page_title: Swedish Reformation and Renaissance literature
section_title: Gothicism
hierarchical_section_title: Swedish Reformation and Renaissance literature / Gothicism
context_page_description: The German Protestant Reformation had spread to Sweden by 1520, and resulted in the Swedish Reformation in 1527. The advent of the printing press facilitated a full translation of the Bible into Swedish in 1541. From a philological view, a new period in the development of the Swedish language called Modern Swedish was initiated with the Bible translation. It also gave power to the vernacular language.
  From a literary point of view, the period between 1400 and 1600 produced little of note, especially during the 1520–1600. Yet, paradoxically, the Bible translation published 1541 is possibly the most significant Swedish book of all times. First and foremost, it had a great religious impact, but apart from that it also introduced the common man to a language beyond the common-day. The Bible was used in churches for around 400 years until the Bible translation of 1917, and meanwhile translations were merely revisions and corrections.
context_section_description: From an ideological perspective, the 16th century literature gave rise to Gothicism. The main idea of this movement is that the Goths, a renowned East Germanic tribe in the 1st–6th century, originated from Scandinavia, and Sweden in particular.  An important advocate was the deposed Swedish archbishop Johannes Magnus, who was exiled in Rome between 1530–1544 together with his brother Olaus Magnus. In Historia de omnibus gothorum suenumque regibus (1554), Johannes Magnus traced the Swedish line of kings back to the Old Testament. The works of the Magnus brothers gained attention throughout Europe and was translated into several languages, and their influence manifested itself in several works during the 17th century.   
  In history, Sweden was a great empire between 1611–1718. In literature, however, its development was trailing other European countries. It was by French and German influence that Swedish literature was to be shaped. In literature, an important turnstone occurred in 1658, when Georg Stiernhielm published Hercules, a work regarded as the first Swedish work of true poetry. The story in Hercules is based on Xenophon's story of Hercules at the crossroads of different paths. It was the first known publication of hexameter in Swedish language, and with it Stiernhielm proved that the Swedish language was up for the task. Another significant aspect of Hercules is the freedom of religious motives, drawing more upon ancient philosophy than on the Bible. In the ensuing decades, Stiernhielm and his followers made further attempts at writing tragedies, pastoral poetry and other poetic styles in the Swedish language.
  The culmination of the Gothicism came with Olaus Rudbeck's Atlantica, a massive four-volume work (1679–1702), where Rudbeck outlined how Sweden was the most ancient of all countries, and the true location of the sunken Atlantis. But when the last volume of Atlantica was published, the Gothicism movement was already on decline. This was for large part a natural reaction to the failed Swedish wars. By 1720, Gothicism was a thing of the past, and Swedish culture took a turn towards science and realism.
caption: First page of the hexametric Hercules,  by Georg Stiernhielm, 1658
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