THE AMERICAN-SCANDIN AVIAN REVIEW 
283 
so exuberant in its humor that the 
learned gentlemen at the Univer¬ 
sity were horrified. The whole 
thing was quite unbelieveable: 
that a scholar, one of their own 
number, should behave in such a 
manner! Why, it was a veritable 
scandal! And so they considered 
with great seriousness how they 
could best punish him. He was 
haled into court, but the court 
proceedings showed better than 
anything else how Holberg’s wit 
had struck home. It was the 
owner of the island of Anholdt, 
where Peder Paars had been 
wrecked, who brought suit on the 
ground that Holberg had treated 
his good and well beloved sub¬ 
jects with indignity. The au¬ 
thor, he said, ought to be pun¬ 
ished and the book publicly 
burned; nothing less would satisfy him. Fortunately one of the few 
persons who had kept his common sense was the king himself. He 
asked to see the dangerous book, read it, and enjoyed it immensely. 
Holberg’s humor had won the day; the suit was dropped—drowned 
in refreshing laughter. 
Then followed, one after another, Holberg’s immortal comedies, 
the seeds of which had lain imbedded in the poem ready to sprout. 
How people laughed! How they chuckled and nudged each other! 
The cap fitted—but it always fitted one’s neighbor; for such is human 
nature: it is easier to see the mote in another’s eye than the beam in 
one’s own. 
In attempting to define the distinguishing mark of Holberg’s 
humor, we are confronted with a subject of dispute which has been 
threshed out ever since his own time, and in the course of the years has 
produced a voluminous literature of profound and scholarly works: 
Was Holberg Norwegian or Danish? 
Norway and Denmark had been united for centuries. Copen¬ 
hagen was the common capital, and to that city everybody had to go 
who desired an education or an opportunity to accomplish anything in 
an intellectual field. This naturally set a similar stamp on both nations, 
and yet they remained fundamentally different in the nature of the 
people and in their manner of living. In the deep valleys and along 
the narrow fjords there lived a race which had developed an individual- 
A Holberg Medal 
