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Introduction, Bibliography, Notes, and Vocabulary Edited by
ANDREW A. STOMBERG
Ever since the establishment, many years ago, of courses in Swedish in afew American colleges and universities the need of Swedish texts,supplied with vocabularies and explanatory notes after the model of thenumerous excellent German and French editions, has been keenly felt.This need has become particularly pressing the last three years duringwhich Swedish has been added to the curricula of a large number of highschools. The teachers in Swedish in these high schools as well as incolleges and universities have been greatly handicapped in their work bythe lack of properly edited texts. It is clearly essential to the successof their endeavor to create an interest in the Swedish language and itsliterature, at the same time maintaining standards of scholarship thatare on a level with those maintained by other modern foreign languagedepartments, that a plentiful and varied supply of text material befurnished. The present edition of Tegnér's Fritiofs Saga aims to be amodest contribution to the series of Swedish texts that in the mostrecent years have been published in response to this urgent demand.
Sweden has since the days of Tegnér been prolific in the creation ofvirile and wholesome literary masterpieces, but Fritiofs Saga by Tegnéris still quite generally accorded the foremost place among the literaryproducts of the nation. Tegnér is still hailed as the prince of Swedishsong by an admiring people and Fritiofs Saga remains, in popularestimation at least, the grand national epic.
Fritiofs Saga has appeared in a larger number of editions than any otherScandinavian work with the possible exception of Hans ChristianAndersen's Fairy Tales. It has been translated into fourteen Europeanlanguages, and the different English translations alone numberapproximately twenty. In German the number is almost as high. Severalschool editions having explanatory notes have appeared in Swedish and in1909 Dr. George T. Flom, Professor of Scandinavian Languages andLiterature of the University of Illinois edited a text with introduction,bibliography and explanatory notes in English, designed for use inAmerican colleges and universities, but the present edition is the firstone, as far as the editor is aware, to appear with an English vocabulary.
Fritiofs Saga abounds in mythological names and terms, as well as inidiomatic expressions, and the preparation of the explanatory notes hastherefore been a perplexing task. A fairly complete statement under eachmythological reference would in the aggregate reach the proportions of atreatise on Norse mythology, but the limitations of space made suchelaboration impossible. While brevity of expression has thus been thehard rule imposed by the necessity of keeping within bounds, it is hopedthat the notes may nevertheless be found reasonably adequate inexplaining the text. Many mythological names occur frequently and indifferent parts of the text, and as constant cross references in thenotes would likely be found monotonous, an effort has been made tofacilitate the matter of consulting and reviewing explanatory statementsfor these terms by adding an index table.
It has not been thought necessary or desirable to translate manyidiomatic expressions in the text, as the vocabulary ought to enable thestudent, without the assistance of a lavish supply of notes, to get att