II.
The genesis of Fritiofs Saga is to be found partly in the renascence of a strong national sentiment in Sweden after the disastrous wars and loss of Finland, early in the nineteenth century, partly in Tegnér's personality and in his profound knowledge and warm admiration of the Old Norse sagas. We have seen how already as a boy he had read the sagas with keen zest and even tried his hand at a heroic poem in stately Alexandrine verse.
To the thoughtful minds of that day it seemed clear that the cause of Sweden's misfortunes was to be found in her loss of a strong manhood, due to a senseless readiness in adopting enervating foreign customs and to a fatal relaxation in morals. In 1811 a handful of enthusiastic students, mostly from Tegnér's native province of Värmland, formed the Gothic Union (Götiska förbundet) for the purpose of working with united efforts for the regeneration of the nation. This, they believed, could best be achieved by reviving the memories of the old Goths, merely another name for the people of the Saga period, which in turn would help to bring back the vigorous integrity and dauntless courage of the past. The ancient sagas must therefore be popularized.
Tegnér, who already in his "Svea" had bewailed the loss of national power and urged his people to become independent and strong again, joined the Gothic Union, at the same time expressing his disapproval of a too pronounced and narrow-minded imitation of old Gothic life and thought. Erik Gustaf Geijer, the great historian and poet, also a native of Värmland and in power of mind and loftiness of ideals almost the peer of Tegnér, published in Iduna, the organ of the Gothic Union, a few poems that faithfully reproduce the old Northern spirit and in strength and simplicity stand almost unsurpassed. An extremist in the camp was Per Henrik Ling, an ardent patriot, who, inspired by Danish and German Romanticism, would rehabilitate the nation by setting before it in a series of epics the strong virtues of the past, albeit that these often appeared in uncouth and brutal forms. For the physical improvement of his countrymen Ling worked out a scientific system of exercise, and though his epics were failures, largely because they set up coarse models for an age that aesthetically had risen superior to them, his system of physical training entitles him to an honored place among the great men of Scandinavia.
Tegner had been greatly grieved at Ling's literary mistakes. It seemed to him deplorable that a worthy cause should be doomed to ignominious failure just because unskilled hands had undertaken to do the work. This feeling prompted him to undertake the writing of a great epic based on the old sagas, but excluding their crudities. But it would be a mistake to think that this was the only force that impelled him to write. Tegnér has now reached the heyday of his wonderful poetic powers and he must give expression to the great ideas that stir his soul. And so he proceeds to paint a picture of Fritiof the Bold and his times. The great Danish poet Oehlenschläger had already published "Helge", an Old Norse cycle of poems which Tegnér warmly admired. This poem revealed to him the possibilities of the old saga themes in the hands of a master.
Fritiofs Saga did not appear as a completed work at first, but merely in installments of a certain number of cantos at a time and these not in consecutive order. In the summer of 1820, cantos 16-19, being the first installments or "fragments," as Tegnér himself called them, appeared in Iduna; the five concluding cantos were completed and published two years later, and not until then did the poet proceed to write the first part. The work was finally completed in 1825.
Although the first cantos published had received a most enthusiastic reception on the part of the people and won unstinted praise from most of the great literary men, even from many who belonged to opposing literary schools, an enthusiasm that grew in volume and sincerity as the subsequent portions appeared, Tegnér became increasingly dissatisfied and discouraged because of the task that confronted him and the serious defects that he saw in his creation. Tegnér was at all times his own severest critic and there is found in him an utter absence of vanity or illusion. "Speaking seriously", he wrote in 1824, "I have never regarded myself as a poet in the higher significance of the word. — — — I am at best a John the Baptist who is preparing the way for him who is to come." [Tegnér, Samlade Skrifter, II, 436.]