The collection of J. Widekindi's letters to M. G. De la Gardie, preserved in the National Archives of Sweden, has not received decent attention in the research concerning the origins of Widekindi's main work, Historia Belli Sveco-Moscovitici Decennalis, which describes the events of the Russian Time of Troubles and the Ingrian War. Especially important in this respect is the last of the eleven letters, dated 15th March 1672 and dealing almost exclusively with Historia. From it we learn that the original text of this bilingual work was written in Latin (although the Swedish version was published first). Hence the status of the versions: the Swedish edition from 1671 is a translation, hastily made by several persons, while the Latin edition from 1672 is a revised and incomplete text of the original written by Widekindi himself. With the help of another letter we find out that Widekindi had started working on the book as early as by 1661. His main scope, clearly indicated in yet other letters, was to glorify his patron's father, Jacob De la Gardie. But M. G. De la Gardie, who was aware of the project for a long time, gave his support to it only in 1666 (or later) -probably because it became quite relevant for his foreign policy. From the letters we also find out that Widekindi took care of Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna's library from the middle of the 1650s. This fact, along with the extensive usage of one of Oxenstierna's drafts in the first book of Historia, gives a clue to where Widekindi got acquainted with many of his sources.

In 1860, Carl Ferdinand Crain, the principal of the "Groe Stadtschule" in the city of Wismar, translated Goethe's poem "Der Erlknig" into ancient Greek. He titled it "Mormo anassa". In the present contribution, Crain's background as a translator is more closely examined, both in the light of the school's history and from an academic perspective. From the standpoint of translation theory Crain's version of "Der Erlknig" as opposed to his earlier Greek translations of Goethe's and Schiller's stage plays ("Iphigenie" and "Jungfrau von Orleans"), proves to be an interesting attempt to project on antiquity the contemporary Romantic poetic world.

In the long history of the reception and transformation of the story about Daedalus and Icarus it was the fall of Icarus that more and more became the center of the artistic attention, whereas Daedalus was almost completely sidelined. Th