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404 IV. EDUCATION AND MENTAL CULTURE IN SWEDEN.
temperament, are generally considered — together with Runeberg, who appeared
somewhat later — as our national poets. In spite of all their individual
dissimilarities, they seem so much to belong to each other in the consciousness of the
people, that one of them can hardly be mentioned without a thought of the other.
They were both natives of the province of Vermland, both were for some time
members of »Götiska förbundet» (Gothic Society), that had made it a task to
strengthen and increase the interest in the past ages of the Northern countries,
in order thereby to incite the rising generation to energy and resolute courage.
Both were University professors, Geijer at Uppsala, Tegnér at Lund (Tegnér
being later made a bishop, for which appointment he was hardly suited); and
both wrote poems on subjects from olden times. But it is only in these exterior
traits that they resemble each other. Geijer, who was also a philosopher and a
composer, is above all the greatest historian of Sweden. After having associated
himself with Romanticism for some time, he changed into the foremost defender
of the liberal ideas of his time. His poems, which are not many, possess a manly
and national ring.
Tegnér, who had greater and more splendid poetical gifts, but a less
harmonious nature than Geijer, embraced at first the academical ideas. His
clear poetic genius had been formed in the school of Voltaire, and under the
influence of the poetic circle of Gustavus III; but he received yet stronger
impulses from Greece and from Schiller, whose strong love of liberty he shared.
Many of his best poems and speeches boil with indignation at the policy of the
Holy Alliance and the reaction in Europe. In the poetry of Tegnér there is a
blending of Greek and Northern features. In form, it is distinguished especially
by a dazzling wealth of metaphors. In universal literature Tegnér is known
above all by his lyrical epic »Fritiofs Saga», which has been translated by some
fifty different hands into eleven foreigu languages.
The ideas of the Gothic Society found a more enthusiastic than critical
adherent in P. H. Ling (1776/1839), the creator of Swedish gymnastics. He
strove in his poems to imitate in rude strength the ancient heathen bards of
Sweden. The poetry of Ling is forgotten, but his system of gymnastics survives.
K. J. L. Almqvist (1793/1866) is an exponent of romanticism about to
change into radical subjectivism, and rises against all kinds of authority, be
it the state, religion, or morality. He has given expression to his moral
skepticism in one of those paradoxes which he loved to scatter about: »Two
things are white: innocence and arsenic». Almqvist is perhaps the most universal
of all our authors; he attempted everything: history, pedagogics, lexicography,
mathematics, music, and all kinds of poetic art. He has been the delineator of
all periods and of aU lands, even the most exotic, and his pictures are made
with astonishingly true colour, both as regards time and place. His motto was,
»Thus I paint, because thus it pleases me to paint». Almqvist may be called a
romanticist, but he was just as well a realist, a psychologist, and a symbolist
half a century before the idea of symbolism rose to conscious recognition. He is
the great »bewitcher» in Swedish literature. His chief literary works are the
two collections combined within the frame of »Törnrosens Bok» (The Book of the
Wild Rose).
Just before the middle of the nineteenth century, poetical productivity entered
a period of weakness, characterized mainly by imitations of Tegnér and
romanticism. Among the poets of that period may be mentioned K. V. Böttiger
(1807/78), a refined and gentle spirit.
At this time people in Sweden, as in the rest of Europe, began to tire
of romanticism. Liberalism, which counts its origin from the July Revolution,
made its entrance, and already in the later periods of the productivity of Geijer
and Almqvist these ideas are clearly discerned. But the liberal views are fa-
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