Viktor Rydberg

Viktor Rydberg (born Dec. 18, 1828, Jönköping, Swed.—died Sept. 21, 1895, Djursholm) was an author of the Romantic school who, with his broad range of achievements, greatly influenced Swedish cultural life.

Rydberg grew up among strangers, with no home of his own; his mother had died in a cholera epidemic, and his father became an alcoholic. He had to break off his studies for lack of money. In 1855 he began to work for the liberal newspaper Göteborgs handelstidning, in which Den siste Atenaren (The Last Athenian), the novel that made his name, appeared serially in 1859. Its description of the clash between paganism and Christianity in ancient Athens revealed his opposition to clerical intolerance and orthodoxy and had a direct bearing on conditions in Sweden. He had previously published Singoalla (1857; revised 1865), a romantic lyrical tale of the Middle Ages in Sweden. In his Bibelns Lära om Kristus (1862; “The Teaching of the Bible Concerning Christ”), he maintained that Christ was not God. The ensuing disputes with the clergy, however, caused him great emotional tension and depression.

In the 1870s Rydberg entered the Swedish Parliament for a short time. He advocated linguistic reform, particularly to reduce the number of words borrowed from the German. In 1874 he visited Rome and on his return wrote Romerska dagar (1877; “Roman Days”), in which his interest in classical antiquity finds its most mature expression. In 1876 he completed his translation of part one of J.W. von Goethe’s Faust, which had occupied him for many years. He also displayed outstanding talent as a poet; his collection Dikter (1882; “Poems”) established him as Sweden’s foremost lyrical poet since Esaias Tegnér and Erik Stagnelius.

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Gradually Rydberg gained official recognition. He was given an honorary doctorate by Uppsala University in 1877, elected to the Swedish Academy in 1878, and in 1884 became a professor at the University of Stockholm.

In the 1880s he was chiefly concerned with research into mythology, the results of which were published in Undersökningar i germanisk mythologie, 2 vol. (1886–89; “Investigations into Germanic Mythology”). In 1891 he published two literary works: Vapensmeden (“The Armourer”), a novel describing life at the time of the Reformation in Sweden, and a new collection of poems, one of which, “Den nya Grottesången” (“The New Grotto Song”), is a remarkable indictment of social conditions.

Rydberg was an idealist, faithful to the Romantic tradition in poetry and thought but liberal in his political and social views, and possessed of wide-ranging interests in aesthetics, religion, philosophy, and psychology. He achieved an unequaled position of authority in Swedish culture.