- Project Runeberg -  Poems by Tegnér: The children of the Lord's supper and Frithiof's saga /
ix

(1914) Author: Esaias Tegnér Translator: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Lewery Blackley
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INTRODUCTION xxiii

ESAIAS Tegn£r was born November 13, 1782, at
Kyrkerud in Wermland.* Both his mother and his
father were children of preachers, whose parents, in turn, had
been peasants. Thus Tegner was virtually of the peasant
class,—a fact of which he was never ashamed. His father’s
name, Esaias Lucasson, had been transformed at the
gymnasium, or preparatory school, to Esaias Tegnerus, because
he came from Tegnaby (the village of Tegna) in Smaland.
In the poet’s own time, the surname was further changed
to its present more aristocratic form.

When Esaias was nine years old, his father died,
leaving a widow and six children with scant means of support.
A state official in the district, Assessor Branting, a friend
of the family, offered to take Esaias, the youngest son, into
his home. Branting gave him a position in the
counting-house, but the boy had plenty of time to himself, which he
devoted mainly to the study of poetry and history. Tegner
liked, above all, the old Icelandic sagas,and read frequently
that of Frithiof the Bold, which was later to become the
basis of his greatest poem. He went with the Assessor on
frequent official trips through Wermland, thus becoming
well acquainted with the beautiful scenery of his country,
which he so often describes.

Branting, being impressed by the future poet’s keenness
of perception and eagerness for knowledge, arranged that he
should study under an elder brother, Lars Gustaf Tegner,

♦The biographical facts in this Introduction are taken mainly from the
valuable essays on Tegner by Brandes and by Boyesen. The standard biography
of the poet is by his son-in-law, C. W. Bottiger, Tcckning af Tegneri Lefnad%
Stockholm, 1847.

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