Svend Grundtvig, Danish literary historian
Viktor Rydberg undoubtedly learned of the sensational new theory concerning the origins of Völuspá from newspaper reports. His former employer, Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, published a review of Bugge and Bang’s lectures on November 14, about a week after Bang’s speech.
Bang’s little brochure —one of science’s many will-o-the-wisps that burst into flame for a moment and vanish into nothing again—played the role of the dwarf and enticed Viktor Rydberg ever so long into the labyrinth of mythology, from which he nearly did not escape. The provoking, tempting mystery of the mythological problem worked its magic allure on him as it did so many others. Atlantis had once dragged the Carolinian era’s great polymaths away from their work in the natural sciences. Mythology likewise now drew the nineteenth century’s Swedish polymath away from the completion of his philosophical work in which he had long labored, even away from excursions into the realm of poetic art.
When, at the end of 1879, Rydberg sent Svend Grundtvig a notification of admission into the newly-founded Nordic Literary Society, he seemed to have mentioned —in a letter unfortunately now lost —Bang’s supposed discovery but said that as a “non-professional” he would withhold his opinion. To which Svend Grundtvig replied, sending Rydberg a copy of a letter he had written to his friend Sophus Bugge in which they had discussed the
matter, along with the following appeal:
“You withheld your opinion as a non-professional. But allow me to remark, that in this which seems to me to be the main point, namely the comparison of Völuspá with the Sybilline books, you are more competent than most, because it is exceptional for any Nordic philologist to have occupied himself with Old Christian literature. Therefore, it would interest me greatly if you, and you alone, would take this matter under consideration as soon as Bang’s presentation is officially published; for the question is of the greatest interest, and ought to be examined by others before the results can be accepted.”
Rydberg answered the appeal. In Nordisk Tidskrift for 1881, he presented his treatise Sibyllinerna och Völuspá, a sharp and scathing critique of Bang’s theory, in two articles.
In the same journal that contained the second part of Rydberg’s treatise, a contribution by Sophus Bugge was published that took issue with the first installment. In it, the respected researcher makes the claim that more must have been known about the Sibylline texts in the Middle Ages than Rydberg thought. Above all he points to the prophecies of Merlin found in seventh book of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittaniæ, which point back to the Sibylline texts as their model on the basis of some astronomical details.
Bugge's few pages gave rise to two more highly captivating articles by Rydberg under the rubric: Astrologien och Merlin in the same issue of Nordisk Tidskrift in which Rydberg thoroughly, shrewdly and poetically treats the sources of the star-lore by Geoffrey of Monmouth and demonstrates the untenability of the proposed parallel in a way which —according to what I have seen— convinced even his opponents on this point.
Grundtvig expressed his joy that Rydberg took the trouble to treat the question raised by Bugge about Merlin and expected a lot of learning from this, but explains that it would be of even greater importance if he wanted to subject Bugge's great work —Studierna — to a criticism "from a methodological point of view". Grundtvig's second prompting, that Rydberg should go to the root of the issue and attack the method that formed the basis of the new hypotheses, did not fall on deaf ears.
Once inside these magical spaces, Rydberg did not easily abandon them. Mythology now held him completely and kept him in its power. During those years, he allowed himself neither respite nor rest, especially in the early 1880s.
