Holberg and Bergen 
By Johan Nordahl-Olsen 
A hundred years ago the people of Bergen took the initiative in celebrating a 
Holberg centennial which was observed round about in various Norwegian cities: 
the hundredth anniversary of the performance of The Political Tinker at the Royal 
Theatre in Copenhagen, September 26, 1722, only three days after the opening of that 
famous theatre. This was the first production of Holberg on any stage. Plans are 
afoot for the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the event this year 
in Christiania and no doubt also in his native city, Bergen .—The Editor. 
The works of Ludvig Holberg mark the beginning of what may 
properly be called literature in Norway and Denmark. The books 
written before his time concerned themselves chiefly with historical 
and religious subjects, while belles-lettres practically did not exist. 
People were terribly serious and went about pulling long faces. Hol¬ 
berg taught them to straighten their backs and lift their heads and 
take note of how much fun life really contained. He gave them what 
they needed more than anything else—a good hearty laugh.. 
To understand how Holberg came to exert so strong an influence, 
we should study not only the conditions under which he worked, but 
also the city where he spent his boyhood. He was connected with the 
University of Copenhagen, which was then the intellectual center 
of the united kingdoms, and there the two topics of all-absorbing 
interest were theological study and historical research. It was the¬ 
ology that overshadowed all else. Learned doctors would discuss 
ponderous theological themes with a sepulchral gravity that brooked 
no fresh breeze from the outside world. They would, for instance, 
debate in all seriousness the question of whether or not the wings .of 
angels consisted of real feathers. They trained themselves in hair¬ 
splitting, and it mattered less whether the subject of debate had any 
real significance than whether the debator could force his adversary 
to the wall by fencing with words. 
This was the company in which the young university instructor 
and future professor found himself—he the man with the fearless 
open eye and the Bergen sense of actualities. He listened and smiled, 
until nature got the better of his training, and he went so far as to 
publish, in 1719, the satirical poem Peder Paars in which he held his 
contemporaries up to ridicule. There we see learned doctors tear¬ 
ing off each other’s periwigs and belaboring each other’s backs with 
“dry” blows for lack of other arguments. Holberg allows Peder 
Paars to make a journey from Kallundborg to Aars, a distance of 
fifteen or twenty Danish miles, and on this trip his hero meets adven¬ 
tures that rival Homer’s Iliad. He is shipwrecked on the island of An- 
holdt, and, in describing the community in which his hero found him¬ 
self, Holberg gives us a parody of Danish society so irreverent and 
