and Heaven and Hell, contributed towards the witch-hunts of the period.
"Lille Viggs äventyr på julafton" ("Little Vigg's Adventures on Christmas Eve", 1871), is a short Christmas tale for all ages, originally written for a newspaper, but later widely printed.
Other works included his translation of "Faust" (1876) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; "Romerska Dagar" (Roman Days' 1877), a series of archaeological studies and essays on Italy; Vapensmeden (The Weapon-Smith, 1891), a historical novel during the Age of the Reformation with an overall message of the importance of historical heritage and art; poems, Tomten (1881) being the most widely known.
Between 1886 and 1889 he published three studies in Germanic and Norse Mythology: Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi I (Investigations into Germanic Mythology I) (1886);Fädernas gudasaga (Our Fathers' Godsaga) (1887) (a children's version of Norse mythology); and Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi II (Investigations into Germanic Mythology II (1889)). Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi I would be translated in English by the honorable Rasmus B. Anderson in 1889, under the title "Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses from the Northland]]. Largely overlooked today, the investigations were aimed at discerning the extant traces of Old Germanic myths from older source material that had been subject to Christian and Classical influence. He concluded that not only were the myths very ancient, but that they were fragments of a vast mythical epic.
[edit] References
- Viktor Rydberg in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
- VIKTOR RYDBERG life and works, a thorough presention by Tore Lund
- Gustafson, Alrik, A History of Swedish Literature (Minneapolis, 1961)
[edit] External links
- Viktor Rydberg's "Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of the Northland" e-book
- Several works online at Projekt Runeberg (in Swedish)
| Preceded by: Carl Vilhelm August Strandberg |
Swedish Academy, Chair No 16 1877-1895 |
Succeeded by: Waldemar Rudin |
