/lit/ - Literature

Viktor Rydberg

>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."[16]

>In 1859, Rydberg's most ambitious novel, and his last one for thirty 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."[16] This struggle is set in Athens, in the time of the last pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate, during the transition from Platonic paganism to Christianity. The novel advocates a philosophy founded on the noblest elements of both ideologies. William Widgery Thomas, Jr. said that "at scarcely thirty years of age" Rydberg was "already acknowledged to be the foremost living prose writer of Scandinavia."[17]