In 1876, the Bayreuth Festival Theatre was inaugurated with Richard Wagner’s ›Ring of the Nibelung‹. For the story, he employed Old Norse myths, which he had drawn from German editions of the ›Edda‹ and Icelandic sagas. The legacy of his operas has given us lasting images which we associate with Germanic and Nordic cultures: the Norse gods became Germanic.

The Wagner phenomenon resulted in a Scandinavian version of elective affinity: the self-styled Wagner successor and Swedish national romanticist Wilhelm Peterson-Berger wrote the opera ›Arnljot‹.

Wagner’s anti-Semitism did nothing to harm his popularity, whether in Germany or Scandinavia – on the contrary: his aura and his writings were an inspiration to many involved in the various nationalist movements.