Wergeland and Welhaven -^^6 1 



the 'syttendemai' movement. He is severely cultured 

 and critical ; and he looks back with a certain amount 

 of regret to the days of the connection with Denmark, 

 and of a higher culture which existed at the Danish 

 capital as compared with the somewhat raw enthusiasm 

 of Christiania. The best of Welhaven's poems are of a 

 satirical kind, and are contained in a volume entitled 

 Norges Dcemring (Norway's Dawn — the title is satirical). 

 He is the intellectual godfather of Henrik Ibsen. Two 

 other poets of this earlier period are Andreas Munch 

 and Jorge Moe. This early Norse poetry is filled with 

 allusions, rather stagey some of them are, to the heroic 

 days of Norse history and to the heathen beliefs of the 

 past ; of these last the writers show a very inadequate 

 knowledge. When they are not dealing with these 

 subjects they write of the pastoral life and picturesque 

 beauties of the country itself. Many of these writers 

 of the earlier years of the century are extremely grace- 

 ful ; but there is not one who can fairly be called power- 

 ful. Anybody who has acquired the Norse may read 

 them with pleasure ; there is no one of them whom it 

 is the least necessary for us to read, if we are in search 

 of the finest fruits of European culture. 



It is different with two other Norse writers who are 

 now living, and of whom we shall have to speak pre- 

 sently ; I mean Ibsen and Bjornson. 



Side by side with this very decided, though not very 

 deep vein of poetry which the earlier Norse literature 

 of this century reveals to us, we see growing up in 

 prose a school of very painstaking historians and anti- 

 quaries, some of whom rise to a very high place in 

 their class. The Scandinavians have, during the present 



