Swedish Reformation and Renaissance literature

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Front page of the first complete Swedish translation of the Bible in 1541, known as the Gustav Vasa Bible. Gustav Vasa Bible 1541.jpg
Front page of the first complete Swedish translation of the Bible in 1541, known as the Gustav Vasa Bible .

The German Protestant Reformation had spread to Sweden by 1520, and resulted in the Swedish Reformation in 1527. The advent of the printing press facilitated a full translation of the Bible into Swedish in 1541. From a philological view, a new period in the development of the Swedish language called Modern Swedish was initiated with the Bible translation. It also gave power to the vernacular language.

Printing press device for evenly printing ink onto a print medium

A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium, thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink, and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in the second millennium.

Bible Collection of religious texts in Judaism and Christianity

The Bible is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures. Varying parts of the Bible are considered to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans by Christians, Jews, Samaritans, and Rastafarians.

Swedish language North Germanic language spoken in Sweden

Swedish is a North Germanic language spoken natively by 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden, and in parts of Finland, where it has equal legal standing with Finnish. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to some extent with Danish, although the degree of mutual intelligibility is largely dependent on the dialect and accent of the speaker. Written Norwegian and Danish are usually more easily understood by Swedish speakers than the spoken languages, due to the differences in tone, accent and intonation. Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It has the most speakers of the North Germanic languages. While being strongly related to its southern neighbour language German in vocabulary, the word order, grammatic system and pronunciation are vastly different.

Contents

From a literary point of view, the period between 1400 and 1600 produced little of note, especially during the 1520–1600. [1] [2] Yet, paradoxically, the Bible translation published 1541 is possibly the most significant Swedish book of all times. First and foremost, it had a great religious impact, but apart from that it also introduced the common man to a language beyond the common-day. [3] [4] The Bible was used in churches for around 400 years until the Bible translation of 1917, and meanwhile translations (in 1618 and 1712) were merely revisions and corrections. [5]

Gothicism

From an ideological perspective, the 16th century literature gave rise to Gothicism. [6] The main idea of this movement is that the Goths, a renowned East Germanic tribe in the 1st–6th century, originated from Scandinavia, and Sweden in particular. [6] An important advocate was the deposed Swedish archbishop Johannes Magnus, who was exiled in Rome between 1530–1544 together with his brother Olaus Magnus. In Historia de omnibus gothorum suenumque regibus (1554), Johannes Magnus traced the Swedish line of kings back to the Old Testament. The works of the Magnus brothers gained attention throughout Europe and was translated into several languages, and their influence manifested itself in several works during the 17th century. [7]

Gothicism

Gothicism or Gothism was a cultural movement in Sweden, centered on the belief in the glory of the Swedish Geats, who were identified with the Goths. The founders of the movement were Nicolaus Ragvaldi and the brothers Johannes and Olaus Magnus. The belief continued to hold power in the 17th century, when Sweden was a great power following the Thirty Years' War, but lost most of its sway in the 18th. It was renewed by the Viking revival and Romantic nationalism in the early 19th century, this time with the Vikings as heroic figures.

Goths East Germanic ethnolinguistic group

The Goths were an early Germanic people, two of whose branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe.

Germanic peoples A group of northern European tribes in Roman times

The Germanic peoples were a collection of ethnic groups of Northern European origin identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples, and identified in modern scholarship as speakers, at least for the most part, of early Germanic languages.

First page of the hexametric Hercules, by Georg Stiernhielm, 1658 Hercules, Stiernhielm.png
First page of the hexametric Hercules, by Georg Stiernhielm, 1658

In history, Sweden was a great empire between 1611–1718. In literature, however, its development was trailing other European countries. It was by French and German influence that Swedish literature was to be shaped. [8] In literature, an important turnstone occurred in 1658, when Georg Stiernhielm published Hercules, a work regarded as the first Swedish work of true poetry. The story in Hercules is based on Xenophon's story of Hercules at the crossroads of different paths. It was the first known publication of hexameter in Swedish language, and with it Stiernhielm proved that the Swedish language was up for the task. Another significant aspect of Hercules is the freedom of religious motives, drawing more upon ancient philosophy than on the Bible. [9] [10] In the ensuing decades, Stiernhielm and his followers made further attempts at writing tragedies, pastoral poetry and other poetic styles in the Swedish language. [11]

Swedish Empire the years 1611–1721 in the history of Sweden

The Swedish Empire was a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The beginning of the Empire is usually taken as the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, who ascended the throne in 1611, and its end as the loss of territories in 1721 following the Great Northern War.

Georg Stiernhielm Swedish noble

Georg Stiernhielm was a Swedish civil servant, mathematician, linguist and poet.

Xenophon Classical Greek philosopher, historian, and soldier

Xenophon of Athens was an ancient Greek philosopher, historian, soldier, mercenary, and student of Socrates. As a soldier, Xenophon became commander of the Ten Thousand at about 30, with noted military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge saying of him, “the centuries since have devised nothing to surpass the genius of this warrior.” He established the precedent for many logistical operations and was among the first to use flanking maneuvers, feints and attacks in depth. He was among the greatest commanders of antiquity. As a historian, Xenophon is known for recording the history of his time, the late-5th and early-4th centuries BC, in such works as the Hellenica, which covered the final seven years and the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, thus representing a thematic continuation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.

Contemporary copper engraving of Olaus Rudbeck giving a fictional lecture on the location of Atlantis. Rudbeck, Atlantica.png
Contemporary copper engraving of Olaus Rudbeck giving a fictional lecture on the location of Atlantis.

The culmination of the Gothicism came with Olaus Rudbeck's Atlantica, a massive four-volume work (1679–1702), where Rudbeck outlined how Sweden was the most ancient of all countries, and the true location of the sunken Atlantis. [12] But when the last volume of Atlantica was published, the Gothicism movement was already on decline. This was for large part a natural reaction to the failed Swedish wars. By 1720, Gothicism was a thing of the past, and Swedish culture took a turn towards science and realism. [13]

Olaus Rudbeck Swedish architect

Olaus Rudbeck was a Swedish scientist and writer, professor of medicine at Uppsala University and for several periods rector magnificus of the same university. He was born in Västerås, the son of Bishop Johannes Rudbeckius, who was personal chaplain to King Gustavus Adolphus, and the father of botanist Olof Rudbeck the Younger. Rudbeck is primarily known for his contributions in two fields: human anatomy and linguistics, but he was also accomplished in many other fields including music and botany. He established the first botanical garden in Sweden at Uppsala, called Rudbeck's Garden, but which was renamed a hundred years later for his son's student, the botanist Carl Linnaeus.

Atlantis Fictional island in Platos works, now a synonym for supposed prehistoric lost civilizations

Atlantis is a fictional island mentioned within an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias, where it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges "Ancient Athens", the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato's ideal state in The Republic. In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the known world, supposedly giving testament to the superiority of Plato's concept of a state. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean.

Hymns

An ecclesiastical body of literature affected by Gothicism was the Swedish hymn production of the late 17th century. The first official Swedish hymn book was published in 1695. It is attributed to the bishop Jesper Svedberg (1653–1753), assisted by the bishop (and later archbishop) Haqvin Spegel. The hymns used an unsophisticated language to the common people, but apart from fulfilling the dire need for a uniform hymn literature, they also gave the commoners greater access to a standardized language. Svedberg was a strong advocate of the strength and high status of Swedish. In fact, he was the last strong proponent and new-thinker of his kind. The hymn book became widespread and beloved in sermons all over Sweden for a full century (the new hymn book was not published until 1819), and its weight cannot be overestimated. But the Gothicism ideals on which it was based had become superseded with the dawn of the 18th century. [14]

See also

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<i>Swenske songer eller wisor 1536</i> book by Olaus Petri

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The Protestant Reformation in Sweden is generally regarded as having begun in 1527 during the reign of King Gustav I of Sweden, but the process was slow and not definitely ended until the Uppsala Synod of 1593 and the following War against Sigismund, with an attempt of counter-reformation during the reign of John III (1568–1592).

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1679 in Sweden Sweden-related events during the year of 1679

Events from the year 1679 in Sweden

References

  1. ↑ Algulin, p.25
  2. ↑ Gustafson, p.54
  3. ↑ Gustafson, p.61
  4. ↑ Algulin, p.27
  5. ↑ Gustafson, p.26
  6. 1 2 Algulin, p. 29
  7. ↑ Gustafson, p.64-66, p.76
  8. ↑ Gustafson, p.77
  9. ↑ Algulin, pp.34-37
  10. ↑ Gustafson, p.76-85
  11. ↑ Gustafson, p.83
  12. ↑ Gustafson, p.80-81
  13. ↑ Gustafson, p.80
  14. ↑ Algulin, p.37

Bibliography

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