Johannes Ewald was the first modern writer to use themes from early Scandinavian myths and sagas. One of his songs is used as a Danish national anthem.

Ewald was born on Nov. 18, 1743, in Copenhagen, Denmark. On the death of his father, a poorhouse chaplain, he was sent to school at Slesvig (Schleswig). In 1758 he went to Copenhagen to study theology, fell in love, and, in search of glory, ran away to fight in the Seven Years' War.

He returned to find that his beloved Arendse, whom he immortalized as his muse, had married another. He passed his final examination when he was 19 and was already becoming known as a writer of prose and occasional poetry. When finishing Adam og Eva (1769), a dramatic poem in the style of French tragedy, he met the German epic poet Friedrich Klopstock.

At about the same time, he read Shakespeare's plays and James Macpherson's supposed translations of the works of the legendary Gaelic bard Ossian. Their influence resulted in the historical drama Rolf Krage (1770), taken from an old Danish legend that was recorded by the medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus.

Beset by an addiction to alcohol, in the spring of 1773 Ewald was moved from Copenhagen to the relative isolation of Rungsted by his mother and a Pietistic pastor.

There he produced his first mature works: Rungsteds lyksaligheder (1773; The Joys of Rungsted), a lyric in the elevated new style of the ode; Balders død (1774; The Death of Balder), a lyric drama on a subject from Saxo and Old Norse mythology; and the first chapters of his memoirs, Levnet og meninger (Life and Opinions), explaining his enthusiasm for the adventurous and fantastic.

In 1775 he was transferred to a still more solitary place near Elsinore, where he went through a religious crisis—a struggle between the Pietistic idea of self-denial and his own proud independence. In 1777 he returned to Copenhagen. His poetic genius was recognized, and his life became calmer despite increasingly severe illness. On his deathbed he wrote the heroic Pietist hymn “Udrust dig, helt fra Golgotha” (Gird Thyself, Hero of Golgotha). He died in Copenhagen on March 17, 1781.

Ewald renewed Danish poetry in all of its genres. Of his dramatic works, only Fiskerne (1779; The Fishermen), an operetta, is still performed. His greatest work in prose is his posthumously published memoirs, in which lyrically pathetic chapters about his lost Arendse intermingle with humorous passages.