writing. Books printed in Swedish were scarce. Most were theological texts intended to spread the Lutheran doctrines through Sweden. Also of importance were the national hymnals. A first draft was created in the 1530s. These set the mark for young people as they sang the hymns in Church. 17th century In the 17th century there were attempts to establish Swedish as a genuine language. An early linguist and author was Georg Stiernhielm, who is today almost universally labelled "Father of Swedish Poetry". He was the first to introduce the hexameter into the Swedish language with his epic Hercules in 1658. The hexameter is used in the Latin language and is sometimes considered unsuitable for Germanic languages because of the differences in prosody. However, it had been adapted to German and English more than a century earlier with the alternating long and short syllables of Latin being replaced with stressed and unstressed syllables of the Germanic languages. The hexameter would later be used by many other Swedish poets. Stiernhielm was a learned man, and has been labelled the most knowledgeable man in Sweden of his time. He was probably the first to be so fascinated by the Norse languages, and spent much labor tracing the similarities between Icelandic and old Swedish. Realizing the common inheritance they shared, he traced their origin from ancient times, descending them from a Biblical tribe. Late Modern Swedish Late Modern Swedish is considered to have begun in 1732 when Olof von Dalin published the weekly publication "The Swedish Argus" in Stockholm. It dealt with current events in Sweden, mainly Stockholm with its population of 50,000, in a publicly appealing way. Often it used irony and satire to portray royalty and other notable people. This popular style characterizes the entire period. Bellman was a Stockholm poet of the late 18th century whose poetry represented the drinking habits of the time. In 1825 a professor of Lund University and later Bishop of Växjö, Esaias Tegnér, published Fritiof's Saga, a Viking epic directed to a general audience. It gained great popularity and was later set to music and sung in the homes of the Swedish middle class. It was reprinted several times in the 19th century, up until the 1880s when the newer realistic poetry set the mark with names such as Strindberg. See also Old Norse Swedish literature References L. Lönnroth, S. Delblanc, et al. Den Svenska Litteraturen