After the French Revolution, national identity could no longer be based on aristocratic succession. The People, the Nation, language, literature, and history: these terms had now evolved to become the roots of a political and national awareness. There was a search for a nation’s origins practically everywhere in Europe, in the separate small states of Germany as well as in Scandinavia.

It was the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder who started the tradition of collecting folk songs and folk tales. The investigation of languages and the search for literature were accompanied by a distinct interest in Old Germanic and Old Norse traditions and texts such as the Old Icelandic Eddic poetry. Mythology and the study of folklore developed into popular sciences. In the absence of suitable models, artists reverted to classical imagery for the depiction of Old Norse mythology.