defects that he saw in his creation. Tegnér was at all times his own
severest critic and there is found in him an utter absence of vanity or
illusion. "Speaking seriously", he wrote in 1824, "I have never regarded
myself as a poet in the higher significance of the word. -- -- -- I am at
best a John the Baptist who is preparing the way for him who is to come."
[Tegnér, Samlade Skrifter, II, 436.]


III.

As the basis for Tegnér's epic lies the ancient story of Fritiof the
Bold, which was probably put in writing in the thirteenth century,
although the events are supposed to have transpired in the eighth
century. But Tegnér has freely drawn material from other Old Norse sagas
and songs, and this, and not a little of his own personal experience, he
has woven into the story with the consummate skill of a master. He made
full use of his poetic license and eliminated and added, reconstructed
and embellished just as was convenient for his plan. "My object", he
says, "was to represent a poetical image of the old Northern hero age. It
was not Fritiof as an individual whom I would paint; it was the epoch of
which he was chosen as the representative." [Tegnér, Samlade Skrifter,
II, 393.]

It was Tegnér's firm conviction that the poet writes primarily for the
age in which he himself lives, and since he wrote for a civilized
audience he must divest Fritiof of his raw and barbarous attributes,
though still retaining a type of true Northern manhood. On this point
Tegnér says: "It was important not to sacrifice the national, the lively,
the vigorous and the natural. There could, and ought to, blow through the
song that cold winter air, that fresh Northern wind which characterizes