cheering vigor common to the nation, only gives them yet more strength
and elasticity. There is a certain kind of life-enjoying gladness (and of
this, public opinion has accused the French) which finally reposes on
frivolity; that of the North is built on seriousness. And therefore I
have also endeavored to develop in Fritiof somewhat of this meditative
gloom. His repentant regret at the unwilling temple fire, his scrupulous
fear of Balder (Canto 15) who--

'Sits in the sky, cloudy thoughts sending down,
Ever veiling my spirit in gloom',

and his longing for the final reconciliation and for calm within
him, are proofs not only of a religious craving, but also and still more
of a national tendency to sorrowfulness common to every serious mind, at
least in the North of Europe." [Tegnér, Samlade Skrifter, II, p. 394.]

Tegnér thus found it easy to justify the sentimentality that
characterizes Fritiof's love for Ingeborg, an element in Fritiofs Saga
that has been most severely condemned by the critics. To the criticism
that this love is too modern and Platonic, Tegnér correctly answers that
reverence for the sex was from the earliest times a characteristic of the
German people so that the light and coarse view that prevailed among the
most cultivated nations of antiquity was a thing quite foreign to the
habits of the North.

Ingeborg like Fritiof is idealized by the poet although here the
departure from the original is not as wide. That delicacy of sentiment
which is inseparable from Ingeborg and guides her right in the great
crisis is not, he maintains, a trait merely of the woman of ancient
Scandinavia but is inherent in each noble female, no matter when or where