Literature of Scandinavia -- Norway

The literature of Norway, apart from Denmark, does not really begin until the nineteenth century. However, Norway had before that time a remarkable share in the joint literature of the two countries.

A sense of national pride in her writers began to grow in Norway after the establishment of a university at Christiania in 1772. After 1814, when the political separation from Denmark was made, the demand for an independent Norwegian literature became insistent.

For many years, it took the unfortunate form of trying to separate the Danish and Norweigian tongues, though the literary form of the languages was the same, and Norway had contributed richly to its development. It was true that Norway had its own dialects, but they had no literature of any account.

Finally, along came Henrik Wergeland (1808-1845), an impulsive young poet, son of a professor, who carried his desire for a separate Norwegian tongue to such lengths that he tried to weld the various Norwegian dialects into a new tongue, leaving the joint Danish-Norwegian language to the Danes.

In this, he was helped by a poet, Aasmund Vinje (1818-1870), who wrote peasant poetry in a rural dialect with attractive effect. Another contributor to the cause, was novelist, Arne Garborg, who wrote stories of country life in the peasant speech.

Then, there was Johan Welhaven, who had some power as a descriptive poet, and far more as a bitter satirist, attacked Wergeland for disowning the language which had given Norway substantial fame. Gradually, the view held by Welhaven prevailed, and Norway retained as her literary language practically the same tongue as Denmark, though there was a great increase of dialect fiction. It was an unfortunate quarrel springing from false pride.

Norway has always had an abundance of poets, but her increasing literary fame has been gained chiefly through fiction and the drama, though all the novelists and dramatists have touched poetry.

Her two writers most widely known throughout the world were managers of theaters during a considerable part of their lives, and the most famous of them was Henrik Ibsen, who lived from 1828 to 1906. He made his great reputation entirely as a writer of plays.

Ibsen was very slow in gaining the recognition his remarkable literary gifts deserved. He was embittered by delayed success to such an extent that much of his writing is an exposure of his countrymen for being smug, hypocritical, conventional, unromantic people who could not or would not appreciate life as he saw it.

He was at war with a world that would not understand him. In the end he won, and he broadened his view as he succeeded, until he died in a blaze of triumph, with his statue erected in the capital of his country.

The stormy character and controversial life and career of Ibsen, is accounted for by the fact that he was a critic of his fellowmen and particularly of his own race. He persisted in showing what was mean and wrong in them.

His power was exposing weaknesses, and he was in a rage with his countrymen because they did not like it. They, too, were often angry with him. Foreigners, who did not see Norwegians as Ibsen saw them, recognized the scathing cleverness of his plays, and presently his fame abroad exalted him in the eyes of Norwegians, and their pride in their son conquered their anger.

The son of a Bergen merchant, Ibsen was in his youth a gloomy apprentice to the an apothecary, and a writer of romantic verse. Naturally, he turned to journalism and then to the stage.

In this, his instinct was true, for no man has ever had a clearer understanding of how simple language can be used dramatically to produce great effects.

His first great success was in a saga drama, The Warriers in Helgeland. However, However, it was in social dramas that Ibsen made his world wide fame, his principal plays being Brand, Peer Gnat, The Mater Builder, Pillars of Society, a Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, and Hedda Gabbler.

In Peer Gynt, which was started as a satire on Norwegian weaknesses, Ibsen became mastered by his interest in his character-sketch, and reached the highest flight of his poetical power. As a lyrical drama Peer Gynt, is further known through the music of the Norwegian composer Edward Grieg, of that same time period.

The fashion for Ibsen is not now what it was in this era, though always there have been admirers who have had reservations about his moral influence. Of the intensity of his genius, few will doubt, but it lacks breadth. His plays who Ibsen at war with the world, rather than interpreting it in a generous spirit.

Now, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, who was born in 1832 and died at seventy-eight, was Norway's most widely known novelist. He was reared in Romsdal, known to all tourists to central Norway, and after writing poetry as a boy he became a journalist, and then a manager of theaters -- like Ibsen -- at Bergen and Christiania.

Bjornson took a different route. He was a man with enormous vitality -- a true poet, a writer of fine dramas, both social and heroic. He was an eager politician, eloquent and fearless. However, he reached his highest distinction as a write of stories of peasant life, with Arne of Synnove as his masterpiece.

It was he who turned the scale in the dispute over Norway's classical language. Admitting that the peasant life of Norway was its real life, he showed in his own writings that it can be more fully pictured in the literary language of the country, than in the rural dialects, which have their interest and use, but are incomplete.

The most popular early novelist in Norway was Jonas Lie (1833-1908), who, after living as a boy in Tromso, became a lawyer, turned to poetry, tried journalism and failed. However, he won popularity by his pictures in well observed detail of life of the seafaring people of the Norwegian fiords. Jonas Lie's stories have won a large circulation by their truthfulness, rather than by their literary power.

Ibsen, Bjornson, and Jonas Lie all obtained from the Norwegian Parliament pensions for life as writers of national importance. Thus, they were enabled to give their best work to their country and the world without anxiety as to their fate when old age came.

Later, Norwegian fiction received a new strength from the fine work of Knut Hamsun and Hans Aanrud, both of whom had the power of building up a gradually increasing impression of intense reality, as they pictured the life of their countrymen in closest touch with nature.

Knut Hamsun has been read much more extensively in English sp4eaking countries since he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. The first of his novels to become fairly well known abroad was Hunger.

It was an outcome of Hamsun's early experiences during a wandering life on both sides of the Atlantic, when he was depending on manual labor for a living. It was restless and impulsive, and lacked the steady thoughtfulness demanded by good art. It seemed to be an explosive outburst from an embittered man. However, surprisingly, it attracted attention in his own country, and gained him a hearing that brought a deeper sense of responsibility.

What is interesting looking back on it is that seldom has a novelist shown a greater change than Hamsun, between the time when he wrote Hunger, and the time when he wrote the book that actually won for him a well deserved European reputation -- The Growth of the Soil.

His hero in this fine story is a Norwegian peasant, who, with the slenderest of resources, gets a footing on the soil, and with it a firm grip on life. The slow, firm progress of the man settled on the land seems to be the very counterpart of the author, as he builds up his theme with strength and patience. The study of both Hunger and The Growth of the Soil, is very interesting in that you can see the growth of a hungry artist who learns to hone his craft of writing somewhere between the writing of two very distinct novels.

 Dr. Nansen, the famouis explorer and scientist, has a place also in the literature of Norway through his epic narratives of adventures in Greenland and the Polar Seas, along with his account of the early Norse explorers who discovered American long before the days of Columbus.