Viktor Rydberg

Viktor Rydberg studied at Lund University. The recorded working language is Swedish. Employment is recorded with Stockholm University and University of Gothenburg. Positions recorded include seat 16 of the Swedish Academy and member of the Second Chamber. Works named in the authority record are Gläns över sjö och strand, Singoalla, Den siste athenaren, Tomten and Den nya Grottesången. Work by Viktor Rydberg is recorded in the collections of Nationalmuseum and J. Paul Getty Museum.

• Name — Viktor Rydberg • Birth Name — Abraham Viktor Rydberg • Born — 18 December 1828 • Birthplace — Jönköping, Sweden • Died — 21 September 1895 • Place of death — Djursholm, Stockholm county, Sweden • Occupation — Author, journalist, novelist, translator and poet • Period — Victorian, Oscarian • Genre — Romance • Subject — Mythology, Religion • Notable Works — Singoalla, Undersökningar i Germanisk Mythologi I-II, Fädernas Gudasaga • Spouse — Susen Hasselblad • Relatives — Johann Rydberg (father), Hedvig Düker (mother)

Viktor Rydberg was of humble parentage. He was the son of a soldier turned prison guard, Johan Rydberg, and a midwife, Hedvig Düker. Viktor Rydberg had two brothers and three sisters. In 1834 his mother died during a cholera epidemic. Her death broke the spirit of his father, who yielded to hypochondria and alcoholism, contributing towards his loss of employment and the family's apartment, forcing authorities to board young Viktor out to a series of foster homes, one of which burnt down, further traumatizing the youth. From 1838 to 1847, Rydberg attended grammar school, and studied law at the University of Lund from 1851 to 1852. Due to financial reasons, his university studies ended after one year without a degree. Afterward, he took a job as a private tutor. Despite his economic status, Rydberg was recognized for his talents. One biographer notes that: "He had a hard struggle to satisfy the thirst for learning which was a leading passion of his life, but he finally attained distinction in several fields of scholarship." In 1855, he was offered work at the Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, a newspaper in Gothenburg, where he remained employed for more than 20 years. It was during this time that his first novels saw print. He soon became a central figure of late Romanticism in Sweden, and Sweden's most famous living author. Throughout his adult life, Rydberg was active in politics. In 1859, he wrote a pamphlet on national defense, which inspired the "Sharpshooter's movement", a voluntary militia of some political importance during the 1860s. In 1870, he took a controversial pro-German stance during the Franco-Prussian War. Representing the traditional economic system of Sweden, from 1870 to 1872, Rydberg was a member of the Swedish Parliament as a supporter of the Lantmanna Party. Having been a supporter of the Jewish cause since his youth, it was MP Viktor Rydberg who gave the keynote speech in the parliamentary debate to enact a law granting all non-Lutherans full civil rights. He worked diligently for working-class people and in 1906 his works on the labor question in both prose and poetry were regarded as part of the "treasury of this class." He also advocated language reform, purging foreign words from the Swedish language, particularly those of German origin. Around this time, he advocated a more Germanic spelling of his own name: Viktor, as opposed to Victor. Throughout his life and career, Rydberg coined several Swedish words; many, such as gudasaga for the foreign mythologi, are still in use today. In 1884, he refused to support anarchist writer August Strindberg in his blasphemy case. As a juror in an 1888 trial of socialist leader Hjalmar Branting, Rydberg voted to send him to jail for blasphemy. They never spoke to one another again. His apprehension of unregulated capitalism at the dawn of the industrial age is most fully expressed in his acclaimed poem Den nya Grottesången (The New Grotti Song) in which he delivered a fierce attack on the miserable working conditions in factories of the era, using the mill of Grottasöngr as his literary backdrop. For his lifetime of literary achievement, Rydberg received an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala in 1877 and was elected a member of the Swedish Academy the same year. He served from 1883 as teacher, from 1884 as professor, of the History of Culture at Stockholms högskola, now Stockholm University, and from 1889 as the first holder of the J. A. Berg Chair of the History and Theory of Art there. In 1889, he was also elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Rydberg died at the age of 66 on 21 September 1895 due to complications from diabetes and arteriosclerosis. Rydberg's passing was reported as far away as the United States of America, where the New York Times published an obituary titled: "Death of Prof. A.V. Rydberg, Career and Remarkable works of one of Sweden's Leading Men." A national day of mourning ensued all over Sweden. Today, his grave is a national monument. Many of his works have been translated and remain in print. His works are widely read in schools throughout Sweden, and his poem "Tomten" ("Santa" or "The Gnome") is a Christmas favorite, as well as the lyrics for Gläns över sjö och strand. A group of three charter high schools (Gymnasium) and one middle school in Stockholm, as well as a street in Göteborg, a student dormitory, and other buildings carry his name. He is still listed in many English language encyclopedias as an individual entry. Since the late 1920s, scholars and critics have speculated about Rydberg's private life and sexual orientation. Referring to a failed engagement, Judith Moffett writes: We can construct a story of backdoor illicit liaisons and front door respectability from these fragments and others— Rydberg would hardly be the first, if it were true— but he never spoke openly about his private life at any time, and our best guess would still be guesswork. Svanberg (1928) and Stolpe (1978) suggested that Rydberg had a homosexual orientation, based on their interpretations of Rydberg's published works. Moffett (2001) endorsed Stolpe's theory, speculating that Rydberg's sexual orientation was the result of the early loss of his mother, concluding that Rydberg was homosexual but celibate. In her opinion, Rydberg found all sexual expression "despicable, impossible, or, at best, delicious but lethal." Sven Delblanc (1983) argued that the novel Singoalla "reflected homosexual desires and impulses in Rydberg himself", and that the protagonist's slaying of his unacknowledged son Sorgborn ['child of sorrow'] was a "masked representation of homosexual intercourse." Bäckmann (2004) disputed this theory noting that there is "no textual evidence" to support this "empathetic reading" of Rydberg's biography.

There is no shortage of scholarly opinion and no consensus on Viktor Rydberg's works on Indo-European and Germanic mythology. Some scholars feel that his work is ingenious, while others feel the work is too speculative. One scholar expressed the opinion that "Rydberg's views" concerning resemblances of Thor and Indra were carried to extremes, therefore receiving "less recognition than they deserved," while another says "Rydberg correctly establishes, like many before and after him, the similarities with the myth of Thor and the Midgard serpent" with that of Indra and the dragon Vrtra. Others contest individual points of the work. While some scholars have praised Rydberg's method, still others have commented on what they see as fundamental flaws in his methodology, objecting to any systematization of the mythology including the one imposed by Snorri Sturlusson, believing it artificial. However, John Lindow and Margaret Clunies Ross have recently supported a chronological systemization of the most important mythic episodes as inherent in the oral tradition underlying Eddic poetry. Rydberg believed that most of the Germanic myths were part of a chronological epic, an approach that H. R. Ellis Davidson characterized as arising "from an assumption that the mythology was once complete and rational." While Rydberg's ingenuity has been recognized by some,Mary E. Litchfield wrote: "Rydberg's researches have made it possible, for the first time, for one to form a definite conception of the cosmology of the mythology, and also because it clears away many inconsistencies that have long clung to it." his work has most often been criticized for being too subjective. Yet, within his work, many find points on which they can agree. In the first comprehensive review of the work in English, Rydberg's "brilliancy" and "great success" were recognized, alongside an acknowledgement that he sometimes "stumbles badly" in his effort to "reduce chaos to order." In 1976, German-language scholar Peter-Hans Naumann published the first evaluation of the full range of Viktor Rydberg's mythological writings. In 2004, Swedish doktorand (PhD student) Anna Lindén reviewed the full two-volume work on mythology, concluding in part that it was not more widely received because it was not fully available in one of the three international languages of scholarship: English, German or French. At the time of its publication, the German school of Nature mythology dominated the field, and contemporary scholars took a dim view of comparative mythology, which would come to flourish in the 20th century. Commenting on Rydberg's mythological work in 1902, Dutch Professor, P.D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, remarks: "The comparative school has, even at the present time, some firm adherents. Among these may be reckoned the Swede, V. Rydberg, who shows great learning in the combination of various aspects of mythical narratives and according to whom even the cosmogonic myths are to be classed among the original possessions of the primitive Indo-European period. Such attempts, however, —of which this single example will suffice—lie outside of the current of modern development." As Fredrik Gadde has explained, it was in this context, that "the book was reviewed by several German scholars, who all took up a more or less disparaging attitude towards Rydberg's methods of investigation and his results. Although they speak with high praise of the author's learning, his thorough insight, his ability to occasionally throw light upon intricate problems by means of ingenious suggestions, they criticize severely his hazardous etymologies, his identification of different mythical figures without sufficient grounds, his mixing up of heroic saga and myth, and, above all, his bent for remodeling myths in order to make them fit into a system which (they say) never existed." "Rydberg's work was, then, stamped as a failure, and this verdict from certain points of view cannot be considered unjust, seems to have caused the book to fall into oblivion, a fate which surely it has not deserved." Among contemporary Swedish reviewers, Hildebrand and Bååth were appreciative, the latter unreservedly praising the work. In 1892, Irish scholar Stopford A. Brooke remarked: "When we have made every allowance for a certain fancifulness, and for the bias which a well-loved theory creates, this book is a real contribution to Northern mythology." While, in 1942, Fredrik Gadde concluded: "Even though the views set forth by Rydberg never stood a chance of being accepted, there are points in his exposition that deserve being once more brought to light." Since their publication, some of Rydberg's mythological theories have been cited in a number of other scholarly works including his theory regarding a World Mill, the dead, and his identification of Harbard with Loki in the Poetic Edda poem Hárbarðsljóð. He has been mentioned as one of several writers who proposed analogs of Ask and Embla in comparative mythology, and who sought Indo-Iranian analogs for the Poetic Edda poem, Völuspá. Marvin Taylor cites Rydberg's definition of the phrase, "dómr um dauðan hvern," as predating that of a more contemporary writer cited by the author in his review of Julia Zernack's Geschichten aus Thule, 1994, published in the Saga-Book of the Viking Society."If Zernack wants to use the word already, how about mentioning Viktor Rydberg, who made the same point in 1886 (Undersökningar i germansk mythologi, I 373)?"

His recorded language was Swedish. He was the child of Johan Rydberg. He married Susen Emilia Hasselblad.

He was employed by Stockholm University and University of Gothenburg. Recorded positions include seat 16 of the Swedish Academy and member of the Second Chamber. He belonged to Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Swedish Academy and Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.

Works recorded as notable number 5: Gläns över sjö och strand, Singoalla, Den siste athenaren, Tomten and Den nya Grottesången.

Viktor Rydberg is recorded as writer, opinion journalist, university teacher and art historian.

• Gustafson, Alrik, A History of Swedish Literature (Minneapolis, 1961)