Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/311

CHAPTER VII.

NORWEGIAN LITERATURE SINCE 1814.

Unfavorable conditions for the foundation of an independent norwegian literature, and efforts to improve these conditions. Wergeland and Welhaven, their respective positions, their feuds and their significance. Munch, Asbjörnsen, Moe, Björnson, Ibsen, Lie and others. Contributions in the various departments of science.

AFTER Norway, in 1814, had been separated from Denmark and had obtained her own constitution, there sprang up a feeling of freedom and independence, and thus also a youthful desire of achieving great deeds without knowing exactly what to do. This sentiment of liberty assumed, however, such a preponderance that it strongly affected the domain of literature and particularly that of poetry. The national element in its purely abstract generality came so decidedly to the front that almost every other interest had to yield to it. "The rocks of Norway," particularly the Dovre mountains, "the cataracts of Norway," particularly the Sarpforce, "the lion of Norway," the "free, independent peasant," were for some the hackneyed phrases of the bombastic, rhetorical poetry, which was continually employed in glorifying Norway and its inhabitants. Such were the chords that were struck by the greater number, while a few others without being able to rise to any essential independence continued in the beaten track of the previous Danish-Norwegian literature. Now and then some writer, as for example Mauritz Chkistopher Hansen (1794-1842), in his rather bright stories, would try to approach the national element, but much progress in this direction was impossible, since the basis on which to found a national literature, that is an intimate knowledge of the popular life, was lacking. About the year 1830, however, the Norwegian nation began to

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