''Den vises sten'' ('the philosopher's stone', an editorial title for a text unnamed in its manuscript) is a fourteenth-century Swedish poem about the
Philosopher's Stone
The philosopher's stone is a mythic alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold or silver; it was also known as "the tincture" and "the powder". Alchemists additionally believed that it could be used to mak ...
.
Form
The poem is in a
metre
The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...
uniquely complex for medieval Swedish literature. The poem comprises twelve verses, each of 13 lines,
rhyming
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (''perfect rhyming'') is consciously used for a musica ...
AABCCBDEDEFFE; most lines have four stresses and either
masculine
Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some beh ...
or
feminine rhymes, but lines 3, 6, 8, 10, and 13 (i.e. rhymes ''b'' and ''e'') have three stresses and feminine rhymes.
[Stephen A. Mitchell,]
Spirituality and Alchemy in ''Den vises sten'' (1379)
, in ''Lärdomber oc skämptan: Medieval Swedish Literature Reconsidered'', ed. by Massimiliano Bampi and Fulvio Ferrari, Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, serie 3: Smärre texter och undersökningar 5 (Uppsala: Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 2008), pp. 97-108. .
Content
The poem relates the characteristics of a wondrous stone, which can endow people with wisdom and strength, restore people's health (including curing blindness, deafness, and lameness), and even raise people from the dead. The poem is much concerned with how the ''mestare'' ('master, scholar') who holds it must keep it from the clutches of his enemies. The poem uses the stone as an allegory for God's love and the prospect of salvation it can bring.
Stephen A. Mitchell has argued that the poem demonstrates fourteenth-century Sweden's up-to-date engagement with Continental trends not only in Christian mystic literature but also in alchemical writing.
(He also suggests that ‘the poem seems to allude to pagan mythological and heroic motifs (i.e. the stories of
Askr, Embla, and
Brynhildr
Brunhild, also known as Brunhilda or Brynhild ( , , or ), is a female character from Germanic heroic legend. She may have her origins in the Visigothic princess and queen Brunhilda of Austrasia.
In the Norse tradition, Brunhild is a shiel ...
)’,
but this has not been accepted as certain.
[ Alaric Hall]
review
of ''Lärdomber oc skämptan: Medieval Swedish Literature Reconsidered'', ed. by Massimiliano Bampi and Fulvio Ferrari, Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, serie 3: Smärre texter och undersökningar 5 (Uppsala: Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 2008)
''Leeds Studies in English'', 40
(2009), 153-55 (p. 155).)
Provenance
The poem occurs in one manuscript, UUB C 391, which was produced in 1379 in the milieu of
Sturkarus Thurgili, a monk of
Vadstena monastery. It is one of only two Swedish rhymed poems to be preserved in a manuscript of the same century as it was composed.
Editions
* Geete, Robert (ed.),
Den vises sten: En hittils okänd rimdikt från 1300-talet, efter en upsalahandskrift från år 1379', Småstycken på forn svenska, andra serien (Stockholm: Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 1900).
References
{{Alchemy
14th-century poems
Medieval literature
Swedish poetry