SWEDISH LITERATURE

the body of writings in the Swedish language. Swedish literature had its beginnings in the 13th century, when Old Swedish became a language distinct from the common Norse that previously had been spoken throughout Scandinavia. The development of medieval Swedish literature was hindered by the country's gradual conversion to Catholic Christianity from the 11th century onward; this meant that Latin became the vehicle of much contemporary writing. Swedish vernacular literature came into its own in the 16th century with Sweden's ardent adherence to the Protestant Reformation. The most important literary event of the period was the complete translation of the Bible into Swedish in 1541; this event inaugurated modern Swedish and provided an inexhaustible source of imagery, motifs, and metaphors for subsequent Swedish writers. During the ensuing centuries Swedish literature reflected the contemporaneous literary fashions of Europe. Georg Stiernhielm's epic Hercules (1658) had a great influence on later poets, and Stiernhielm is regarded as the father of Swedish poetry. Olof von Dalin was the foremost literary representative of the Enlightenment as it affected 18th-century Sweden. Other prominent literary figures during the 18th century included the academic poet Johan Henrik Kellgren, the naturalist Carl von Linn (Carolus Linnaeus), and the mystical theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. Carl Michael Bellman was the outstanding Swedish lyric poet of the 18th century. As elsewhere in Europe, Neoclassicism in Sweden gradually gave way to Romanticism in the early 19th century. Swedish Romanticism was as much dominated by German developments as Swedish Neoclassicism had been dominated by French models. Romanticism manifested itself in Sweden in an ardent national spirit and in a renewed interest in Sweden's past and traditions. In the late 19th century Romanticism yielded to realism, and at this time Sweden produced a figure of world importance in the playwright August Strindberg. Strindberg's work marks the beginning of modern Swedish literature, and Strindberg himself remains the greatest writer Sweden has ever produced. In the 20th century Sweden produced such noted writers as the novelists Selma Lagerlf and Hjalmar Bergman and the poet and novelist Pr Lagerkvist.