Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Blaðsíða 123

SWEDISH AND DANISH CHRISTIANITY
117
than anywhere else has come into contact with different categories
of the Swedish people, doctors, authors, sportsmen, etc. A “Sig-
tuna spirit” of mutual understanding has grown up, which has
highly counteracted the rise of chasms between Church and people.
The cultural interest which is characteristic of the young-
church movement in the form it has taken in the Sigtuna Foun-
dation and which places it on the line of the old Swedish Chris-
tian cultural tradition, has weakened in many of the youngest
generation. In this we may now instead trace an increasing inter-
est in the old forms of the Church, not least as regards liturgy.
They do not search for solutions of their own, but want to find
authoritative answers in the established confession of the Church
and thus approach to the old orthodoxy of the i6th and i/th
centuries. The most prominent representative of this orthodox
and ritualistic church Christianity is the young clergyman Bo
Giertz. His belief in the Church and its confession he has advanced
e. g. in novels which have also won literary appreciation. In him
there is alive some of the vigour of earlier ecclesiastical revivalist
preachers. In his orthodox view of the church he has so far been
followed only by young clergymen and theologians, and the world
of laymen on the whole are uncomprehending as regards this
aspect of his preaching. The greatest understanding of it he finds
in the Evangeliska Fosterlandsstiftelsen and similar circles, where
the tone from the time of Rosenius is still alive and no liberal-
humanistic ideas have ever been accepted.
It is curious to notice to how slight an extent Swedish and
Danish church life have influenced each other. Both countries
have received impulses from outside, first of all from German
Protestantism, but also from free movements in England and
America, but these impulses have come directly, not least through
study tours of Swedes and Danes to the countries in question.
Afterwards, however, each country has digested the impressions
in its own way and only to a slight extent concerned itself with
the thinking of the other country. The knowledge of Grundtvig’s
ideas is slight in Sweden, and equally little is known of Geijer or
Billing in Denmark. Only during quite recent years, when the
people of Scandinavia in a new manner have come to be sensible
of their fellowship, the two countries have begun to occupy them-