RYDBERG, ABRAHAM VIKTOR (1828-1895)

This article appears in Volume V23, Page 949 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: RON-SAC

RYDBERG, ABRAHAM VIKTOR (1828-1895) , Swedish author and publicist, was born in Jonkoping on 18th December 1828. He was educated at the high school of Vaxio, and passed on to the university of Lund in '1851. While at school he was publishing verse and

prose

PROSE

in the

periodicals

PERIODICALS

; some of these early miscellanies he collected in 1894 in the volumes called *Varia. As a student he turned to more precise labours, and devoted himself to science. He had almost determined to adopt the profession of an engineer, when he was offered in 1855 a post on the staff of one of the largest Swedish news-papers. This caused his thoughts to return to imaginative literature, and it was in the feuilleton of this

journal

JOURNAL
JOURNAL (through Fr. from late Lat. diurnalis, daily)

(the Goteborgs Handels-och sjofartstidning) that Viktor Rydberg's romances successively appeared; he was editorially connected with it until 1876. The Freebooter on the Baltic (1857) and The Last of the Athenians (1859) gave Rydberg a place in the front rank of contemporary novelists. It was a surprise to his admirers to see him presently turn to theology, but with The Bible's Teaching about Christ (1862), in which the aspects of modern Biblical criticism were first placed before Swedish readers, he enjoyed a vast success. He followed this up by a number of contributions to the popular philosophy of religion, all inspired by the same reverent and yet searching spirit of inquiry. The modernity of his views led to his being opposed by the orthodox clergy, but by the wider public he was greatly esteemed. Nevertheless, it is said that it was his religious criticism which so

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

excluded him from the Swedish

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

, since he was not elected until 1877, when he had

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

been the first living author of Sweden. Roman Days is a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of archaeological essays on Italy (1876). He collected his poems in 1882; his version of Faust

dates

DATES

from 1876. In 1884 he was appointed professor of ecclesiastical history at Stockholm. He died, after a short illness, on the 22nd of September 1895. In Viktor Rydberg Sweden possessed a writer of the first order, who carried on the tradition of

Bostrom

BOSTROM, CHRISTOFFER JACOB (1797-1866)

and Geijer in

philo

PHILO
PHILO, HERENNIUS

-:lophy and history, and possessed in addition a glow of

imagination

IMAGINATION

and a marvellous charm of style. He was an idealist of the old romantic type which Sweden had known for three-quarters of a century; he was the last of that race, and perhaps, as a mere writer, the greatest. In personal character Rydberg was extremely like his writingsstately, ardent and ceremonious, with a fund of amiability which made him universally beloved. His premature death was the subject of nationalmourning, and had even a historical significance, for with him the old romantic influence in Swedish literature ceased to be paramount. (E. G.)

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