RUNEBERGJohan Ludwig (1804-1877), Swedish poet, was born at Jakobstad, in Finland, on the 5th of February 1804. Brought up by an uncle at Uleâborg, he entered the university of Âbo in the autumn term of 1822, and in 1826 began to contribute verses to the local newspapers. In the spring of 1827 he received the degree of doctor of philosophy, and shared in the calamity which, in September of the same year, destroyed the city and university of Abo with fire. Runeberg accepted a tutorship at Saarijiirvi, in the interior of Finland, where he remained for three years, studying hard and writing actively. The university had been removed after the great fire to Helsingfors, and in 1830 the young poet returned thither, as amanuensis to the council of the university. In the same year he published his first volume of Dikier (Poems), and a collection of Servian folksongs translated into Swedish. In 1831 his verse romance Grafven i Perrho (The Grave in Perrho) received the small gold medal of the Swedish Academy, and the poet married the daughter of Dr Teng-ström, archbishop of Finland. For a tractate on the Medea of Euripides he was in the same year appointed university lecturer on Roman literature. In 1832 he leaped at one bound to the foremost place among Swedish poets with his beautiful little epic Elgskyttarne (The Elk-Hunters); and in 1833 he published a second collection of lyrical poems. His comedy Friaren fran Landet (The Country Lover) was not a success in 1834. He returned to more characteristic fields in 1836, when he published the charming idyl in hexameters called Hanna. In 1837 Runeberg accepted the chair of Latin at Borg;! College, and resided in that little town for the rest of his life....
From Borgâ he continued to pour forth volumes of verse, and he was now recognized in his remote Finland retirement as second only to Tegnér among the poets of Sweden. In 1841 he published Nadeschda, a romance of Russian life, and Julqudllen (Christmas Eve), an idyl. The third volume of his lyrical pieces bears the date 1843, and the noble cycle of unrhymed verse romances called Rung Fjalar was published in 1844. Finally, in 1848, he achieved a great popular success by his splendid series of poems about the war of independence in 1808, a series which bears the name of Fdnrik Stals Sdgner (Ensign Steel’s Stories); a second series of these appeared in 1860. From 1847 to 1850 the poet was rector of Borgâ College, a post which he laid down to take the only journey out of Finland which he ever accomplished, a visit to Sweden in 1851. His later writings may be briefly mentioned. In 1853 he collected his prose essays into a volume entitled Smdrre Berdttelser. In the same year he was made president of a committee for the preparation of a national Psalter, which issued, in 1857, a Psalm-Book largely contributed by Runeberg for public use. He once more attempted comedy in his Kan ej (Can’t) in 1862, and tragedy, with infinitely more success, in his stately Kungarne pa Salamis (The Kings at Salamis) in 1863. He collected his writings in six volumes in 1873-74. Runeberg died at Borgâ on the 6th of May 1877.
The poems of Runeberg show the influence of the Greeks and of Goethe upon his mind; but he possesses a great originality. In an age of conventionality he was boldly realistic, yet never to the sacrifice of artistic beauty. Less known to the rest of Europe than Tegnér, he yet is now generally considered to excel him as a poet, and to mark the highest attainment hitherto reached by imaginative literature in Sweden.
The life of .Iolian Ludvig Iiuneborg lias not yet been written in detail, Iilthongfi it is said to be in preparation. The fullest account of his life and works is that which forms the introduction to the Siirnlatle Skrifter of 1873. Itwaswritten by Prof. Nyblotn. A minute criticism of Runeberg 1 S principal poems, with translations, occupies pp. 1 JS-133 of Gosse’s Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe, 1879. A selection of his lyrical pieces was published in nn English translation by Messrs Magnusson and Palmer in 1878.
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