The Water-Sprite and Ägir’s Daughters

Nils Blommér turned to Norse myth for the subject of this moonlit canvas: the sea god Ägir’s nine daughters, named for the waves, float around the Water-Sprite as he plays his harp, while the ruins of Stegeborg Castle rise behind them on the Baltic shore. Blommér, a Swedish painter trained in Paris and Rome, belonged to the National-Romantic generation that sought a native imagery for Scandinavian art in folklore and the old gods, and his picture of 1850 became the best-loved expression of that ambition. Moonlight, ruin and legend together make the painting a characteristic work of northern European Romanticism. The painting is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.