_fiancee_, then living in the country, dated March 7, 1811, he says:
"We have formed a society which meets nearly daily. We talk, smoke,
and read together about Gothic Viking deeds. We call each other by
Gothic names, and live in the past." And Anna-Lisa, his future wife,
writing to a friend, says: "My _fiancee_ has become a Goth; instead of
loving me, he is in love with Valkyries and shield-bearing maidens,
drinks out of Viking horns, and carries out Viking expeditions--to the
nearest tavern. He writes poems which must not be read in the dark,
they are so full of murders and deeds of slaughter." Ling, who also
belonged to this society, was a fervent admirer of the Eddas and
Sagas, of the Scandinavian myths and folk-lore. Tegnér, despite his
classical education and Hellenic turn of mind, was an ardent Norseman
in feeling and instinct. "Go to Greece for beauty of form," he would
say, "but to the North for depth of feeling and thought." He scorned
alike the metaphysical subtleties of French philosophy and the
moonshine heroics of German romanticism. But he was at one with Geijer
and Ling in the desire to make Scandinavian heroes and myths the
subjects of poetry.

The result of the movement was _Frithiof's Saga_, by Tegnér, Geiger's
_Viking_, and Ling's heavy epics of Walhalla warriors. But Geijer and
Ling alone had followed out the theory in all its consequences. Their
heroes were simply _Eddic_, of their time, in spirit and in thought.
Ling's realism went so far that his Northern gods and warriors,
"everlastingly killed but to revive again," were deemed "pork-eating
and mead-drinking yokels." They were soon forgotten, and Ling himself
is best known as the inventor of gymnastic exercises on scientific
principles, an art now practiced all the world over as "Swedish
gymnastics." Geijer, whose _Viking_ gave a pure and true picture
of Viking life seen in its own light, was himself disappointed. He