Excerpt from Life Story of Rasmus B. Anderson After long and repeated urging on the part of many friends, Prof. Rasmus B. Anderson has undertaken the writing of his autobiography which he has also consented to give to the readers of this paper in installments, beginning with the opening of the new year. Prof. Anderson's career has been interesting from many points of view. His parents were among the earliest Norwegian settlers in this country, so that his story reaches back and practically covers the whole period of Norwegian settlement. He was a member of the first class to graduate from Luther College at Decorah, Iowa, was the first man to hold a chair in Scandinavian languages and literature in an American university, and was the first of Scandinavian parentage to represent our country abroad, serving as United States minister to Denmark from 1885 to 1889. He has also written and translated numerous books dealing with Scandinavian history and literature. In the American supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica he is called the father of Norwegian literature in America. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

Once there was another Sun and another Moon, a different Sun and a different Moon from the ones we see now. Sol was the name of that Sun, and Mani was the name of that Moon. Nevertheless, always behind Sol and Mani wolves went a wolf behind each. The wolves caught on them at last, and they devoured Sol and Mani. And then the world was in darkness and cold. In those times, the Gods lived, Odin and Thor, Hödur and Baldur, Tyr and Heimdall, Vidar and Vali, and Loki, the doer of a good doer of evil. Moreover, the beautiful Goddesses lived then, Frigga, Freya, Nanna, Iduna, and Sif. Nevertheless, in the days when the Sun and Moon were destroyed, the Gods were destroyed too—all the Gods except Baldur who had died before that time, Vidar and Vali, the sons of Odin, and Modi and Magni, the sons of Thor. At that time, too, there were men and women in the world. However, before the Sun and the Moon were devoured and before the Gods were destroyed, terrible things happened in the world. Snow fell on the four corners of the earth and kept on falling for three seasons. Winds came and blew everything away. Moreover, the people of the world who had lived on despite the snow and the cold and the winds fought each other, brother killing brother until all the people were destroyed.

From early modern times rulers and politicians have sought to ground their legitimacy in ancient tradition - which they have often invented or rewritten for their own purposes. This issue of Studies in Medievalism presents a number of such cases.