Where We Got Our Hymns — Chapter 3
In Jesper Swedberg’s Psalmbok of 1694, there appeared a text that was to become the most popular summer hymn in Sweden — “Den blomstertid nu kommer” (Now Comes the Time for Flowers). It is not in our present hymnal but was published in New Hymns and Translations I (Covenant Press, 1978). The author was Israel Kolmodin (1643-1709), a Church of Sweden pastor, and it was translated by Zenos Hawkinson. One midsummer Sunday, Kolmodin was scheduled to preach in the Ganns medieval church which was situated in a large grove of splendid oaks and spreading elms. He came early so that he could walk leisurely in the wooded area carpeted by wild flowers. Near the church was a famous old well, at which he sat and penned the words of the hymn. It is a song about the beauty of nature with an invitation to sing praise to God as we hear the birds sing. The final stanza is a prayer that Jesus would be our light and joy and kindle “fires of love” in our hearts.
The tune, BLOMSTERTID, was the setting for the text. It was in the Swedish Koralbuch of 1697, but the melody is older. It first appeared as the setting for a thirty-one verse “visa” about a Roman count who desired to visit the grave of Christ. Though his wife discouraged him, he went, was taken captive by the Turks, and was put to work as a slave. His wife, dressed as a monk, went to the king, and, through her pleasing appearance and beautiful harp music, was able to win his favor and the freedom of her husband, though neither he nor the king knew her identity. The tune is also the setting for the Icelandic hymn, “How Marvelous God’s Greatness” (Covenant Hymnal, 79).
The greatest development of the Psalmbok came under Johan Wallin (1779-1839). He was Sweden’s greatest hymn writer and the creator of a hymnal that, without revision, served the church for 118 years. Wallin was an able poet and preacher who was elevated to the bishopric and later made archbishop. Twice he won the chief prize for poetry at Uppsala University. When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translated Tegner’s poem, “Children of the Lord’s supper,” he spoke of Wallin in these lines:
And with one voice
Chimed in the congregation,
and sang an anthem immortal
Of the sublime Wallin,
of David’s harp in the Northland.
By this time, Swedberg’s hymnal had been in use for more than a century. The Swedish parliament appointed a hymnbook commission with Wallin as one of the members. After three years, a first draft was produced, but it was not approved. Wallin was entrusted with the entire task of completing the book. Two years later, in November, 1816, the work was done. After a few minor changes were made, the volume was officially authorized by King Karl XIV in January, 1819. Of the 500 hymns in the collection, 128 were Wallin originals and 164 were revisions or translations done by him. When the Psalmbok was revised in 1937, more that one-third of the 600 hymns were originals, translations, or revisions by Wallin. The Church of Sweden hymnal, published in 1986, has 33 Wallin originals and 453 translations or revisions.
Our hymnal has five Wallin texts: “Again Thy Glorious Sun Doth Rise,” (39), “Jerusalem, Lift up Thy Voice” (105), “O Bride of Christ, Rejoice” (115), “Watch My Soul and Pray” (445), and “All Hail to Thee, O Blessed Morn” (124). The last mentioned is the most loved and best known of his hymns. It has been associated so long with the Swedish and Swedish- American celebrations of Christmas that it would be difficult to imagine a “Julotta” without it. Archbishop Lindblom had requested a Christmas text set to Philipp Nicolai’s popular chorale tune for the new hymnal. Two other writers had written lyrics, but it was Wallin’s that made the Psalmbok. He was ill and depressed at the time, and he may have been expressing his own mood when he made reference to “our sorrows” and “our cup of woe.” Ernst Olson translated the text for the Augustana Hymnal, 1901, the version that has been included in Covenant English hymnals since 1921.
The tune, WIE SCHØN LEUCHTET, gets its name from the opening words of the German epiphany hymn, “How Brightly Shines the Morning Star.” “Our English version is “O Morning Star! How Fair and Bright” (157). It was with this text that the melody was first published in the appendix to Philipp Nicolai’s Freuden Spiegel, or “Mirror of Joy,” a volume of meditations. These were written during the Black Plague which had devastated the city Unna in Westphalia where he was pastor of the Lutheran church. The tune is sometimes called the “Queen of Chorales.” Bach used it in six of his cantatas and other works, and Mendelssohn used it at least once. Most of Wallin’s hymns were of the impersonal, objective type. “Watch My Soul...” is one of the few with personal, subjective lyrics that came from his pen. The Psalmbok and his hymns were proof of the high standards he had imposed upon himself. “A new hymn,” he said, “aside from the spiritual considerations, which must never be compromised in any way, should be so correct, simple, and lyrical in form, and so free from inversions and other imperfections of style, that after a lapse of a hundred years, a father may be able to say to his son: ‘Read the hymnal my boy, and you will learn your mother tongue!’ ” In his early years, Wallin had been influenced by Rationalism, and the hymns written during that period bore the marks of the “new theology.” But as he became more immersed in his task, there was a deepening in his spiritual life, and his hymns took on a more evangelical cast. In an address he made in 1816, he came out against the new theology and declared his stand upon the confessions of the Lutheran church.