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Viktor Rydberg

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 97.100.237.167 (talk) at 02:03, 30 May 2008 (Added scholarly citation to clear up any confusion about scholarly opinion on the matter of Harbard.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Viktor Rydberg
Rydberg in 1876
Rydberg in 1876
OccupationAuthor, publicist, translator and poet
NationalitySwedish
Notable worksSingoalla, Undersökningar i Germanisk Mythologi I-II, Fädernas Gudasaga,
SpouseSusen Hasselblad

Abraham Viktor Rydberg (Jönköping, December 18 1828 - Djursholm September 22 1895) was a Swedish author, publicist, translator and poet. Rydberg has been described as "Sweden's last Romantic". As "the leading cultural figure of his day,"[1] he has been described by Judith Moffett as "a 'man of letters': a journalist, novelist, poet, religious historican, and expert on Norse mythology and the history of ideas, and all-around cultural leader and recognized as such by his contemporaries".[2]

As an idealist and a romantic, Rydberg had little influence on the next generation of writers, dominated by realism.[3] "It is as an exegetic researcher that Rydberg’s influence on the history of ideas is the greatest." His work has "plainly been seen as the breakthrough of religious liberalism in Sweden."[4] Rydberg works on the history of religion and comparative Indo-European studies has not been recognized to the same extent.[5]

Biography

Viktor Rydberg was of humble extraction. One biographer notes that: "He had a hard struggle to satisfy the thirst for learning which was a leading passion of his life, but he finally attained distinction in several fields of scholarship."[6] The son of a soldier turned prison guard, and a midwife, Victor Rydberg had two brothers and three sisters. In 1834 his mother died during a cholera epidemic. After the death of his beloved wife, alcoholism contributed towards his father's loss of employment and the family's apartment, forcing authorities to board young Victor out to a series of foster homes, one of which burnt down, further traumatizing the youth.

Despite his economic status, Rydberg was recognized for his talents. From 1838 to 1847, Rydberg attended grammar school, eventually attending the University in Lund from 1851 to 1852. Due to finacial reasons, his university studies ended without a degree. Afterward, he took a job as a private tutor. In 1855, he was offered work at the Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, a newspaper in Göteborg, where he would remain employed for more than 20 years. It was during this time that his first novels saw print. He soon become a central figure of late Romanticism in Sweden.

Throughout his adult life, Rydberg was active in politics. In 1859, he wrote a pamphlet on national defence, which inspired the "Sharpshooter's movement", a voluntary militia of some political importance during the 1860s. In 1870, he took a controversial pro-German stance during the Franco-Prussian War. Representing the traditional economic system of Sweden, from 1870 to 1872, Rydberg was a member of the Swedish Parliament as a supporter of the Peasant's Party. Having been a supporter of the Jewish cause since his youth, it was MP Viktor Rydberg who gave the keynote speech in the parliamentary debate to enact a law granting all non-Lutherns full civil rights. He was the uncompromising champion of the working man and his works on the subject in both prose and poetry are part of the "treasury of this class."[7] He also advocated language reform, purging foriegn words from the Swedish language, particularly those of German origin.[8] Around this time, he advocated a more Germanic spelling of his own name: Viktor, as opposed to Victor.

Throughout his life and career, Rydberg would coin several Swedish words, many still in use today. His disdain for modernism 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. They would never speak to one another again. His apprehension of unregulated capitalism at the dawn of the industrial age is most fully expressed in his acclaimed poem Den nya Grottesången (The New Grotti Song) in which he delivered a fierce attack on the miserable working conditions in factories of the era, using the mill of Grottasöngr as his literary backdrop.

In 1877, Rydberg received an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala, for his lifetime of literary achievement. He was elected to the Swedish Academy in 1877. He served as History of Culture professor and eventual chair to History of Art at Stockholm Högskola, now Stockholm University (1884 - 1888).[citation needed]

Rydberg died at the age of 67 on September 8th, 1895 due to complications from diabetes and arteriosclerosis. Rydberg's passing was reported as far away as America, where the New York Times published an obituary titled: "Death of Prof. A.V. Rydberg, Career and Remarkable works of one of Sweden's Leading Men."[9] A national day of 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 in print. His works are widely read in schools throughout Sweden, and his poem "Tomten" is a national Christmas favorite. A group of three charter high schools (Gymnasium) and one middle school in Stockholm, as well as a street in Götesborg, a student dormatory, and other buildings carry his name. He is still listed in many English language encyclopedias as an individual entry.[10]

Publications

Viktor Rydberg's grave in Gothenburg.

In 1857, Rydberg's first novel, Fribytaren på Östersjön (The Freebooter of the Baltic; 1857), a historical romance set in the 17th century, incorporating themes of piracy, witchcraft and nautical excursions, was published.

This was soon followed by his first major success, and one of his most popular novels, Singoalla (1858), a "romantic story out of the Middle Ages, permeated with a poetic nature-mysticism, about the tragic love between a knight and a gypsy girl."[11] Rydberg rewrote the book throughout his life. The fourth and final edition of 1894, concludes with Erland dying as a hermit monk. The story has been made into a film twice, and today, a popular brand of cookie takes its name from the book's main character: Singoalla. A review of the first English translation of the work in the Saga-Book of the Viking Club, Vol. 4, Part 1, 1904-5, noting that the book "has already been translated into most of the languages of continental Europe," remarks that "Singoalla is a novel occupying a pre-eminent place among Rydberg's prose writings."

In 1859, Rydberg's most ambitious novel, and his last one for 30 years, was published under the title Den siste Atenaren (The Last Athenian). This, his best-known novel, offers a contrast between "Rydberg's admiration for classical antiquity and his critical attitude to dogmatic Christianity."[12] This struggle is set in Athens, in the time of the last pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate, during the transition from Platonic paganism to Chistianity. The novel advocates a philosophy founded on the noblest elements of both ideologies. At "scarely thirty years of age," Rydberg was "already acknowledged to be the foremost living prose writer of Scandinavia."[13]

In 1862 he wrote and published “Bibelns lära om Kristus” (‘Christ According to the Bible”), a work of contemporary religious criticism, which was hugely successful. Introducing modern Biblical criticism to Scandinavia, he used the New Testament to deny the divinity of Christ. The long term effects of the book, would be the weakening of the authority of the Church over the educated classes of Scandinavia. He taught freedom of individual conscience. It was this that inspired him in the fight against the state church.[14] Predictably, this book attracted the ire of the orthodox religious establishment and is generally credited for Rydberg's exclusion from the Swedish Academy until as late as 1877. From 1865 to 1868, Rydberg suffered a severe about of depression caused by the theological struggle and a broken engagement in 1865.

Rydberg's next work, "Medeltidens Magi" ("The Magic of the Middle Ages") 1865 is an exposition of the magical practices and beliefs of the Medieval period. According to Rydberg, the contemporary Church was still driven by the ideology of the Dark Ages, and its dualistic notions of good and evil, represented by God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell, contributed towards the horror of the witch-hunts in Europe and America in the recent past. From this point forward, Rydberg was economically successful as a writer.

cover to Fädernas gudasaga

"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. It has since become a Christmas classic in Sweden.

After a long journey in Italy in 1874, Rydberg published Romerska sägner om apostlarna Petrus och Paulus (Roman Legends concerning the Apostles Peter and Paul 1874) and "Romerska Dagar" (Roman Days 1877), a series of essays on Italian culture, history and archaeology; The journey is said to have strengthened Rydberg's creative power, as he now produced some of "the finest philosophical lyrics in Swedish literature".[15] In an apparent reference to Rydberg's writings on Greece and Rome, Judith Moffett, a science fiction writer who translated a number of Rydberg's poems reflects the scholarly reception by stating that Rydberg was "a historian who cared more for atmospheres and half-truths than for historical facts."[16]

Other important works include his translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (1876) and the historical novel Vapensmeden (The Armoror, 1891), his first novel in three decades. Set during the Reformation, the novel depicts the struggle between Luthern Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. In it, Rydberg "still fought fanaticism and dogmatism, and his ideal was still humanity and liberty."[17]

Between 1886 and 1889, his scientific work was focused on the old Norse and Germanic mythology.[18] He published several works in the field including two articles on the origins of the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, in which he debated the authenticity of the poem with Norwegian scholar Sophus Bugge, who held that the poem was based on Classical and Biblical sources. Of this work Old Norse scholar Ursula Dronke characterizes this work as "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.”[19] Even Sophus Bugge acknowledged that Rydberg won the argument, ushering in the modern age of Eddic scholarship by firmly vanquishing the nature-school of mythology.[20] The result of his own investigations in prose was titled Segerssvärdet 1882, (The Sword of Victory), followed by two volumes of mythic studies titled Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi, första delen, 1886 (Investigations into Germanic Mythology, Volume 1); and Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi, andre delen, (Investigations into Germanic Mythology, Volume 2) 1889 as well as a children's version of Norse mythology in 1887 titled Fädernas gudasaga (Our Fathers' Godsaga).

Rydberg has been called the "last —and poetically most gifted —of the mythological school founded by Jacob Grimm and represented by such men as Adalbert Kuhn" which is "strongly synthetic" in its understanding of myth.[21] Of this work, noted Dutch scholar Jan de Vries, said:

At a time, when one was firmly convinced that the Old Norse myths were a late product, Rydberg’s voice resounds. At that time, he swam against the stream, but he clearly expressed that which has become an ever stronger certainty today: a large part of the myths of the Germanic tradition —and that is to say basically the Old Norse tradition—must be set back in a time when the undivided Proto-Indo-European people themselves created the vessel of their worldview in myths.[22]

One of Rydberg's most widely accepted mythological theories is that of a vast world-mill which rotates the heavens, which he believed was an integral part of Old Norse mythic cosmology.In 1934, German scholar O.S. Reuter provided the first conceptual drawing of this mill in his work Germanische Himmelskunde.[23] In the late 1960s, Professors Georgio de Santilliana and Hertha von Dechend used the mill as a central theme in their groundbreaking work on archeoastronomy, Hamlet's Mill.[24] More recently, Clive Tolley took up Rydberg's theory[25] in his 1995 Saga-Book article on “The Mill in Norse and Finnish Mythology,” which examined additional Indo-European and Finnish analogs of the mill.[26] Tolley concluded that “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 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,"[27] further noting that "the image of a cosmic mill, ambivalently churning out well-being or disaster, may be recognized in certain fragmentary myths"[28] Ursula Dronke references Tolley’s article in her analysis of Völuspá 5, 1-4, stating "we now have an incisive analysis of comparative mythological material on the theme of the cosmic mill in ON, Finnic, and Indian," adding "the central parallels which Tolley undogmatically presents are most impressive."[29] Richard M. Dorson expresses a similar view in the 1999 History of British Folklore.[30]


During the 1880s, Rydberg also published two studies of runic inscriptions. His acceptance speech into the Swedish Academy, titled "Om Hjeltesagan å Rökstenen" (translated as "Concerning the Heroic-Saga on the Rök Runestone") was published in English translation, with an introduction by Swedish Scholar Ola Östin, in its entirety in The Runestone Journal 1, 2007, a publication of the Asatru Folk Assembly.

Scholarly Reception of Rydberg's Mythological Works

There is no shortage of scholarly opinion and no consensus on Viktor Rydberg's works on Indo-European and Germanic mythology. Some scholars feel that his work is ingenious,[31] while others feel the work is too speculative. One scholar expressed the opinion that "Rydberg's views" concerning resemblances of Thor and Indra were carried to extremes, therefore receiving "less recognition than they deserved."[32] Others refute individual points of the work.[33] Still others have commented on what they see as fundamental flaws in Rydberg's methodology. [34] While many modern scholars object to any systematization of the mythology inclduing the one imposed by Snorri Sturlusson, believing it artificial, Margaret Clunies Ross and John Lindow have recently advocated a chronological systemization of the most important mythic episodes as inherent in the oral tradition underlying Eddic poetry. Rydberg, however, believed that most of the Germanic myths could be fit into such a chronology, an approach characterized as "fundamentalist" by H. R. Ellis Davidson, who first commented on his book "Teutonic Mythology" in 1943.[35]

While Rydberg's ingenuity has been recognized by some,[36] his work has most often been criticized for being too subjective.[37] In the first comprehensive review of the work in English, Rydberg's "brilliancy" and "great success" were recognized, alongside an acknowledgement that he sometimes "stumbles badly" in his effort to "reduce chaos to order."[38] In 1976, German-language scholar Peter-Hans Naumann published the first evaluation of the full range of Viktor Rydberg's mythological writings.

More than 120 years after its initial publication, Rydberg's work continues to be cited by scholars in the field. Rudolf Simek includes Rydberg's work in the bibliography of his Dictionary of Northern Mythology, 1984. In 1997, William H. Swatos, Jr. and Loftur Reimar Gissurarson reference Rydberg's explanation of draugur ('mound-dwellers') in their work, Icelandic Spiritualism, [39] while Marvin Taylor cites Rydberg’s definition of the phrase, “dómr um dauðan hvern,” as predating that of a more contemporary writer cited by the author. [40] In the comprehensive multi-volume Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, Bd. 2,[41] and in Carol Clover's article "Hárbardsljóð as Generic Farce",[42] Rydberg was identified as one of the scholars who identified the ferryman Harbard of the Eddic poem Hárbardsljóð as Loki, rather than Odin. The Kommetar states: "Because there is no explicit revelation in the poem Harbardsljod concerning the identity of the title figure, Harbard, who is concealed under this name remained disputed until the end of the 19th century. The hostile attitude toward Thor, which continues throughout the poem, contributed to Harbard being understood as an enemy of the gods. Thus Gunnar Pálsson and others saw in Harbard a giant, Bergmann and Rydberg, in contrast, Loki," adding “The identity Harbard-Odin has been generally accepted since the detailed rejection of the opinions of Bergmann and Rydberg by Niedner and Finnur Jónsson. ...But Klingenberg affirms that HArbardr-Odin presents himself as 'Loki-like.'”.[43] More recently, Swedish Doktorand (PhD student) Anna Lindén reviewed the full two-volume work on mythology, concluding in part that it was not more widely received because it was not fully available in one of the three international languages of scholarship: English, German or French.[44]


In 2008, Swedish composer Mats Wendt completed a 15 hour "cybersymphony" based on Rydberg's Fädernas Gudasaga (Our Fathers' Godsaga).

An amount of interest exists in Rydberg's theories about Germanic paganism in Germanic Neopaganism. According to pagan scholar Jenny Blain (2002):

[d]iscussions of Rydberg's highly systematized versions of the mythology periodically surface on Ásatrú mailing lists and other public fora for debate. They have a few adherents within the community; however, on the whole the community rejects them, as do academics today, as being attempts to create an artificial order based on flawed methodological principles and nineteenth century definitions of deity.[45]

Bibliography

Many of Rydberg's works can be found catalogued on the Project Runeberg website listed below.

  • 1857, Fribytaren på Östersjön
  • 1858, Singoalla
    • Singoalla, A Legend-Story, translated by Josef Fredbärj, 1904.
  • 1859, Den siste Atenaren
    • The Last Athenian, translated by William W. Thomas Jr.
  • 1862, Bibelns lära om Kristus (‘Christ According to the Bible')
  • 1865, Medeltidens Magi
    • "The Magic of the Middle Ages" translated by August Hjalmar Edgren.
  • 1871, Lille Viggs äventyr på julafton (Little Vigg's Adventures on Christmas Eve)
    • Little Vigg's Christmas Eve, in the anthology, Australia Once a Month, translated by D. Conolly, 1885.
  • 1874, Romerska sägner om apostlarna Petrus och Paulus
    • Roman Legends about the Apostles Paul and Peter, translated by Ottilia von Düben, 1898.
  • 1877, Romerska Dagar
    • Roman Days, translated by Alfred C. Clark, 1877.
  • 1876, Swedish translation of Goethe's Faust
  • 1882, Segerssvärdet (The Sword of Victory)
  • 1887, Fädernas gudasaga
    • Our Fathers' Godsaga, translated by William P. Reaves, 2003.
  • 1886, Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi, första delen, (Investigations into Germanic Mythology, Volume I).
    • Teutonic Mythology translated by Rasmus B. Anderson 1889
  • 1889, Undersökningar i germanisk mythologi, andre delen.
    • Viktor Rydberg's Investigations into Germanic Mythology, Volume 2, Parts 1 & 2, translated by William P. Reaves, 2004-2007.
  • 1882-1891 Dikter (Poems)
    • A selection of these appear in Anthology of Swedish Lyrics from 1750 to 1925, translated by Charles W. Stork, 1930; and The North! To the North! : Five Swedish Poets of the Nineteenth Century, translated by Judith Moffett, 2001.
  • 1891, Vapensmeden,(The Armorer, literally "The Weapon-smith").
  • 1894, Varia (Miscellanea).


References

  1. ^ Larouosse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, 1994.
  2. ^ Judith Moffet, The North! To the North! (2001), p. 78. He was further charaterized as a "specialist in Germanic religions" in 1990 by Tore Ahlbäck in Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place-names: Based on papers read at the Symposium on Encounters between Religions in Old Nordic Times and on Cultic Place-names held at Åbo, Finland, on the 19th-21st of August 1987.
  3. ^ Moffet (2001), p. 85
  4. ^ Edvard Rodhe. Den religiösa liberalismen i Sverige Uppsala, 1935), p. 168.
  5. ^ Anna Lindén, Viktor Rydberg and the comparative study of the history of Indo-European religion, Lychnos: Årsbok för idé- och lärdomshistoria (Uppsala, 2004)
  6. ^ Anthology of Swedish Lyrics From 1750 to 1925 by Charles Wharton Stork, 1930
  7. ^ The American Monthly Review of Reviews by Albert Shaw; "Viktor Rydberg: Reformer, The Dante of Sweden"
  8. ^ The Nordic Languages:An International History of the North Germanic Language, Vol. 1, 2002, by Oskar Bandle, Kurt Braunmuller, Lennart Elmevik, Ernst Hakon Jahr, Gun Widmark, Allan Karker, Hans-Peter Naumann, Ulf Teleman.
  9. ^ "Death of Prof. A.V.Rydberg". New York Times. 8.22.1895. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ "Viktor Rydberg". Encyclopedia Brittanica. 1911., among others.
  11. ^ European Authors (1000-1900) A Biographical Dictionary of European Literature, Edited by Stanley J. Kunitz and Vineta Colby, 1967.
  12. ^ ibid, Kunitz and Colby.
  13. ^ William Widgery Thomas, Jr. writing in the introduction to the The Last Athenian.
  14. ^ ibid, Albert Shaw.
  15. ^ ibid, Kunitz & Colby, p. 809.
  16. ^ Moffet (2001), p. 84
  17. ^ Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, Second Edition, edited by Jean-Albert Bédé and William B. Edgerton, 1980.
  18. ^ ibid, Bédé and Edgerton.
  19. ^ Völuspá and the Sibylline Traditions, Latin Culture and Medieval Germanic Europe, ed. Richard North and T. Hofstra, 1992 [Reprinted in her book Myth and Fiction in Old Norse Lands].
  20. ^ Jan de Vries, Forschungsgeschichte der Mythologie, 1961.
  21. ^ Henrik Schück, quoted by Karl Warburg in Viktor Rydberg, En Lefnadsteckning, 1900.
  22. ^ Jan De Vries, Forschungsgeschichte der Mythologie, 1961. [verification needed]
  23. ^ Germanische Himmelskunde, 1934, p. 239.
  24. ^ Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Professor of Linguitics and Archaeology at Occidental College, and Paul T. Barber, When They Severed Earth From Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth, 2008: "This chapter could not have existed without the massive groundbreaking by Santilliana and Dechend [1977, first published in 1969 in German]. ..Although controversial, they have usefully flagged and collected Herculean amounts of relevant data."
  25. ^ Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, bd. 3, p. 839: "Diese Deutung Rydberg’s greift in jüngster Zeit noch Tolley auf (1995)."
  26. ^ Tolley, Clive (1995), "The Mill in Norse and Finnish Mythology." Saga-Book 24:63-82, p.73. There Tolley states: “The word luðr 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,’" specifically arguing against the speculative readings "cradle" and "coffin" found in all modern translations of Vafthrudnismal 35, before stating "If Bergelmir was placed on a mill-frame, he was clearly ground up: Rydberg (1886, I431-32) 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 (cf. the sand described as ‘meal’ by the companions of Amlethus in the citation from Saxo above)”
  27. ^ ibid., p.77.
  28. ^ ibid, p.73
  29. ^ Ursula Dronke, Poetic Edda, Vol. 2, pg. 116-117.
  30. ^ History of British Folklore, Vol. II, Routledge, p. 174. “A similar conception underlies the Eddaic Mundilföri, the giant who makes the heavens turn round in its daily and yearly revolutions by moving (færa) the handle (mundil, möndull) of the great world-mill— that being the Teutonic idea of the revolving vault of heaven. [Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology, 396-7; M. Müller, Contributions to the Science of Mythology, 40, 651] Mundilföri, the axis-mover and heaven-turner, is a solar being who has his children Máni and Sól (i,e, Sun and Moon). As fire-producer by turning, he was identified with Lodhurr, the fire-kindler. [Rydberg, 412; Du Chaillu, Viking Age, i. 38; C.F. Keary, The Vikings, 65. In the Finnish Kalevala the sun is called ‘God’s spindle’ (Grimm, T.M., 1500)].”
  31. ^ Commenting on specifics of Rydberg's comparative mythology, the Dutch scholar Jan de Vries calls him "sagacious." De Vries, writing in The Problem of Loki, 1933, said:

    The resemblance between Loki and Prometheus, which indeed cannot be denied, was mostly considered to be a proof of his character as a fire-god, even going back to the Aryan period. The sagacious Swedish scholar V. Rydberg argued in the same way, considering him only more particularly to be connected with the heavenly fire, the lightning; this seems to be shown by the etymological meaning of the names Byleistr and Farbauti both parents of Loki.”
  32. ^ E.O.G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, 1964, p. 103
  33. ^ Marlene Ciklamini observed in 1962, "Since Suttungr is unanimously declared to be the possessor of the poetic mead, it is difficult to agree with Rydberg that Hávamál 140 represents Bölþorn's son as the owner. His hypothesis is based on a misinterpretation of the stanza, since Háv. 140 represents the boast of a god who deprived his enemies of the exclusive right to magic and the ownership of the mead.... Rydberg's suggestion that Mímir is Bölþorn's son is not substantiated by any source." Marlene Ciklamini, "Óðinn and the Giants," Neophilologus 46:145-58 (1962), p. 151.
  34. ^ Anatoly Lieberman, who characterizes Rydberg as a "thunderous Snorri basher" remarks that “[m]erging Eddic characters and looking for hypostases is an unprofitable occupation. It allows any god (giant, dwarf) to become anybody else, as happened under Rydberg’s pen,” from "Some Controversial Aspects of the Myth of Baldr," 11 Alvíssmál 17-54 (2004), pp. 33-34.
  35. ^ Hilda R. Ellis Davidson: “Another approach is the fundamentalist one, illustrated by the 19th century scholar Rydberg. He accepted every detail in Old Norse mythological literature as reliable, and showed much ingenuity in building up a complex mythological scheme to include it all, smoothing over apparent contradictions. Such approaches arise from an assumption that the mythology was once complete and rational" in: Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe, 1988; Davidson denounces "Rydberg's fantasies" in Book Review: Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time, 85 Folklore 282-83 (1974), p. 283.
  36. ^ In 1890, Mary E. Litchfield wrote: "Rydberg’s researches have made it possible, for the first time, for one to form a definite conception of the cosmology of the mythology, and also because it clears away many inconsistencies that have long clung to it.” The Nine Worlds, Stories from Norse Mythology, 1890 (reprinted by Freedonia Books, Amsterdam in 2001)
  37. ^ Britt-Mari Näsström (1995) Freyja: The Great Goddess of the North. University of Lund, ISBN 9122016945.:

    “Victor Rydberg suggested that Siritha is Freyja herself and that Ottar is identical with same as Svipdagr, who appears as Menglöd’s beloved in Fjölsvinnsmál. Rydberg’s intentions in his investigations of Germanic mythology were to co-ordinate the myths and mythical fragments into coherent short stories. Not for a moment did he hesitate to make subjective interpretations of the episodes, based more on his imagination and poetical skills than on facts. His explication of the Siritha-episode is an example of his approach, and yet he probably was right when he identified Siritha with Freyja.”
  38. ^ Frederick York Powell, writing in the introduction to the first English translation of Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum by Oliver Elton, wrote in 1894:

    No one has commented upon Saxo's mythology with such brilliancy, such minute consideration, and such success as the Swedish scholar, Victor Rydberg. More than occasionally he is over-ingenious and over-anxious to reduce chaos to order; sometimes he almost loses his faithful reader in the maze he treads so easily and confidently, and sometimes he stumbles badly. But he has placed the whole subject on a fresh footing, and much that is to follow will be drawn from his "Teutonic Mythology," adding "The skeleton-key of identification, used even as ably as Dr. Rydberg uses it, will not pick every mythologic lock, though it undoubtedly has opened many hitherto closed."
  39. ^ "Viktor Rydberg (1886, vol 1: 554-58) refers to the latter part living in the haugur as the 'ghost' (draugur). For the pagan he explains a ghost or draugur meant a branch of a tree cut from its tree of life, and would wither away eventually.", etc. in Icelandic Spiritualism: Mediumship and Modernity in Iceland, pp. 38-39.
  40. ^ “If Zernack wants to use the word already, how about mentioning Viktor Rydberg, who made the same point in 1886 (Undersökningar i germansk Mythologi, I 373)?" quoted from Review of Drápa af Maríugrát, the Joys and Sorrows of the Virgin and Christ, and the Dominican Rosary by Kellinde Wrightson, Saga-Book, 24/5 1997.
  41. ^ Currently one of 4 volumes commenting on Eddic poems individually, edited by Klaus Von See, Beatrice LaFarge, Eve Picard, Ilona Priebe, and Katja Schultz, ISBN3825305341.
  42. ^ The Poetic Edda, Essays on Old Norse Mythology. Edited by Paul Acker and Carolyne Larrington, 2002, ISBN 0815316607.
  43. ^ Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, Bd. 2, p. 155-156.
  44. ^ Viktor Rydberg and the comparative study of the history of Indo-European religion, by Anna Lindén, Doktorand, Lund University; Himlens blå, Örjan Lindberger, Veritas 5 (1991)
  45. ^ Jenny Blain, Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism (2002), p. 163.
  • Viktor Rydberg in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
  • Svante Nordin, "Viktor Rydberg" in Svenskt biografiskt lexikon, (2000).
  • Gustafson, Alrik, A History of Swedish Literature (Minneapolis, 1961)
  • J. Moffett, 'Viktor Rydberg, 1828-1895', in The North! To the North!: Five Swedish Poets of the Nineteenth Century (2001).
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Viktor Rydberg.
Preceded by Swedish Academy,
Chair No 16
1877-1895 		Succeeded by
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