what is Swedish literature?
What was to be called later on the Swedish language started to develop at the beginning of the Wiking era (some time around the year of 800). These are also the beginnings of Christianity, with the missionary monk Ansgar (801-865), even if the Christianisation of the country was an extremely slow process. These are the times of the first norther writings, the runes. And also the time of the Old Norse versification patterns, such as the fornydislag, the eight-verse-long, alliterated strophe divided in two halves, the helmings, and the drottkvätt, six-syllable with internal rhymes called "the noble warrior's meter". In those old times there already existed Uppsala, the university town of the later age.
Quite a different hallmark of Sweden is the mystical literature. Its early representative was Birgitta Birgersdotter (1303-1337) who not only had religious visions, but also travelled all across medieval Europe to that source not only of faith, but also of poetry that was Santiago de Compostella.
Before the Middle Ages ended, Sweden already had quite a variety of poetic genres, the varied "visors", i.e. ballads, such as riddarvisor (chivalry ballads), historiskvisor (ballads about historical events), trollvisors (ballads about trolls and such fantastic creatures), kämpavisor, about the heroes from old Icelandic sagas, and finally skämtvisor, the comical ones.
The things may seem more boring after the beginning of the Reformation, when Swedish literature enters the general circuit of West-European letters. And then there is Baroque, a great age of Sweden, and then the Enlightenment, that brought major figure of Swedish science, Carl Linnaeus, but also the great visionary, Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). And then there is Classicism and Romanticism, and when the realist-naturalist literature comes to the fore, the things start to grow really big, There is Strindberg, and such people, and then the Swedish literature culminates in the heroic cycle of Pippi Långstrump (1945-1948).
Quite a different hallmark of Sweden is the mystical literature. Its early representative was Birgitta Birgersdotter (1303-1337) who not only had religious visions, but also travelled all across medieval Europe to that source not only of faith, but also of poetry that was Santiago de Compostella.
Before the Middle Ages ended, Sweden already had quite a variety of poetic genres, the varied "visors", i.e. ballads, such as riddarvisor (chivalry ballads), historiskvisor (ballads about historical events), trollvisors (ballads about trolls and such fantastic creatures), kämpavisor, about the heroes from old Icelandic sagas, and finally skämtvisor, the comical ones.
The things may seem more boring after the beginning of the Reformation, when Swedish literature enters the general circuit of West-European letters. And then there is Baroque, a great age of Sweden, and then the Enlightenment, that brought major figure of Swedish science, Carl Linnaeus, but also the great visionary, Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). And then there is Classicism and Romanticism, and when the realist-naturalist literature comes to the fore, the things start to grow really big, There is Strindberg, and such people, and then the Swedish literature culminates in the heroic cycle of Pippi Långstrump (1945-1948).
I have readTomas Tranströmer, Sorgegondolen | The Sorrow Gondola (1996)
August Strindberg, Inferno (1897) |
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I have written... nothing ...
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The literary things of Sweden seem well established at the frontier of my "ultraminor" World Literature, even if, as I verify and organise the pieces of information I used to have, I discover that many writer I associated with Sweden are in fact Norwegian. Namely Ibsen and Hamsun, authors that occupied my shelves since time immemorial. Was Swedenborg a Swede? Oh, at least he did. As well as Bridget of Sweden. And Astrid Lindgren Pipi Longstocking. And of course, the Bullerby Children. And Moomins (although they are half-Finnish). I'm surprised how Swedish my Polish childhood in fact was.
