Swedish Literature

I

Introduction

Swedish Literature, literature written in the Swedish language. The earliest Swedish writings are in the Latin alphabet in the form of provincial laws called landskapslagar, written down in the 13th century, and the 14th-century Landslag, the king's common law for all the Swedish provinces. To this period, too, belong the visions of the nun and mystic St Birgitta (Bridget), recorded in Latin by her confessors. Although most of the best Swedish folk songs and ballads were also composed in the 13th and 14th centuries, extant collections date from only the 16th and 17th centuries.

II

Reformation

During the Reformation in the 16th century, the most important writers were the brothers Olaus and Laurentius Petri, monks who had been converted to Lutheranism while at the University of Wittenberg in Germany. Their translation of the Old Testament into Swedish is of particular importance, as is their work on the translation of the first complete Bible published in Swedish (1541). Olaus Petri, author of the Swedish Chronicle, is known as the Swedish Martin Luther. The 17th century produced Georg Stiernhielm, the father of Swedish poetry and author of the allegorical epic Hercules (1658), and other distinguished poets such as Samuel Columbus, Jacob Frese, and Lars Johansson, called Lucidor.

III

18th Century

In the 18th century, the leading prose writer, apart from the theologian Emanuel Swedenborg and the botanist Carolus Linnaeus, was Olof von Dalin, an essayist who reflected English and French cultural influences. In the Gustavian era (1772-1809), literature was patronized by King Gustav III, himself a poet and essayist. Among the leading Gustavians were the poets Johan Henrik Kellgren, Carl Gustaf af Leopold, Count Johan Gabriel Oxenstierna, Frans Mikael Franzén, Anna Maria Lenngren, famed for her idylls and satires, Thomas Thorild, and Carl Michael Bellman, regarded as one of the finest writers of Swedish songs and poems.

IV

19th Century

In the 19th century the spirit of Romanticism sweeping through Europe soon became evident also in Swedish writings. Among early Romantics was Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom. The accompanying renaissance of national feeling brought into prominence such writers as Erik Gustaf Geijer, who was also a historian, and Esaias Tegnér, who was especially famous for his Frithiofs Saga (1825; trans. 1833). Among the most important writers of the middle and late 19th century were the novelists C. J. L. Almqvist, Fredrika Bremer, and Abraham Viktor Rydberg, and the Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, who wrote in Swedish.