Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Biographical Sketch of Viktor Rydberg by Dr. H. A. W. Lindehn
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elected a lay member of the first Ecclesiastical
Convention of Sweden, and in 1870 and 1872 a member of the
Swedish Parliament (Riksdag). In public as in private
life, all his acts were in strict adherence to the liberal
principles and the fervent patriotism which pervade his
whole work as an author.
In 1877 a new honor, the highest that can fall to a
writer in Sweden, was bestowed upon him, that of a
chair in the Swedish Academy. This institution was
founded in 1786, by King Gustavus III., himself a gifted
writer, for the care and culture of the Swedish language,
and with the view of enlivening and elevating the
national sentiment of the beautiful. This distinction, like
that for a Frenchman of membership in the French
Academy, is a goal which is looked forward to more or
less hopefully by every talented Swedish writer, and
attracts him as by a magnetic force. The Academy has
only eighteen places to be filled with candidates for
“immortality.” The number of those, therefore, who can
arrive at the desired goal necessarily falls far short of the
long list who fail to reach it. Rydberg, however, by
public opinion, had long been designated for a seat in
this lettered Areopagus, when the Academy itself called
him to the chair that had been vacated through the
death of another celebrated poet. Dr. C. W. Strandberg.
The election of Rydberg was only a simple act of
justice to a man who has hardly ever been exceeded in
zeal for the culture of his native language.
In the same year that Rydberg became member of
the Academy, the University at Upsala celebrated its
four hundredth anniversary by a jubilee, to which had
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