Since antiquity, stories about children who fall in love with each other have circulated in Europe. According to the above-cited passage, the second stanza of the Swedish poet Oscar Levertin's poem ‘Florez och Blanzeflor’, the famous lovers Floire and Blancheflor were two such children who played together before they eventually fell in love. The poem was published in 1891, in Levertin's first collection of poems Legender och visor, written at a sanatorium in Davos whilst the poet was suffering from tuberculosis. Like many writers of his era, Levertin was inspired by medieval literary themes and thus devoted the poem to the famous couple. While Tristan and Isolde are among the most famous medieval lovers for modern audiences, the story of Floire and Blancheflor was an even greater medieval success, at least if we measure literary success on the basis of the number of extant text witnesses in different languages. The tale is preserved in a great number of versions in different medieval and Renaissance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Middle Dutch, Middle High German, Middle Low German, Middle English, Old West Norse, Old Swedish, Old Danish, Czech, Greek and Yiddish. The mention of Blancheflor alongside Helena in Carmina Burana (Ave formosissima) is yet another example of the tale's popularity.

It was probably through the Old Swedish translation Flores och Blanzeflor, written, as were Herr Ivan and Hertig Fredrik av Normandie, at the behest of Queen Eufemia of Norway, that the Swedish poet Levertin knew the story of the two lovers. Flores och Blanzeflor is the last of the three Eufemiavisor and was finished shortly after the queen's death. Ingeborg was only one year old when she was engaged to the Swedish duke and eleven years old when she married him – so still a child herself. In the Erikskrönika, the narrator describes how the couple immediately fell in love when they were presented to each other.