ing. He returns home and
rebuilds Balder's temple, whereupon the sentence of outlawry is removed,
and he is reconciled to Ingeborg's brothers and marries the beloved of
his youth.

The last canto, called "The Atonement," is perhaps the most flagrant
violation of historical verisimilitude in the whole epic. A hoary priest
of Balder actually performs the wedding ceremony in the restored temple,
and pronounces a somewhat unctuous wedding oration, which differs from
those which Tegner himself had frequently delivered chiefly in the
substitution of pagan for the Christian deities. As a matter of fact,
marriage was a purely civil contract among the ancient Norsemen, and had
no association with the temple or the priesthood, which, by the way, was
no separate office but a patriarchal function belonging to the secular
chieftainship. But Tegner's public were in nowise shocked by
anachronisms of this sort; they probably rejoiced the more heartily in
the happiness of the reunited lovers, because their marriage was,
according to modern notions, so "regular."

It was soon after his publication of "Frithjof's Saga" that Tegner
became Bishop of Wexioe. He then removed from Lund and took up his
residence upon the estate Oestrabo, near the principal town in his
diocese. The great fame of his poem came to him as a surprise; and he
even undertook to protest against it, declaring with perfect sincerity
that he held it to be undeserved. In letters to his friends he never
wearied of pointing out the faults of "Frithjof" and his own
shortcomings as a poet. In a letter to the poet Leopold (August 17,
1825), who had praised the poem to the skies, he argues seriously to
prove that his admiration is misplaced:

"My great fault in 'Frithjof' was not that I chose my theme from
the old cycle of sagas, but that I treated it in a tone and with a
manner which was neither ancient nor modern, neither antiquarian
nor poetical, but hovered, as it were, on the boundary of both. For
what does it mean to treat a subject poetically if not this, to
eliminate everything which belongs to an alien and past age and now
no longer appeals to any heart? The hearts to which it once did
appeal are now all dust. Other modes of thought and feeling are
current. It is impossible to properly translate one age into
another. But to poetry nothing is really past. Poetry is the
beautifying life of the moment; she wears the