Note 15.
IVAR INGEMUNDSON'S LAY. In the first half of the twelfth century an
Icelandic skald of this name lived and sang at the court of King
Eystein in Norway. He loved a young Icelandic girl, but had not
declared his love. When his brother was going home to Iceland, Ivar
asked him to tell her of his love and beg her to wait for him. But
on his later coming to Iceland, she met him as that brother's wife.
Ivar returned Norway and was thereafter always melancholy and
thoughtful. When Harald Gille became King, Ivar lived at his court,
but sympathized warmly with the able and bold Sigurd Slembe, who
claimed to be Magnus Barefoot's son and Harald Gille's half-brother.
After many years of hardship Sigurd came to Harald Gille and asked
him to recognize him. Harald was a good-natured, but weak and
ignorant man, entirely controlled by his chieftains, who persuaded
him to have Sigurd imprisoned, with the intention of killing him.
Sigurd, however, escaped and fled.
Note 16.
MAGNUS THE BLIND. Magnus was born in 1115, and became King in 1130.
He had Harald Gille as co-regent. Their agreement was that Harald
could not demand a larger share in the kingdom as long as Magnus
lived. But Magnus made himself hated by his own deeds, and in 1131
a breach resulted between the Kings. The chieftains were on Harald's
side. He seized Magnus in 1135, had him blinded and castrated, and
sent him into the monastery at Nidarholm. Sigurd Slembe, who made
war on Harald and conquered him, freed Magnus from the monastery
and caused him to fight in his army. He died in the sea-battle of
Holmengraa.
Note 17.
SIN, DEATH. Written during the latter half of 1862 in Munich, and
possibly, according to an oral statement of Björnson's, under
impressions received from German ecclesiastical art: "It is only
natural that in Munich symbolical poems should present themselves."
Note 18.
FRIDA. This poem was first printed March 24, 1863, soon after the
death, at the age of twenty-two, of her whom it commemorates. She
was a younger sister of the leading Danish literary critic, Clemens
Petersen, born 1834. He became Björnson's friend in 1856 and aided
greatly in opening the way for him in Denmark. Until 1868 Petersen
had much influence on public opinion. Soon after that he came to
America, and did not return to Copenhagen until 1904. He was a
follower of Heiberg, but more liberal.
Note 19.
BERGEN. Written in 1863 for a musical festival in which Björnson and
Ibsen took part. Bergen's unusually favorable situation made it for
a long time Norway's first city in commerce; it has only recently
fallen behind Christiania. It has ever had a large local fleet and
great traffic in its harbor. Founded about 1070 by King Olaf the
Quiet, Bergen was very important in the older history of the land,
as the residence of the Kings, until about 1350, when Hanseatic
control began, continuing until late in the sixteenth century. In
the seventeenth century Bergen was incomparably the first commercial
city in the Danish-Norwegian monarchy; in the eighteenth it was
surpassed by Copenhagen. The people of Bergen have always been
distinctly liberal in thought and feeling.
Holberg, Ludvig (1684-1754), was born in Bergen, but resided in
most of his life in Denmark. His comedies, which founded modern
Danish-Norwegian literature, are indeed immortal.
Dahl, John Christian Clausen (1788-1857), a Norwegian landscape
painter, who, though born in Bergen, went in 1811 to Copenhagen and
from 1818 resided in Dresden. As subjects he preferred water, rock,
and strand, and showed a realistic tendency in his light-effects.
Welhaven, see Note 36.
Ole Bull (1810-1880), a violinist of world-wide renown. In his
later life he passed most of his time in the United States, but
every year he returned to the home which he maintained near Bergen,
at a distance of about two hours by steamer. Carrying out a plan
conceived in 1848, he established in Bergen with his own means the
first Norwegian National Theater, which was opened January 2, 1850.
Collin says that the last line of the poem sums up Björnson's view
of Norway's historical memories as motive power for new achievement.
This seems realized in Bergen's recent development,--it now had the
largest steam-fleet of all the cities in Norway.
Note 20.
P. A. MUNCH. Peter Andreas Munch (born in Christiania, December 15,
1810; died in Rome, May 25, 1863) became professor of history in
1841 and Keeper of the Archives in 1861. He was not only one of the
greatest historians of Norway, but also a philologist, an
ethnographer, an archaeologist, a geographer, and a publicist. His
chief field was the prehistoric age and the medieval period.
He traveled much in the Scandinavian lands and elsewhere in Europe,
made several long stays in Rome, and was buried there. His main and
best known work is the History of the Norwegian People, in eight
large volumes, published from 1851 to 1863. This and his other
writings greatly strengthened the national self-consciousness and
sense of independence. Munch had a phenomenal memory, marked talent
for music and drawing, playful humor, incredible capacity for work,
rare intuition for epoch-making discoveries. In a speech in 1892
Björnson placed Munch by the side of Wergeland (see Note 78) as a
fosterer of national self-consciousness and faith in the future: "We
can remember when we were young, how P. A. Munch's History came out
in parts, and how he fought with the Danish professors, to get
Norway brought home again from Danish captivity in history also,
--we can remember how eventful it was for us, and how it had its
share in molding us. ... He had his large share in what our
generation has done. I put his work in this way by the side of
Wergeland's."
Through provincial Asian forests, etc. These lines refer to the
so-called "immigration-theory" advanced by Rudolf Keyser and
elaborated by Munch, which maintained that the remote ancestors of
the Swedes and the Norwegians migrated from the northeast into the
Scandinavian peninsula about 300 B.C.: the Swedes from Finland and
the Northmen through Lapland. These scholars also held that Old
Norse literature, as being the product of Norway and Iceland, was
distinctly Norse, and not "Northern" or joint-Scandinavian.
When I call, paraphrase of Isaiah xlviii, 13
Who again shall reunite fit? Munch left no peer in international
reputation. Coursed the sea-ways toward his standard. Not only was
Munch honored throughout Europe, but he was the first to secure for
Norwegian history its rightful place in European history.
|
