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suggestive power. The figurative language he sometimes employs, though always sparingly and with
discrimination, not only adorns the subject with the graces of imagery and fancy, but is an instrument
admirably adapted to extract its essence, and to impress the mind of the reader, by a few words, more
forcibly than by pages of disquisition. His narrative is rapid, animated, and striking; while he excels
not less in deciphering the faint and imperfect records of the past, and lighting up the dim obscurities of
history with the gleam of truth, than in relating the best ascertained facts of the clearest periods,
standing upon unquestioned testimony. This will be acknowledged by such as compare the first two chapters
of the following history, or the ten of the Scandinavian Antiquities, which are in the nature of an inquiry,
with his account of the reigns of the later sovereigns. In the caution and sagacity with which he tracks
his way through the mysterious gloom of the mythological and traditionary period, constructing a
symmetrical and harmonious fabric of verisimilitude from the poetical legends of the sagas and the scattered
hints of foreign annalists, the same analytic faculty is exhibited which Niebuhr brought to bear on the
darkness of the early Roman history, conjoined with an artistic method and felicitous eloquence which
we vainly desiderate in the German writer. Of the heathen and Catholic periods, for which the
authorities are few, brief, and unsatisfactory, his exposition is necessarily succinct and undetailed. Here he
follows in some passages, as the safest course in dealing with imperfect evidence, the exact language of
the original writers [1]; which indeed is sometimes the vehicle best calculated to imbue the inquirer’s
apprehension with the spirit of the age or subject. In his progress to the names and events which have
gained a world-wide celebrity, and demand a breadth, force, and grandeur of narration, not unequal to
the theme, he displays these qualities in an amplitude of measure that leaves nothing to be desired;
crescit cum magnitudine rerum vis ingenii. At times there is a scriptural energy and solemnity which
indicate one of the models he has followed, and impart to his own narrative the same features that stamped
the mind and style of the ancient heroes of Sweden. Not unfrequently, like all the chief northern writers,
from the Icelanders to the modern poets of England, he blends the elements of comic and tragic emotion,
or illustrates elevating truths by familiar things. In the occasional inborn and homebred pith of his
expressions, drawn from the stores of demotic feeling and fancy, is pourtrayed the free, plain-spoken,
and vigorous spirit of the people whose story he relates.
The study of Swedish history is not only necessary, as an integrant part of general history, and
interesting in itself, because fertile in memorials of heroic exertion, lofty achievement, and patient triumph
over difficulties manfully encountered; it is also indispensable to the right comprehension of the mutual
relations, and even the intrinsic import of other departments of European history. For the pomp and
grandeur which gild the medieval story of nations such as France, England, and Spain, whose numbers,
opulence, and power have thriven under advantages of situation, soil, and climate, denied by nature to
the remote north, we must not look here. Yet there are many elements which lend the subject a
character of elevation and dignity beyond any that could be conferred by mere magnitude of material
resources, and amply compensating their deficiency. And above all, the history of Sweden possesses a
unity of interest, wanting in those of both Germany and Italy, where the student’s attention is distracted
by the multiplicity of constituent parts, arising from the political divisions of these countries, or even in
that of her neighbour Denmark. Down to our own day, her power and consideration in Europe have
ever exceeded the due proportion of her population and means, as was also the weight which she could
at times, as in the seventeenth century, throw into the scale; results ascribable partly to the talents of
her sovereigns, and partly to her comparative freedom from the religious divisions, and other distracting
causes, which tore contemporary states.
Although the opinion once so generally spread, that Scandinavia [2] was the home and dwelling-place
of the Gothic tribes which subdued the Roman empire, has been overthrown by the more critical learning
and precise inquiry of modern days, its claims on our curiosity need not be rested on any such factitious
grounds. In its indigenous religion, institutions, and manners, the purest type of the ancient Gothic
mind exhibited itself, and exercised its constructive faculties. These exemplify the original form of
society among all the kindred of the Gothic stock. They are not less deserving of investigation in
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