Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1939, Blaðsíða 231
PER HENRIK LING
221
counter-fencing with a couple of his students and then made a
suggestion to the royal suite, that probably gave them a bit of
a shock. Ling wished that one of the gentlemen- in- waiting,
with naked sword, should make an assault on him. That, how-
ever, was not allowed. The Crown-prince considered “the assault
dangerous,” which, of course, it was, but Ling and his older
Pupils had worked out a method, by which they could receive
assaults on the bared chest “from stiff, often sharp-pointed
swords.” The point of the sword did not go more than skin-deep,
as the person attacked, through a deep breath, raised the chest,
and in this way the force of the attack was chequed.
In the autumn 1804 we encounter Ling in Lund, where he
soon became fencing-master at the university and he introduced
gymnastics there as well as in some other towns in the south
and west parts of Sweden. He attracted attention, as much by
his gymnastics as by his poetry. Through both he wanted to
inspire a national renaissance. Through his poetry he wanted
to draw his compatriots’ attention to the past, to what he con-
sidered Sweden’s national heritage. He saw a power in the sense
°f the past, an idea shared by romanticism.
Poetry should be one source of strength, Gymnastics an-
other. National activity and will-power should be strengthened
through physical exercises, just as imagination should be nourish-
ed by national memories. ¥e thus see that the different sides of
Ling’s activity supplemented each other, so that they together
should form a whole. It was not in Ling’s power equally to
justify both the one and the other side — who could do that? —
The combination of gymnastics and poetry was, however, the
red thread in his work, the centre of his system of ideas.
In Ling as we see him in Lund, the southern Swedish uni-
versity town, from 1804—1813, the European ideas of the
beginning of the nineteenth century were clearly perceptible. The
nutional romantic re-action against the eighteenth century had
set in. New winds were blowing also through the spiritual atmo-
^phere of the North. The political aspect was of a special type.
Threatened by external dangers, the Northern people tried, as
Perhaps never before, to preserve their spiritual possessions. The
jnterest in past times, typically reflected in Ling, became an
mterest in his own time.
The poetry, through which he became known as a poet, was
called Gylfe—named after a king of olden times. It was political