Problems compiling gforth-0.7.9

Hi,
I'm trying to learn Forth. It seems to me that a reasonable option is
to use gforth. Since the gforth package for my O.S. (Linux Mint 22.2)
is old, I downloaded the latest available version of gforth (0.7.9)
and attempted to compile it.
But I receive a warning saying that I need a swig for forth. I have
swig, but it has no -forth option. What is more, in the swig site
there is no mention of forth at all among the available languages.
So my question is: do I really need swig for forth to compile and use
gforth? If so, where can I get it?
Many thanks for any help.
Tom