Poetry
Frithiof's Saga
Frithiofs saga
Esaias Tegnér · 1825
Synopsis
Frithiof, son of Thorsten, the friend of King Bele, has grown up with Ingeborg, the king's daughter, under the guardianship of old Hilding. When they are grown, they love each other; but on the king's death his sons, Helge and Halfdan, refuse their sister to a man who is not of royal blood. Ingeborg is placed in Balder's sacred enclosure, where Frithiof joins her in secret, and the two brothers send him to collect a tribute across the seas.
Context
The poem appeared in pieces: a partial paraphrase in 1820 in the review of the Gothic Society, five more cantos in 1822, then the whole, which the author published himself in the summer of 1825; a second edition followed in September, and the two sold four thousand copies. Each of the twenty-four cantos has its own metre, a procedure borrowed from the Dane Oehlenschläger. The material comes from an Icelandic saga of around 1300. Goethe recommended it, and twelve translations had appeared by 1839.
Who it is for
Twenty-four cantos in Swedish, each in a different metre; readable in French in two old translations and in English in many versions.
Prizes and reception
Hailed by Atterbom as the Swedish national epic, the poem that made its author the father of modern poetry in his country.
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