this myth to a great extent. Another Swedish author who had great influence on the perception of the
Vikings was Esaias Tegnér, member of the Geatish Society, who wrote a modern version of Friðþjófs
saga hins frœkna, which became widely popular in the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom, and
Germany.
Viking long ships besieging Paris in 845, 19th century portrayal
Fascination with the Vikings reached a peak during the so-called Viking revival in the late 18th and 19th
centuries as a branch of Romantic nationalism. In Britain this was called Septentrionalism, in Germany
"Wagnerian" pathos, and in the Scandinavian countries Scandinavism. Pioneering 19th-century scholarly
editions of the Viking Age began to reach a small readership in Britain, archaeologists began to dig up
Britain's Viking past, and linguistic enthusiasts started to identify the Viking-Age origins of rural idioms
and proverbs. The new dictionaries of the Old Norse language enabled the Victorians to grapple with the
primary Icelandic sagas.
Until recently, the history of the Viking Age was largely based on Icelandic sagas, the history of the
Danes written by Saxo Grammaticus, the Russian Primary Chronicle, and Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib. Few
scholars still accept these texts as reliable sources, as historians now rely more on archaeology and
numismatics, disciplines that have made valuable contributions toward understanding the period.
In 20th-century politics
The romanticised idea of the Vikings constructed in scholarly and popular circles in northwestern Europe
in the 19th and early 20th centuries was a potent one, and the figure of the Viking became a familiar
and malleable symbol in different contexts in the politics and political ideologies of 20th-century Europe.
In Normandy, which had been settled by Vikings, the Viking ship became an uncontroversial regional
symbol. In Germany, awareness of Viking history in the 19th century had been stimulated by the border
dispute with Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein and the use of Scandinavian mythology by Richard
Wagner. The idealised view of the Vikings appealed to Germanic supremacists who transformed the
figure of the Viking in accordance with the ideology of the Germanic master race.[167] Building on the
linguistic and cultural connections between Norse-speaking Scandinavians and other Germanic groups in
the distant past, Scandinavian Vikings were portrayed in Nazi Germany as a pure Germanic type. The
cultural phenomenon of Viking expansion was re-interpreted for use as propaganda to support the
extreme militant nationalism of the Third Reich, and ideologically informed interpretations of Viking
paganism and the Scandinavian use of runes were employed in the construction of Nazi mysticism.