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THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW 
ality that had as much of the jolly young Bergen lad as of the Copen¬ 
hagen university professor. Moreover, it can be shown historically 
that in the comedies themselves there are scattered traits which remind 
us more of the Bergen of Holberg’s boyhood than the Copenhagen of 
his manhood. This is especially apparent in his first comedy, The Po¬ 
litical Tinker. In the first edition, of 1723, Holberg not only used such 
familiar Bergen names as von Bremen and von Liibeck (the latter was 
the name of the tapster in whose house the Collegium Politicum met— 
a curious name for an inn-holder, which was afterwards changed to the 
more common Jens Tavern-keeper), but references are made to events 
that took place in Europe at the very time when Holberg was living 
as a young man in his native city. In Holberg’s well known account of 
an imaginary journey entitled Niels Klim's Journey to the Under 
World, we come still closer to Bergen. The hero Niels Klim himself 
was a real person, a parish clerk in the Korskirke, a character who was 
much talked about for his oddities. Take it all in all, a closer study 
of Holberg’s works will reveal many traits more reminiscent of Bergen 
than of Copenhagen. 
Nothing gives us a better insight into Holberg’s relation with his 
native city and its influence upon his literary work than a study of his 
own description of Bergen, published in 1737, while he was a professor 
at the University of Copenhagen. In this book he gives us a picture 
of life on the streets and in the alleys so vivid and dramatic that it seems 
like his own comedies come to life again. We know those types! There 
is the worthy Jeronimus stalking about full of dignity. There is the 
glib-tongued Pernille haggling with fishmongers on the market, and 
there is the scalawag Henrik playing his practical jokes and flinging 
his jests after passers-by just as the young Bergen boys used to do. 
In fact, there is not another city either in Norway or Denmark where 
we so often, even down to our own day, meet street scenes which we 
recognize. Where have we seen them before? In Holberg’s comedies. 
What, then, was the character of the Bergen people in Holberg’s 
time ? 
What we notice first and foremost was their practical bent. Their 
city was essentially a trading mart. Trade was the beginning and the 
end, the bone and sinew of individual wealth, the foundation for the 
fame and prosperity of their city. Toward the end of the seventeenth 
century business was unusually flourishing. The people were enter¬ 
prising and industrious. The fisheries had had several successful sea¬ 
sons. The very position of the city, built as it was around a deep harbor, 
was ideal. Seagoing ships could anchor at the very door of the mer¬ 
chants’ houses, which combined under one roof the warehouse, the retail 
shop, and the home, so that the owner could always keep an eye on his 
business. It was not only the men who were successful merchants; 
women, too, carried on trade on their own account and were often as 
