324 Norivay and the Norwegians 



A recollection of this time of ferment has been pre- 

 served in Henrik Ibsen's social drama Bosmersliohn. It 

 is said that the writer, returning to his country about 

 this time, was painfully impressed by the bitterness 

 which, through party feeling, had crept into all social life. 

 He, from the standpoint almost of a foreigner — for he 

 does not reside in Norway — is for ever satirizing the 

 pettiness, as he conceives it, of the life of his fellow- 

 countrymen. A strong Liberal himself — like Bjornson, 

 his contemporary — it is his object to rouse the Nor- 

 wegians from their contentment with their parochial life, 

 and with their traditional religion, and from their fear 

 of innovation. Thus it is the Conservative school- 

 master, Kroll,^ who is responsible for all the ill-feeling 

 and misrepresentation which embitters the lives of 

 Eosmer and Eebecca in this drama. 



In 1876 the number of electors to the Storthing were 

 under a hundred and forty thousand, not more than 7-7 

 per cent, of the wdiole population. So that the fran- 

 chise was by no means a very wide one. Out of the 

 electors, nine-tenths were proprietors of some kind. 

 What is perhaps more curious, is that out of these 

 hundred and forty thousand voters, only a little over 

 eighty-four thousand had, before the previous elec- 

 tion, got themselves placed upon the register, and of 

 these only a little over thirty-seven thousand actually 

 took part in the election. So we see that that Parlia- 

 ment was actually elected by only about two per cent, 

 of the population. 



1 Reciur KioW, lie is called in tlie play, the title Rector being given in 

 Norway, not to the clergyman (who is Prteste or Pastor), Irat to the school- 

 master. 



