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INTRODUCTION
xxiii
"My golden harp shall never borrow
Sad tones that I have brought to light;
The poet was not made for sorrow.
The sky of song is ever bright."*
Frithiofs Saga tells the sweet love story of the humbly
born Frithiof for the noble Ingeborg. Though its material
is ancient, its treatment is modern, to such an extent, in
fact, that the Christian marriage ceremony is introduced.
Frithiof, sentimental in spite of his heroic qualities, is
nearer in spirit to Tegner’s own time than to the
feast-ing, fighting days of ninth-century Scandinavia, which are
reflected rather in Bjorn,the hero’s friend and counsellor.
A characteristic feature of the poem is the use of a
different metre in each of the twenty-four cantos, often with
variations within the canto itself, to fit the scene in hand.
In other words, though a narrative, the poem is lyric. Its
form and its contents, in so far as it takes a saga story
for its plot, was inspired, Tegner frankly admitted, by
Oehlenschlaeger’s Helge. Both poems were the outgrowth
of the renascence of interest in the saga age that was then
manifest throughout Scandinavia. Frithiof, however, with
its exuberant glee, soon eclipsed its gloomier model in
popularity and influence.
It is distinctly a poem for the young, and Frithiof is
a typical boy’s hero. There is little doubt that cantos like
"Frithiofs Wooing" and "Frithiofs Happiness" are
reminiscent of Tegner’s own happy student days, when he
spent his vacations with the Myhrmans. Only in
"Frithiof s Return," written under the shadow of later love
complications, is there the sadness of age. Frithiof here, like
Tegner himself at the time he wrote the canto, is a mis-
•From Tie Sang. English version by R.B.Anderson.
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