Copyright, 1917, by The American-Scandinavian Foundation

D. B. Updike The Merrymount Press Boston U. S.A.

THE

INTRODUCTION

HE biographer of Björnson, Christian Collin, characterizes both Björnson and Ibsen as men of "twostory minds," and suggests that herein lies the secret of their power and charm. The foundation-story, in both cases, is built of material quarried from the historical and legendary past of Norway, its sagas, its folk-lore, and its mythology, and in this rich treasure-house of imagery and fundamental motive both poets found the poetical inspiration of their earlier work. Then the ferment of modern thought became active in their minds, and they built their superstructure out of the materials-political or social, intellectual or moral-provided by contemporary life, discussing or envisaging the problems of the modern world in the light of the creative imagination that had come to maturity during their preoccupation with the deep-rooted ideas that were their racial inheritance. Certainly, the outstanding fact in the career of both poets is the transformation in form, if not in spirit, that came over their work at the age of forty or thereabouts. Ibsen spoke of having had many a lyrical Pegasus slain beneath him, and Björnson proclaimed that the best poet a people could have was he who flung himself into the thick of life, and came most closely in touch with his fellow-men.

If, on the other hand, we ask how the two poets are differentiated, it seems fair to say that Björnson's lower story has deeper foundations, and is more solidly built, than Ibsen's, and that his superstructure does not exhibit so

absolute an abandonment of the material previously used. Ibsen's earlier recourse to saga and legend was rather the expression of the romantic temperament than the result of a racial mandate, and the figures of Catiline and Julian the Apostate served his purpose quite as well as those of the warriors of Halogaland. The latter half of his life found him a romanticist turned realist, and that is all. Now Björnson was also a romanticist turned realist, but his romanticism was of the type which only a Norseman could exhibit, and the realist that he afterwards became never wholly lost those racial traits that made him throughout his career preëminently the voice of his people, and made the mention of his name equivalent to the hoisting of the Norwegian flag. He could never be quite the cosmopolitan that Ibsen became, because, however wide-spreading his tree in its foliage, its roots were firmly planted in his native soil, and the sap of its outermost ramifications welled up from that sustaining source. However sophisticated his work became, it never wholly lost the elements of naïveté and raciness that marked the earlier manifestations of his genius.

This work of Björnson's first epoch (1857-1872) comprises the peasant-tales, long and short, the five saga and folk dramas, the collection of Poems and Songs, and the epic cycle of Arnljot Gelline, now translated. Arnljot Gelline and the saga-trilogy of Sigurd Slembe constitute Björnson's highest achievement in his reconstruction of the heroic past of Norway. The two works are closely akin. Each of them has a protagonist whose presentation is a miracle of creative