The pagan element that Tegnér discovered in his own nature, derived its nourishment from two sources in his earliest studies; first from his relations to northern antiquities, and second from his devotion to Greek poetry. In a letter of 1825, he wrote: "A certain spiritual kinship with our barbaric ancestors, which no culture can wipe out, always impelled me to turn back to their grotesque but magnificent forms." What he especially had in mind when he referred to this spiritual kinship was that wilfulness of the ancient Norseman which betrayed itself in his case in a challenging manner, and in that tendency to melancholy which had been one of the characteristics of the ancients. In Tegnér it was not revealed by romantic lamentations, but by a grave and sometimes gloomy temperament, which, after his fortieth year found such abundant food that it degenerated into weariness of life and contempt for humanity. The poetic symbol for this Titanic element in his composition, for gigantic strength of nature, for inner unrest beneath the weight of a mighty pressure, he sought now among the Scandinavians, now among the Grecians; and thus the old Norse and the old Greek mythology became blended in his fancy. The old Norse giant speaks to him in the same way as Goethe's Prometheus:-- "I hate the radiant Asas And Ask's fair children, Who bow before the Gods That I despise." And his lament, "The Age of the Asas" (Asatiden), is so nearly allied to Schiller's "Gods of Greece" that the poet must unquestionably have derived his ideas from this poem. "Ye lofty mem'ries, engraved on historic page, Like empty harness that no one can wear, all lonely; With shrinking awe ye're viewed by this trifling age, For hero life in the North is a saga only. "Sleep calmly, thou Past! In vain would I dun to-day Drag forth thy deeds from their graves as some rusty token; Here strangers only to unknown gods now pray, The sinews of song and the blade of action lie broken." Here, too, Norse and Greek paganism are blended in the author's memory.