THE LITERATURE. About 160 of the runic in scriptions of Sweden, the oldest dating from the tenth century, contain alliterating verses evi dently quoted from preexisting sagas. This and other lines of evidence show that the poetic art was widely cultivated in the Viking Age. But this 'literature,' which may have been compar able to that preserved in Old Icelandic. is lost. By the middle of the twelfth century Christianity was firmly established, and the old pagan songs and sagas fell under the ban of the Church. From that time on for five hundred years the national literature was dominated, rather more than else where in Western Europe, by the religious spirit. The earliest writings that have come down in the Latin alphabet are certain codes of provincial laws (lamiskapsingar). The most important is the "Elder West Cffita Law," dating from the thirteenth century. Magnus Eriksson's Landslag (about 1350) is that King's attempt to provide a common law for all the provinces he had brought under his rule. It t was probably a scholar from the entourage of this same King Magnus who wrote the celebrated Um styrilsi konunga oir hiifinnya ("On the Conduct of Kings and Magnates"). To the fourteenth century be long the writings ascribed to Saint Birgitta, a pious nun and mystic revealer of heavenly things. There are nine books of her "Revelations." Saint Birgitta is the most eminent person age in the annals of Catholic Sweden. She made the Convent of Vadstena a literary centre, where many Latin writings, chiefly mystical and hagiographic, hut including a part of the Bible, were translated into Swedish for the benefit of the nuns. In poetry the mediaeval period is not very rich, though its aggregate of metrical pro duction is considerable. The romances of chiv alry are represented in the so-called Enfemia visor, certain tales of knighthood done into Swed ish verse by a gleeman living at the court of Queen Eupbemia of Norway (1303-12). They are Herrn Bean. Hertig Fredrik of Yormandie, and Flores och Blanzaf for, all in rhyming couplets with four accents to the line. Besides these met rical romances, there are several rhymed chron icles. the oldest being the ErikskrOnika (about 1320), and the ballads. It is agreed that the ballad-making period in Sweden was in the thir teenth and fourteenth centuries, but the extant collections are of the sixteenth and seventeenth.
None of the known specimens are of indisputable antiquity, but the best compare very well in form and matter with the better Ktemperiser of Denmark. From the fifteenth century we have a good poems by Bishop Thomas of Strengiffis (died in 1443).
The Reformation transferred the literary centre from Vadstena to Upsala. The literature of the sixteenth century is almost exclusively religious, the two chief writers being the brothers Petri, Carmelite monks who had been converted to Lutheranism at Wittenberg. They stand out as the leading Swedish apostles of the new faith. The elder, Olavus ('Master Olof '1, wrote psalms, devotional poems. a prose chronicle of Swedish history, and (probably) the mystery-play Tobie Comedic. With his brother Lanrentius he di rected the publication of the first Swedish Bible (lipsala, 1541). The first secular author of any note in the new era is the historian Messenius, who also wrote six 'school comedies' on subjects from Swedish history. The best known is Disa, which was played by Upsala students in 1611.
The period of Swedish expansion (16301730) is marked by the widening of the literary horizon through the introduction of new ideas and forms from Germany, France, Italy, aml Holland. The prominent figure is Stjernhjelm (1598-1672), the 'father of Swedish poetry.' lie did a work like that of Opitz in Germany, by whom he was influenced; that is, he sought to give his country a worthy poetic literature by imitating good models, old and new. lie laid great stress on metrical regularity and ornateness of diction. His poem Hercules, a didactic allegory on the conflict of Pleasure and Duty, may fairly be said to have nationalized the dactylic hexameter. It is metrically elegant, but rather florid. Stjern hjelm also experimented with alexandrines, the ottara rims, the sonnet, and the ballad. His most noteworthy disciple was the poet-scholar Colum bus (1642-79). _U opponent of Stjernhjelm, Rosenhane won fame especially as a sonneteer. A jovial and facile rhymester who stood apart from the schools was Johansson, called Lueidor (died in 1684). The eccentric polyhistor Rudbeck (1630-1702), with his amaz ing Atlantika, belongs to the history of literary curiosities rather than of literature.