for all ages, originally written for a newspaper, but later widely printed. It has since become a Christmas classic in Sweden. After a long journey in Italy in 1874, Rydberg published Romerska sägner om apostlarna Petrus och Paulus (Roman Legends concerning the Apostles Peter and Paul 1874) and Romerska Dagar (Roman Days 1877), a series of essays on Italian culture, history and archaeology; The journey is said to have strengthened Rydberg's creative power, as he now produced some of "the finest philosophical lyrics in Swedish literature". "His poems are not numerous, but their masterly form and wealth of thought give them rank among the best poetry in Swedish literature." Charles Wharton Stork remarks: "In the originality and forcefulness of his imagery Rydberg marks an important advance in Swedish poetry;" "there is a manliness in Rydberg's voice which makes the notes carry. His ideas are not the shadows of others, they are his by strong conviction." Other important works include his translation of Goethe's Faust (1876) and the historical novel Vapensmeden (The Armoror, 1891), his first novel in three decades. Set during the Reformation, the novel depicts the struggle between Lutheran Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. In it, Rydberg "still fought fanaticism and dogmatism, and his ideal was still humanity and liberty." Between 1886 and 1889, his literary work was focused on Norse and broader Germanic mythology. "Rydberg had already begun, in the guise of fiction, to devote himself to cultural history, and this now continued in the form of a series of scientific investigations. These dealt first and foremost with religion and mythology." He published several works in the field including two articles on the origins of the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, in which he debated the authenticity of the poem with Norwegian scholar Sophus Bugge, who held that the poem was based on Classical and Biblical sources. An article by George Stephens in The Antiquary August 1881, describes Rydberg's response: "Against this last theory, the Swedish savant, Dr. Viktor Rydberg, of Gotenburg, has written a brilliant paper in the two first numbers of Nordisk Tidskrift for 1881. It is not too much to say, that a more crushing and masterly reply was never penned. A century later, Old Norse scholar Ursula Dronke characterizes this work similarly: "... over one hundred pages (as against Bang's twenty-three!) of marvellously intelligent, masterly criticism of the errors, imprecise thinking and failure of scholarly imagination