IBSEN IN SKIEN AND GRIMSTAD:

IBSEN IN SKIEN AND GRIMSTAD: 

his education, reading, and early works 

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IBSEN IN SKIEN AND GRIMSTAD: 

his education, reading, and early works 

Philip E. Larson 

Copyright 1999 by Philip E. Larson. All rights reserved. 

The Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum, Grimstad 

Telemark Museum, Skien 

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For my grandchildren 

Published by: The Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum, Grimstad 

Telemark Museum, Skien 

ISBN: 82 - 992932 - 5 - 1 

Philip E. Larson, 1941— 

Printed by: TERJES trykkeri as, Lillesand. 

1000 copies 

Cover: Grimstad, painting by Henrik Ibsen (1850). 

The Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum, Grimstad 

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CONTENTS 

Table of Contents ........................................................................... 5 

Illustrations .................................................................................... 6 

Acknowledgements ........................................................................ 7 

Introduction ................................................................................... 9 

Ibsen in Skien .............................................................................. 13 

Ibsen in Grimstad, 1844-48 .......................................................... 45 

On the Composition of Catilina ..................................................... 85 

Ibsen’s Last Year in Grimstad, April 1849-April 1850..................... 107 

Key to Website .......................................................................... 129 

Notes ....................................................................................... 133 

Bibliography ............................................................................. 153 

Index........................................................................................ 177 

Addendum on Ibsen's Education in Drawing and Painting .............. 184 

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ILLUSTRATIONS 

1. Venstøp, woodcut .............................................................................................17 

2. Fossum Jernverk (Fossum Ironworks), painting ..................................................... 25 

3. Follestad Gård, watercolor ............................................................................... 28 

4. Gjerpen Kirke og Prestegård (Gjerpen church and parish house) watercolor ...........29 

5. Josva og Engelen (Joshua and the Angel), print ....................................................32 

6. Joshua and the Angel, painting ..........................................................................32 

7. Limie’s building, photograph .............................................................................39 

8. The building which housed Reimann’s Pharmacy as it is today, photograph ........... 53 

9. Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum as it is today, photograph ..................... 82 

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

Many people helped me in the course of this project, which began in 

1989. In the USA, Evert Sprinchorn of Vassar College read many drafts 

and gave insightful criticism and warm encouragement. Dunbar Ogden 

of the University of California at Berkeley provided valuable advice on 

research procedures. Robert Matteson and John Jaunzems of the St. 

Lawrence University English department read drafts of chapters. Thomas 

Berger of the same department proofread the whole manuscript. Betsy 

Cogger Rezelman and Collen Knickerbocker, successive associate deans 

of academic affairs at St. Lawrence, authorized support from the faculty 

research fund. 

In Norway, where much of the research was done, those who helped 

me at various stages include librarians, archivists, translators, professors, 

scholars and friends of Ibsen. Each made a contribution in opening up 

for a curious stranger some aspect of Norwegian culture: Karsten Alnæs 

suggested I read the Skien newspapers from the 1830s. Lisen Bergshaven 

of Grimstad shared her own rich fund of knowledge of local lore, and 

introduced me to others who also had information to offer. Helge Fæhn 

explained to me the place of pietism in 19 th century Norwegian religious 

life. Tor Gardåsen of the Telemark Museum in Skien generously shared 

the resources of that archive, and later read and corrected the chapter on 

Skien. Ingard Hauge read and corrected my translations of Ibsen’s 

Grimstad poems. Hege Hobæk, president of the Ibsen society in Skien, 

showed me the scenes of Ibsen’s childhood, helped me find things in her 

town, and offered many useful suggestions. Tove Dahl Johansen and 

other reference librarians at the National Library in Oslo helped in locating 

information and references. Terje Leiren of the University of Washington 

taught me about Norwegian history at the International Summer 

School in Oslo. Herman and Borghild Løvenskiold showed me through 

their estate at Fossum, and shared the bibliography of their book collection. 

Harald Noreng, who among his other achievements is an expert on 

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local Grimstad history, offered advice on many occasions. Trine Næss of 

the National Library made the resources of the theatre collection available 

to me while I was tracking down the plays performed in Skien and 

Sørlandet during Ibsen’s time. Astrid Sæther, director of the Ibsen Center 

in Oslo, made me welcome at the center and provided research materials 

as well as working space. Bjørn Tysdahl of the University of Oslo 

offered insight into Norwegian literature in the early 19 th century. Trond 

Woxen corrected the translation of Andreas Munch’s “Donna Clara, en 

natscene.” Vigdis Ystad of the University of Oslo supervised my reading 

at the very beginning of the project. Asbjørn Aarseth of the University of 

Bergen allowed me to attend his course on Ibsen’s history plays, held at 

the University of Oslo, and also read an early draft of the manuscript. I 

am grateful to several excellent Norwegian language teachers, and especially 

to one, Bård Sandvei. 

Jarle Bjørklund, director of the Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum, 

offered me his hospitality many times, opened the way for me 

with valuable clues, and is the publisher of this book. The expenses of 

publication are being shared by the Telemark Museum in Skien, through 

the cooperation of Vibeke Mohr, director of the museum. The illustrations 

were prepared by Tor Gardåsen in Skien, and Pål von Krogh in 

Grimstad. Final proofing was done by Reidar Marmøy, chair of the board 

of the Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum. The manuscript was 

seen through the press by Rolf Erik Nilsen. The website was constructed 

by Geir Andresen. 

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Philip E. Larson 

Grimstad, Norway 

February, 1999

INTRODUCTION 

Henrik Ibsen of Norway is recognized today as one of the best dramatists 

of the nineteenth century. Some people even regard him as one of 

the best who ever lived. The American critic, Harold Bloom, for example, 

in a recent survey of major authors in the Western tradition, ranked Ibsen 

as "second only to Shakespeare and perhaps Molière." 1 More than ninety 

years after Ibsen’s death, his plays have been translated into many languages, 

and are read and performed all over the world. 

Most of the scholarly attention that Ibsen has received has been directed 

towards his middle and late plays. If one examines only his greatest 

works, however, one can fail to appreciate the gradual mastering of 

craft that led up to them. The assumption of the present investigation is 

that an understanding of the beginning of Ibsen's creative activity is valuable 

for an appreciation of his achievement as a whole. 

Ibsen's beginnings are more obscure than one might expect for someone 

of his stature. One reason for this obscurity is that his early years 

were spent in small towns. He was born in 1828 in Skien, a town of about 

2500 residents on the southeastern coast of Norway, and he lived there 

until he was 15 years old. In late December of 1843 he moved to Grimstad, 

a smaller town about 75 miles farther down the coast, where he lived for 

six years, until April 1850, when, at the age of 22, he moved to the 

Norwegian capital, Christiania (Oslo). 

Ibsen's culture was part of the general European culture of the time, 

although it was influenced most strongly by that of Denmark in its "Golden 

Age," especially its center, Copenhagen. 2 Since he lived in an area remote 

from the center, Ibsen received the general culture indirectly, filtered 

through parents, schoolteachers, religious instructors; published materials 

in books, magazines and newspapers; conversations with those 

who had been outside the area or abroad; and other such intermediaries. 

To be sure, Ibsen did not apprehend his cultural environment uncritically; 

he knew it was filtered, and he had his own filters to receive it. 

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Ibsen was not only geographically removed; he was physically isolated 

as well, sometimes by preference, at other times by necessity. As a 

boy he spent hours playing by himself in a little room stocked with books 

and toys. 3 From the age of 15 he did not live with his family but rather 

supported himself as a pharmacist's apprentice in Grimstad. Christopher 

Due, who knew Ibsen during the three years he worked in the Nielsen 

pharmacy in Grimstad (1847-50) and who observed his confinement and 

isolation, later wrote of him: "It was as if his whole spiritual life moved 

exclusively, or at any rate essentially, in the direction of imagination and 

thought." 4a More than most people, Ibsen lived in his mind and created 

in his imagination a reality alternative to the one he occupied physically. 

The subject of Ibsen's beginnings has been investigated. There are 

several biographies, the best-known being those by Henrik Jæger, Halvdan 

Koht, and Michael Meyer. 5 Jæger's biography, which was published during 

its subject's lifetime, includes a memoir written by Ibsen himself of 

his boyhood in Skien. 6b Koht was more familiar with Ibsen's work than 

was any other biographer, since he participated in the editing of his works 

over a period of more than 50 years. 7 Koht had lived in Skien as a boy, 

and could talk to Ibsen’s family as well as to others who had been close to 

him. Still, a reader of Koht's biography is perplexed by the fact that he 

often does not reveal his sources. Meyer's biography incorporates much 

of what had been presented in earlier accounts and is thoroughly documented. 

He observes in his introduction, however, that a lot of information 

which Ibsen scholars would like to have at hand is available but 

"widely scattered." 8 

A biography that covers a writer's entire life will naturally devote the 

most attention to the periods in which its subject's major works were 

composed, and these three biographies are alike in this respect. There 

are several other books, however, which concentrate on Ibsen's early life. 

In 1949 Oskar Mosfjeld published Henrik Ibsen og Skien, 9 based not only 

on the existing literature but also on interviews with elderly people from 

Skien who remembered Ibsen as a boy. While this book is the most detailed 

account of Ibsen's boyhood, it contains information that either may 

be unreliable or else is impossible to verify. 10 

Christopher Due published a monograph of his recollections of Ibsen 

in Grimstad sixty years after the events described had taken place. 11 This 

monograph preserves some precious anecdotes of the young Ibsen, but it 

a Unless otherwise indicated in the notes, all translations in the text are by the present writer. 

b A translation of this memoir is included below, pp. 14-19. 

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does not relate them in the order in which they must have occurred. For 

example, Due wrote that only a few weeks after Ibsen and he became 

acquainted, Ibsen gave him a poem which Due sent to a newspaper in 

Christiania for which he was the local correspondent. 12 This poem, "I 

Høsten" ("In the Autumn"), was published 29 September, 1849, but Ibsen 

and Due must have become friends either in late 1847 or early 1848, 

almost two years earlier. 

In 1940 Hallvard Lie saw through the press a monograph written by 

Hans Eitrem, and left unpublished at his death. It was entitled Ibsen og 

Grimstad. 13 The manuscript was based both on Eitrem's own research in 

Grimstad in 1909-10 and on notes that were lent to him by Hans Terland, 

a local schoolteacher and historian. The complex authorship of this book 

raises questions about its authenticity, even though all three persons involved 

no doubt approached its subject with care. 

The present study draws on all these published sources as well as on 

others. The investigation which preceded the writing of this book was 

not limited to published information, however, but also included new 

research, conducted in libraries, museums, and archives in Skien, 

Grimstad, Arendal, and Kristiansand, as well as in Oslo. 

The material of this study is organized into two parts. The printed 

part is a book, and comprises four chapters on Ibsen's intellectual and 

literary activity from the time he learned to read, in about 1835, to April 

1850, when he left Grimstad for Christiania. The second part is a series 

of files that have been loaded onto a website; these contain sources of 

information about Ibsen and his cultural background, some of which either 

have not previously been available, or if available, may not have 

been examined with respect to their possible value for Ibsen studies. 14 

The files are of several different kinds. There are lists of books that 

were available in Skien and Grimstad, a list of plays that were performed 

in Skien, and a list of plays some of which were probably performed in 

Grimstad. There are translations of later accounts by Norwegian and 

Danish writers of local religious, educational, and theatrical activities of 

the time. There are translations of a few pieces of contemporary journalism 

that Ibsen might have read, and of reviews of performances of plays 

that he might have attended. Translations of some of Ibsen's earliest 

prose writings, and of the poetry he wrote in Grimstad are included, as is 

a translation of most of Due's memoir. 

The narrative is constructed to provide not so much a complete 

biography as a basic introduction to the facts of Ibsen’s early life and 

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circumstances, but it discusses new or recently discovered information 

in somewhat greater detail. Those who are already familiar with the 

known facts of Ibsen’s early life must be patient with the obligatory review 

of them, if they are to gain the new information the book contains. 

Those to whom the subject is new will appreciate the review, as well as 

the notes and bibliography at the end. The book can be read without 

reference to the files on the website, which are provided for those who 

want to delve more deeply into the subject. 

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IBSEN IN SKIEN 

Henrik Ibsen was born in 1828 in Skien, an old town on the southeastern 

coast of Norway in the province of Telemark. The town’s main industries 

were farming, timbering, and shipping. Skien had only 2500 

inhabitants, but it was prosperous; its location at the head of a fjord into 

which a navigable river flowed made it a center for people, goods and 

information travelling to and from the mountainous hinterlands. Skien 

was a provincial community, but one not without cultural resources. The 

town had several churches and schools, and its cultural life included concerts, 

fairs, and theatrical performances. 

Skien had a number of well-established families, and the Ibsens were 

among them. Until Henrik was seven years old, the family lived in town, 

first in one fine house, and then in another, even finer one. Henrik’s 

father, Knud Ibsen, owned a general store and the town’s second largest 

brandy distillery; he was also an importer and had shipping interests. 

One year his name appeared as 17th in the list of taxpayers, indicating 

that he had one of the largest personal incomes in the district. 15 

Henrik’s condition was comfortable, and had it continued he might 

have developed in a different way. In 1834, however, Knud suffered a 

series of financial setbacks, and he had to sell his businesses and his 

fine house in town. 16 In 1835 the family moved about a mile outside of 

town to a farm at Venstøp that had been bought in 1832 as a summer 

place. [See Illustration 1.] Knud was never able to recover from his 

losses, and his economic circumstances continued to decline. In 1837 

he had to sell the farm, although the family was allowed to live there 

until 1843. 

The family's straitened circumstances after 1835 might lead one to 

conclude that Henrik’s childhood was one of cultural as well as economic 

deprivation, but he probably could not have attained the intellectual and 

artistic mastery he displayed in his mature years if his native culture had 

not supplied him with significant resources. 

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One would like to have Ibsen’s own account of his childhood. In 1881 

he began to write a memoir, in which he described some early experiences 

and impressions of his home town. This memoir is worth including 

here since it is the only narrative about his early life that he ever 

composed: 

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At the time when, a number of years ago, the streets of 

my native town of Skien were named,--or perhaps rechristened,--the 

honor was done me of giving to one of them my 

name. At least report has said so, and I have been told of it by 

trustworthy travellers. According to their accounts, this street 

runs from the market-place down to the sea, or the dredged 

area at the shore. 

But if this description be accurate, I cannot imagine why 

the street has come to bear my name, for in it I was neither 

born nor did I ever live. On the contrary, I was born in a 

court near the market-place,--Stockmann’s Court, it was then 

called. This court faces the church, with its high steps and its 

noteworthy tower. At the right of the church stood the town 

pillory, and at the left the town-hall, with the lockup and the 

madhouse. The fourth side of the market-place was occupied 

by the common and the Latin schools. The church stood in a 

clear space in the middle. 

This prospect made up, then, the first view of the world 

that was offered to my sight. It was all architectural; there was 

nothing green, no open country landscape. But the air above 

this four-cornered enclosure of wood and stone was filled, the 

whole day long, with the subdued roar of the Langefos, the 

Klosterfos, and the many other falls, and through this sound 

there pierced, from morning till night, something that resembled 

the cry of women in keen distress, now rising to a 

shriek, now subdued to a moan. It was the sound of the hundreds 

of saws, that were at work by the falls. When I read of 

the guillotine afterwards, I always had to think of these saws. 

The church was naturally the most imposing building of 

the town. At the time when, one Christmas eve near the 

close of the last century, Skien was set on fire through the 

carelessness of a serving-maid, the church which then stood 

there burned with the rest. The servant-maid was, as might 

easily happen, put to death. But the town, rebuilt with straight

and broad streets upon the slopes and in the hollows where it 

lies, gained thereby a new church, of which the inhabitants 

boasted with a certain pride that it was built of yellow Dutch 

clapboards, that it was the work of an architect from 

Copenhagen, and that it was exactly like the Kongsberg church. 

I was not able at that time fully to appreciate these advantages, 

but my mind was deeply impressed by a white, stout, 

and heavy-limbed angel, with a bowl in his hand, on weekdays 

suspended high up under the roof, but on Sundays, when 

children were to be baptized, lowered gently into our midst. 

Even more than by the white angel in the church, my 

thoughts were occupied by the black poodle who lived at the 

top of the tower, where the watchman called out the hours of 

the night. It had glowing red eyes, but was not often seen; in 

fact, it appeared, as far as I know, upon one occasion only. It 

was a New Year’s night, and the watchman had just called 

“One” from the window in the front of the tower. Just then 

the black poodle came up the tower steps behind him, stood 

for a moment, and glared at him with the fiery eyes,--that was 

all, but the watchman at once fell head foremost out of the 

tower-window down into the market-place, where he was seen 

lying dead next morning by all the pious folk who went to the 

early New Year’s service. Since that night no watchman has 

ever called out “One” from that window in the tower of Skien 

church. 

This incident of the watchman and the poodle occurred 

long before my time, and I have since heard of such things 

having happened in various other Norwegian churches, in 

the days of old. But the tower-window in question has stood 

prominently in my memory since I was a child, because from 

it I got my first deep and lasting impression. For my nurse 

took me up into the tower one day, and let me sit right in the 

open window, held from behind, of course, by her stout arms. 

I remember distinctly how it struck me to see the crowns of 

the people’s hats; I looked down into our own rooms, saw the 

window-frames and curtains, saw my mother standing at one 

of the windows; I could even see over the roof of the house 

into the yard, where our brown horse stood tied near the barndoor 

and was whisking his tail. I remember that on the side 

of the barn there hung a bright tin pail. Then there was a 

15

16 

running about, and a beckoning from our front door, and the 

nurse pulled me hastily in, and hurried downstairs with me. 

I do not remember the rest, but I was often told afterwards 

that my mother had caught sight of me up in the tower-window, 

that she had shrieked, had fainted,--as was common 

enough then,--and, having got hold of me again, had wept, 

and kissed and caressed me. As a boy, I never after that 

crossed the market-place without looking up to the tower-window. 

I felt that the window especially concerned me and the 

church poodle. 

I have preserved but one other recollection from those 

early years. Among the gifts at my christening there was a 

big silver coin bearing the image of a man’s head. The man 

had a high forehead, a large hooked nose, and a projecting 

under lip; furthermore, his neck was bare, which I thought 

singular. The nurse told me that the man on the coin was 

“King Fredrik Rex.” Upon one occasion I took to rolling the 

coin on the floor, and, as an unfortunate consequence, it rolled 

into a crack. I believe that my parents saw an evil omen in 

this, since it was a christening gift. The floor was torn up, 

and thorough and deep search was made, but King Fredrik 

Rex never again saw the light of day. For a long time afterwards 

I looked upon myself as a grave criminal, and whenever 

Peter Tysker, the town policeman, came out of the town 

hall and across to our front door, I ran as hurriedly as I could 

into the nursery, and hid under the bed. 

We did not live long in the court by the market-place. My 

father bought a bigger house, into which we moved when I 

was about four years old. My new home was on a corner, a 

little farther up town, just at the foot of the “Hundevad” hill, 

named after an old German-speaking doctor, whose imposing 

wife drove a “glass coach,” that was transformed into a 

sleigh for winter. There were many huge rooms in this house, 

both up and down stairs, and we lived a very sociable life 

there. But we boys were not much within doors. The market-place, 

where the two biggest schools were situated, was 

the natural meeting-place and field of battle for the village 

youth. Rector Oern, an old and lovable man, ruled in the 

Latin school at that time; in the common school there was 

Iver Flasrud, the beadle, also an imposing old fellow, who

1. Venstøp, woodcut. Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum. 

17

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filled the post of village barber as well. The boys of these two 

schools had a good many warmly contested battles around 

the church, but as I belonged to neither, I was generally present 

as a mere onlooker. For the rest, I was not much given to 

fighting as a boy. I was much more attracted by the pillory, 

already mentioned, and by the town hall, with its gloomy mysteries. 

The pillory was a reddish-brown post, of about a man’s 

height; on top there was a big round knob, that had been black 

at one time; it now looked like an inviting and benevolent 

human face, a little awry. From the front of the post hung an 

iron chain, and from this an open bow, which always seemed 

to me like two small arms, ready to grasp my neck with the 

greatest of pleasure. It had not been used for many years, but 

I remember well that it stood there all the time that I lived in 

Skien. Whether or not it is still there, I do not know. 

And then there was the town hall. Like the church, it had 

high steps. Underneath there were dungeon cells, with grated 

windows looking into the market-place. Within the bars I have 

seen many pale and sinister faces. One room in the basement 

of the town hall was called the madhouse, and was really, 

strange as it now seems to me, at one time used for the 

confinement of the insane. This room had a grated window 

like the others, but inside the grating the whole opening was 

filled by a heavy iron plate, perforated with small round holes, 

so that it looked like a colander. Furthermore, this cell was 

said to have served for the confinement of a criminal named 

Brandeis, much talked of at the time and afterwards branded. 

It was also inhabited, I believe, by a life-convict, who had 

escaped, was recaptured, and flogged out on the Li marketground. 

Of this latter, eye-witnesses related that he danced 

when he was led to the place of punishment, but had to be 

drawn back to the lockup in a cart. 

In my boyhood Skien was a lively and sociable town, entirely 

different from what it was afterwards to become. Many 

highly-gifted, prominent, and respected families then dwelt, 

both in the town itself, and on great farms in the neighborhood. 

These families were mutually bound together by relationships, 

more or less near, and balls, daytime companies, 

and musical assemblies followed one upon another in close 

succession, both summer and winter. We nearly always had

visiting strangers in our spacious place, and especially at 

Christmas and fair time our rooms were full, and open house 

the rule from morning till evening. The Skien Fair came off 

in February, and it was a happy time for us boys. We began to 

save up our shillings six months beforehand for the jugglers, 

and rope-dancers, and circus-riders, and for the purchase of 

honey-cakes in the fair booths. I do not know if this fair did 

much for trade; I think of it as of a great popular festival, 

lasting the whole week through. 

In those years not much account was made of the 17 th of 

May c in Skien. A few young men shot with pop-guns out on 

Blege Hill, or burned fireworks; that was about all. I have an 

idea that this reserve in our otherwise demonstrative townspeople 

was due to consideration for a certain highly-esteemed 

gentleman, d who had a country-seat in the neighborhood, and 

whose head was respected for various reasons. 

But it was all the merrier on St. John’s eve. e This was not 

celebrated by all the people together, but the boys and grownup 

people grouped themselves into five, six, or more companies, 

each of which worked to collect the material for its own 

bonfire. From as early as Whitsuntide we used to go in crowds 

around the wharves and shops to beg tar-barrels. In this matter 

a peculiar custom had reigned from time immemorial. 

Whatever we could not get freely given us was stolen, without 

either owner or police ever thinking to complain of this 

sort of violence. A company could thus by degrees collect a 

whole stack of empty tar-barrels. We had the same time-honored 

right to old barges. Whenever we found them ashore, if 

we could succeed in getting one quietly away, and well concealing 

it, we thereby acquired the right of possession, or, at 

least, our claims were not contested. The day before St. John’s 

eve the barge was borne in triumph through the streets to the 

place of the bonfire. A fiddler sat up in the barge. I have 

often witnessed and taken part in such proceedings. 17 

c 17 May, 1814, was Norway’s constitution day. 

d Ibsen may be referring here to Severin Løvenskiold, the governor-general of Norway. He was one of 

the strongest supporters of the king of the unified kingdoms of Norway and Sweden, who was first of 

all the king of Sweden, and was not fond of Norway’s independence day. It appeared to him to flout 

the union, which had been imposed by the Swedes on the Norwegians through the threat of force. 

e Midsummer’s eve, 23 June. 

19

This narrative apparently recounts nothing from the time after 1835, 

when Ibsen was seven years old, and the family moved out of town to 

Venstøp. Therefore we must depend for information about his early life 

primarily on the testimony of others who knew him and on evidence 

that can be reconstructed of his surroundings. 

Education 

An unanswered question about Ibsen's development has to do with 

his early education. We do not know how much regular schooling he 

had. Even though the family lived in the country, there was a private 

school less than two kilometers from the Ibsens' farm, on an estate called 

Fossum. 18 This school was operated by the owners of the estate, the 

Løvenskiold family, for the children of their employees. Halvdan Koht 

writes that Ibsen went to school at Fossum. 19 He does not say how he 

knows this, but his family had moved to Skien in the 1880s, when he was 

8 years old, and he may have heard the information from friends or relatives 

of the Ibsens. 

The Løvenskiolds were the wealthiest family in the area near Venstøp. 

Members of the family for generations had been highly-placed civil servants 

and government ministers. During Henrik’s time in Skien, the 

head of the family, Severin Løvenskiold, was the governor-general 

(Stattholder) of Norway, that is, the deputy of the king of the unified kingdoms 

of Sweden and Norway. 20 The family owned (and still owns) a tract 

of about 85,000 acres, much of which was in timber; there were iron 

mines on the land, and an ironworks which made stoves, cannons, and 

farm equipment. [See Illustration 2.] 

A model of the grounds of the estate as it was in the nineteenth century, 

displayed in a private museum there, shows a substantial two-story 

school building. This building had been constructed in 1834 out of stone, 

on a site where earlier there had been a wooden school building. 21 According 

to Koht 90 students were enrolled at the school in the 1830s, and 

the teacher was Hans Isaksen. It is difficult to imagine Henrik’s parents 

not doing everything possible to take advantage of this school for their 

son. Knud Ibsen was Ernst Løvenskiold’s deputy in the Gjerpen parish 

council in 1839-40, suggesting that he was a trusted associate of the latter, 

and he was also associated with two successive managers of the Fossum 

ironworks. 22 His son might have attended the school as a charity case, 

and this might be why it was never mentioned later. 

20

According to another scholar, Terje Christensen, the school on the 

estate was an almueskole, that is, a school for working-class children where 

one learned “the three Rs” in a few months and not much else. 23 This 

opinion may be based on a confusion between the school building shown 

on the model and another building which used to stand outside the gates 

of the estate, and may originally have been a guardhouse. This building 

was moved down the road towards town and operated by the municipality 

as a working-class school. This school was not established until 1901, 

however, after the school building on the grounds of the estate had been 

torn down, along with all the other buildings associated with the ironworks, 

which closed in 1867, after the iron deposits had been depleted. 

While the Løvenskiold family usually had private tutors for their own 

children, Oskar Mosfjeld says that at certain periods they sent them to 

the Fossum school for language instruction. 24 They could not have done 

that if the school had been only a working-class school. Another relevant 

fact is that some of the employees at the ironworks were educated people, 

among them engineers from Germany, and they would not have been 

satisfied for their children to receive merely the kind of education that 

was available at a working-class school. 

When Ibsen took the university entrance examinations in 1850, he passed 

both French and German, as well as Latin. We know he studied Latin in the 

early 1840s at a private school in Skien, and later with a tutor in Grimstad, 

but if he did not study French and German while he lived on the farm at 

Venstøp, it is not easy to say where and when he did study them. 

Christensen concludes that while it is not certain where Ibsen started 

school, his teachers were probably either Hans Isaksen or Christen Lund. 

Both of these men were residents of Aarhus, a district adjoining Venstøp 

to the south. Both men knew French and German. 25 What we can say on 

the basis of our present knowledge is that in the community where Ibsen 

lived at Venstøp were people able to provide him with a good elementary 

education, including instruction in languages. 

Ibsen also received at least one year, possibly two, of secondary education. 

In 1841, when he was not quite thirteen, his parents enrolled him 

in a new private school in the town of Skien. 26 It was conducted by two 

theological candidates from the university in Christiania, W. F. Stockfleth 

and Johan Hansen. It was not the only school in Skien; there was also a 

lærd skole (Latin school), but in those years it was not very good and was 

also quite expensive. 

At that time Skien and Larvik had the only Latin schools between the 

capital city of Christiania (Oslo) and Christianssand, at the southern end 

21

of the Norwegian peninsula. The purpose of such a school was to prepare 

students for the university entrance exam. Skien's Latin school could 

claim several distinguished alumni from the 1820s, including the historian 

Peter Andreas Munch, the economist and politician Anton M. 

Schweigaard, and the critic and philosophy professor Marcus Jacob 

Monrad. After the retirement in 1839 of its longtime rector, Knud Ørn, 

however, the school had declined in quality; between 1839 and 1842 only 

fifteen students enrolled there, while about 20 students enrolled at the 

new school Ibsen attended. 27 

In February 1841 the local newspaper in Skien carried an advertisement 

for the school that Ibsen was about to attend. It reads in part that 

students should come to the school "bringing with them the books they 

have used previously," that is, the books from the schools they had attended 

earlier. 28 This statement tells us that the new school was not 

drastically different from the Latin school, since its teachers were prepared 

to use the same books. Hansen became the rector of the Skien 

Latin school several years later, a fact which indicates that he was a fully 

qualified teacher at that level. 

We do not know which books were used in Ibsen's private school, 

but we do know the ones that were used in the Latin school, since a 

report on the books used in that school in 1840 was published in 1842 in 

the university annals. 29 If the teachers at Ibsen's private school were 

willing to use the books the students already owned, there is a good chance 

that some of these were the ones used in the local Latin school, since 

they would have been circulating in the town. If we combine the invitation 

in the newspaper ad with the list of textbooks used in the Latin school 

in 1840, we have, if not iron-clad evidence of Ibsen's schoolbooks, at least 

some information about what those books might have been. 

There were anthologies for reading not only in Modersmaalet (Ibsen’s 

native language, which at that time in its written form was essentially 

Danish), but also in German, French, and other languages. These anthologies 

included excerpts from the writings of major authors in each 

language. There were textbooks in world history as well as Scandinavian 

and specifically Norwegian history. The text in that subject by the Skien 

native P. A. Munch contains a famous and controversial theory of the 

origins of the Norwegian people that Ibsen refers to in an article on the 

heroic ballad that he wrote in 1857. 30 Its section on medieval Norwegian 

history could have provided an idea he later developed into Kongsemnerne 

(The Pretenders, 1863). 

22

An article published almost 40 years later by J. F. Ording, a classmate 

of Ibsen’s at the private school, relates some information about Ibsen’s 

talents and behavior at the time: 

Although there is so much that is changed and different, 

there is at the same time much that is similar, that is like 

himself and recognizable, in what he [Ibsen] recurs to: the 

schoolboy with the good head, the deep understanding, the 

somewhat sensitive, irritable temperament, the slightly irascible 

mind, the sharp tongue, the satirical inclination, but at 

the same time friendly and informal. 

Already as a schoolboy Ibsen had a marked inclination for 

drawing and painting. There were several who thought that 

in this direction he could become an artist of high rank. There 

may be still in someone's possession one or another of those 

pictures that with simple ordinary colors he painted, of the 

landscape of his native town Skien, for example Fossum ironworks 

with its picturesque, romantic surroundings, of which 

there was a view from the farm where Ibsen's parents then 

lived. f I remember very well how radiantly these drawings 

shone for our childlike eyes. I myself have in my possession 

a little picture that Ibsen had given me, a shepherd boy, sitting 

on a rocky knoll; it was extremely beautiful. This definitely 

striking, outstanding talent in Ibsen did not get a chance 

for direct development, but it is fully and strongly recognizable 

in his work, in the remarkable artistic eye wherewith he 

organizes everything to the strongest possible painterly effect. 

Ibsen was of a higher intelligence than ordinary people. 

He read history eagerly. In his rendering of historical events, 

in conversations about historical personages he revealed a 

depth of understanding, a warm interest, that had to awaken 

strong attention. He especially liked to study ancient, classical 

history. 

There was among our comrades a somewhat odd, droll 

person, who usually went by the name "The Astronomer." 

f No picture by Ibsen of Fossum ironworks survives, but there is a watercolor by him of another 

estate, “Follestad Gård.” [See illustration 3.] 

23

24 

This was a lanky boy with hair so fiery red, as I have never 

seen it on any other human being. His face, with a pair of 

roguish, good-natured, twinkling eyes, had a color, which did 

not give away much to that shining, glowing hair; it was as if 

illuminated by that scarlet hair, and for the sake of harmony 

he had clothes of reddish-brown material, of which the outermost 

part was a little tailcoat which contributed not a little to 

increase the person's, the figure's, somewhat comic effect. 

He had got his nickname from the fact that with a genuine 

passion he contemplated, he carefully observed the moon and 

the stars through a little spyglass he owned and that literally 

was the light of his eyes. Not seldom one got to see "The 

Astronomer" sitting up in a tree or on a board fence, and from 

this observatory he peered at the moon through the spyglass 

and with an incomparably comic expression declared as the 

result of his observation . . . “I still do not believe it, it is inhabited.” 

What usually happens in school happened here, that "The 

Astronomer," despite all his good-naturedness, had some small 

dispute with Ibsen, and in combination with another comrade 

he [Ibsen] had a stab at a lampooning artwork. Ibsen 

himself asked [his comrade to participate?] with a feigned 

composure, and yon scribbler g imagined himself already to 

have thoroughly punished his adversary. But so it happened 

that one morning: we had just taken our places on the 

benches, but the instruction had not yet commenced. Facing 

Ibsen sat "The Astronomer" in his usual place, the redhead 

fairly content. h But all at once his illuminated face got even 

redder, and he began to make unambiguous signs of coming 

over the table in order to employ those so-called "arguments 

ad hominem." The occasion for his strong excitement showed 

itself to be a piece of paper, which Ibsen from his side held up 

towards him and which seemed to work on him in the same 

g Surely Ording is referring to himself as Ibsen’s accomplice, since they were sitting next to each 

other. 

h The desks were constructed so that each pair of boys sat facing one another across a raised, sloping 

writing surface.

2. Fossum Ironworks, painting by Peter Wergmann (1830s). Telemark Museum. The brown wooden school building, replaced in 1834 by a stone 

building, shows in the right center group as perpendicular to the picture plane, with a simple peaked reddish tile roof. 

25

26 

way as a red cloth on some animals. No wonder: on the 

paper stood the star-gazer vividly depicted in all his red appurtenances 

with the spyglass before his eye, observing the 

pale half-moon, and underneath was written his scientific 

proverb: "I do not believe it, it is inhabited!" 31 

Ibsen's most influential teacher at the private school was Johan 

Hansen, 32 who in addition to giving him tutoring in Latin, taught history, 

which according to Ording was Ibsen’s favorite subject. Ording also notes 

that Ibsen was “on a higher level” than the other students. This indicates 

that he had had more education before enrolling in the new school than 

the other boys his own age. He was the only student in the school at that 

time to receive tutoring in Latin, which shows that his teacher recognized 

his promise and offered him a subject that he would need if he 

wanted to enter the university. According to Henrik Jæger, Ibsen was 

also interested in religion, and Hansen taught that subject as well. 33 Ibsen 

was sorry when Hansen died in 1865 and remembered him as having 

had "a gentle, lovable temperament." 34 

Religious education 

Like other boys in Norway at that time, Henrik received religious as 

well as secular instruction. In October 1843, when he was 15 years old, 

he stood up at the front of the sanctuary in the Gjerpen church and answered 

questions about the Bible and the Christian religion put to him by 

the rector of the church, Fredrik Rode. [See Illustration 4.] In preparation 

for the confirmation examination, Ibsen had had to study not only 

the Bible but also the Lutheran catechism, which presents the articles of 

Lutheran doctrine in a question-and-answer format, with passages from 

the Bible as well as other explanatory material to support each point. 

The Lutheran catechism was the standard text for Norwegian students 

preparing for confirmation. This catechism had been written originally 

in German, and therefore had to be translated. The translation most 

commonly used at the time was the one by Erik Pontoppidan. 35 Its commentary 

has a distinctly pietistic bias, however. Pietism was a movement 

of emotional and evangelical Lutheranism that arose in northern 

Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, partly in reaction to 

the rationalistic preaching of clergymen who had been educated in 

universities.

According to Christensen, Rode was neither a pietist nor a rationalist, 

but rather preached a fairly straightforward, or as he put it, "pure" 

Lutheranism. 36 He was embattled at times during his tenure in Gjerpen, 

partly because of his differences with some of his conservative parishioners, 

and partly because of a growing sentiment for pietism in the parish 

which led to a split in the congregation. The pietistic preacher Gustav 

Adolf Lammers, who happened to be married to Rode’s sister, became the 

pastor of the Lutheran church in Skien in 1848. He formed a new congregation, 

made up of members from both the Skien and Gjerpen churches, 

in 1853. It was the first “Indre misjonsforening” in Norway, and was a 

pietistic congregation. Ibsen’s mother Marichen and his sister Hedvig 

chose to join that congregation. These events took place after Henrik 

had left Skien, but dissension in the Skien congregation was already evident 

by 1843. 

Rode was a big, strong man, who had served several scattered parishes 

in northern Norway before his appointment in Skien, and who in 

addition to his role as parish rector was a farmer and an innovator in 

agriculture. He had published his own explanation of Luther's catechism 

in Skien in 1840. 37 In preparing Henrik’s class for confirmation, the rector 

may well have used his own text. Perhaps it does not make much 

difference which text they used, although surely it is important in evaluating 

the quality and character of Ibsen's religious education that his 

teacher was a scholar and doctrinally in the mainstream of the denomination. 

By tradition, the rector of the Gjerpen parish church also had the title 

of prost (i.e., dean, or administrative head) of the churches in the provinces 

of Telemark and Bamble. Both Rode, who was rector from 1832 to 

1854, and his predecessor, Edvard Munch, in turn left Gjerpen and assumed 

the deanship of the cathedral parish in the capital city of 

Christiania. These successive appointments may have been influenced 

by Severin Løvenskiold, but they also indicate the respect in which the 

Gjerpen church was held and the stature of the men attracted to it. The 

Gjerpen church was the major social institution in the area where the 

Ibsens lived, and by all accounts its influence was largely positive. 

According to his father, Henrik acquitted himself very well in the confirmation 

examination. 38 The rector's evaluation appears to corroborate 

this judgment. In the parish record he wrote that Henrik Ibsen: "Reads 

remarkably well in the Book, and displays thoughtfulness." His grade for 

the examination was: "Very good knowledge of Christianity." 39 

27

28 

3. Follestad Gård, watercolor by Ibsen (1842). Otto Lous Mohr, Henrik Ibsen som Maler, Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1953, facing p. 16

4. Gjerpen church and parish house, watercolor by Paul Linaae (1861). Telemark Museum 

29

Literary and theatrical resources 

Henrik was often physically isolated as a child, not merely because 

he lived on a farm, but also because ordinarily he did not choose to play 

with the other children in his vicinity. 40 He was considered standoffish, 

even arrogant, and he described himself in his memoir as an observer of 

rather than a participant in the games of boyhood. 

He was a great reader, however, both then and in later life. 41 He was 

usually secretive about what he read, since he was several times accused 

of stealing other people's words and presenting them as his own. When 

he was still a boy in school, 13 or 14 years old, one of his teachers, W. F. 

Stockfleth, accused him of plagiarizing an essay he had written for class. 

Ibsen defended himself stoutly, claiming that "every single word" was his 

own. 42 It is easy to understand why his teacher suspected him, because 

Ibsen's essay contains allusions to other writing. His early poetic, dramatic 

and critical texts were based on other texts, but what he wrote 

combined elements from his sources in new ways, changed their connotations, 

or set a source composed in one genre in opposition to a source 

from another. 

Ibsen’s method of reading may have been part of his originality, since 

he was not only a talented but also a very intelligent person. It is possible 

that he learned the idea of combining and opposing different texts 

from reading the Bible. He was reading the Bible by the age of seven, and 

he continued to do so all his life. 43 It was his favorite book. 44 In the Bibles 

of that time, as now, after a verse of scripture there was often a footnote 

directing the reader to refer to another passage whose meaning could 

alter or illuminate the meaning of the given passage. Henrik used to sit 

at the dining room table and read the Bible for hours, carefully turning 

the pages to all the references as he did so. Perhaps he was interested in 

the way one passage could alter or enhance the meaning of another. 45 

Not only did Ibsen read intertextually, but when he came to write his 

own texts he often composed with two or more literary sources in front 

of him, or the memory of what he had read clearly in his mind. He did 

not necessarily respect the integrity of the texts he read, rather he used 

them as raw material for his own invention. Still, from the very beginning 

his process of composition grew out of his reading, and when we 

know what he read, that knowledge can provide information about his 

purposes and procedures. 

Sometimes Ibsen’s sources are obvious. For example, in 1855, when 

he was writing Gildet på Solhaug (The Feast at Solhaug), he used dozens of 

30

passages from the Norwegian folk songs collected by M. B. Landstad. 46 

Some lyrics are used as given, while others are changed. Ibsen uses the 

folk songs not merely for musical accompaniment but also to characterize 

the persons and to bring to life the world of the medieval folk songs 

and ballads. The play also depends on other literary and theatrical sources, 

one of which may have been the Danish dramatist Henrik Hertz’s Svend 

Dyrings Hus. One reviewer of the play at the time it first appeared thought 

Ibsen had plagiarized Hertz’s play, a charge which Ibsen attempted to 

rebut in the preface to the second edition of his play. 47 Hertz’s play was 

produced at the Norwegian Theatre in Bergen during the same season in 

which The Feast at Solhaug premièred, so Ibsen was familiar with it. The 

repertoire included many other plays as well, however, and Ibsen’s play 

also shows traces of other plays of the time. A working dramatist uses 

what he finds appropriate to his purposes, whether it comes from literature 

or from life, and it may be more important to try to understand 

Ibsen’s characteristic procedures of composition than to measure too scrupulously 

his indebtedness to the intellectual property of others. An 

author’s text can derive from other texts without necessarily being merely 

imitative or a pastiche. 

Sometimes one can determine what an author has read from the internal 

similarities between the source text and the author’s text. For 

example, when Peer Gynt says “My kingdom for a horse! . . . Well, half 

my kingdom”-- we can recognize this as an allusion to Shakespeare’s Richard 

III. Ibsen uses his sources in many different ways: sometimes he 

means us to recognize the connection, and at other times, not. Sometimes 

he will take tiny details or a larger motif from another play; at 

other times he will borrow the vocabulary of a particular philosopher, 

like Kierkegaard or Hegel. In each case his use contributes in some way 

to the poetic or dramatic design, so it is not enough merely to identify the 

allusion, although that is the first step. Beyond that one must observe 

how he uses his source or sources, in order to begin to understand his 

meaning. In the allusion cited above, for example, Ibsen is humorously 

comparing his hero with Shakespeare’s; the fact that Peer is willing to 

give only half his kingdom illustrates his compromising character. 

Another way to attempt to ascertain what an author has read is to 

establish what reading materials were available to him and to read them 

searching for resemblances. It might be assumed that Ibsen’s access to 

reading materials as a child was limited primarily to the books left in the 

loft at Venstøp by its former owner, “the Flying Dutchman,” books like 

Harryson’s History of London, for example. Hedvig Ekdal refers to that 

31

32 

8. Joshua and the Angel, painting by Ibsen (1845?). The Ibsen House 

and Grimstad Town Museum, Grimstad 

7. Josva og Engelen (“Joshua and the Angel”), print in Billed-Bibel for 

Det norske Folk, indeholdende Den hellige Skrifts kanoniske Bøger, 

Christiania: Guldberg & Dzwonkowskis Officin, 1840, p. 177

ook in Vildanden (The Wild Duck), and some scholars have reasoned 

from the details of the play back to the life of the author. That book 

might have exercised a special magic on the boy because of its association 

with its mysterious former owner, but Henrik had other books to 

read as well. 

One possible source of reading matter for the young Ibsen was the 

book collection of his neighbors, the Løvenskiolds. That family had a 

large collection of books, many of which are preserved to this day. The 

study, sittting room, and dining room in the main house on the estate are 

maintained in their original condition and closely resemble the setting at 

Old Werle's in Act One of The Wild Duck: 

A richly and comfortably furnished study, with bookcases 

and upholstered furniture, a writing table, with papers and 

reports, in the middle of the floor, and green-shaded lamps 

softly illuminating the room. In the rear wall, open folding 

doors with curtains drawn back disclose a large, fashionable 

room, brightly lit by lamps and candelabra. In the right foreground 

of the study, a small private door leads to the offices. 

In the left foreground, a fireplace filled with glowing coals, 

and further back a double door to the dining room. 48 

All of these details are present in the main house at Fossum, even the 

small door that leads to the office downstairs, which is like the one that 

Old Ekdal is forced to come through during the dinner party in Act One 

of The Wild Duck, when the door from the office to the outside is locked. 

It seems likely from the detailed accuracy of this stage direction that 

Ibsen was familiar with the room where the books were kept. 

In 1843, the year the Ibsens left Venstøp, the Løvenskiolds’ book collection 

contained more than 900 titles, including plays by Aeschylus, 

Sophocles, Shakespeare (in Danish and German, as well as English), Jean 

Racine, Molière, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, Johan 

Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludvig Holberg, Adam Oehlenschlæger and others. 

It also included many other authors of imaginative literature from 

Homer on, as well as books on history, philosophy, religion, law, agriculture 

and science. 49 

Knud Ibsen had been a member of the Løvenskiolds' social circle before 

his financial losses, 50 and while he lived at Venstøp he was associated at 

times with the managers of the ironworks. 51 Therefore he was probably in 

the house where the books were kept, so it is physically possible that he 

33

orrowed some of them for his son. Other well-established families with 

whom Knud and his wife Marichen were connected would also have had 

book collections, although not as large as the one at Fossum. The 

Løvenskiolds' collection is of special interest not only because it was kept 

in a house near to where Henrik lived, but also because many of the books 

in the collection still exist. It provides evidence of the cultural environment 

where Ibsen grew up. While there is no anecdotal evidence that Ibsen 

was ever inside the main building at Fossum, the existence of the book 

collection shows that good literature was present in his vicinity, and we 

must therefore be prepared to imagine the young Ibsen reading, and hearing 

read, the literature of the general European culture from an early age. 

Books were not his only source of published reading material. Skien 

also had the first newspaper in Telemark, Ugeblad for Skien og Omegn. It 

was founded in 1830, when Henrik was two years old, so it was part of his 

literary landscape from the beginning. Since his father placed ads in this 

paper over the years, to sell milk, cream, and hay, we can assume that he 

had a subscription to it; if that is so, the paper would have come to the 

house every week, and Henrik could have read it as soon as he was old 

enough to read. We know that he read newspapers regularly later on, 

and it may be reasonable to assume that he formed this habit early. 

This newspaper was usually only six pages, but it contained a variety 

of information. There was local, national and international news. There 

were announcements for auctions and other sales. Book dealers and 

lending libraries placed advertisements for books. For example, one ad 

offered a Danish translation of Sophocles' Oedipus the King. The fact that 

the ad appeared does not prove that Ibsen read the play, but it is worth 

noting that such a play could be acquired in Skien in the 1830s. 

In the newspaper there were also ads for theatrical productions: 148 

plays were advertised for performance in Skien between 1832 and 1843. 52 

Most of the plays that were performed were one-acts and vaudevilles or 

musical comedies, but plays by some of the better dramatists of the time 

were also presented, usually by travelling companies of Danish actors. 53 

An example of the plays performed by visiting Danish theatre companies 

is Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s Elverhøj (“Elves’ Hill”), a “fairy-tale comedy” 

which was performed twice in Skien while Ibsen was growing up, in 

1836 and again in 1840. 54 J. L. Heiberg was a scholar, poet, critic, playwright, 

and theatre director. He had married Denmark’s best actress, 

Johanne Luise Heiberg, whose first major role was as Agnete in Elverhøj, 

which premièred in 1828 and became Heiberg's most famous play. For 

many years Heiberg wrote plays for Det kongelige Theater (the Royal 

34

Theatre) in Copenhagen, one of the finest repertory theatres in Europe. 

He became its artistic director in 1847. 

While we cannot be sure that Ibsen saw any of Heiberg's works while 

he lived in Skien, it should be noted that Heiberg’s own plays, and his 

translations of plays by other dramatists, were performed in Skien more 

often than anyone else's while Ibsen was growing up. Heiberg's example 

as dramatist, critic, and theatre artist was a significant influence on Ibsen's 

early plays and dramatic criticism. Two of his early plays, Sancthansnatten 

(St. John’s Night) and Olaf Liljekrans, are "fairy-tale comedies" in Heiberg's 

manner. Ibsen's youthful dramatic criticism, written in Christiania in 

1850-51, shows that he had been reading Heiberg's published criticism. 55 

When Ibsen received a travel grant from the Norwegian Theatre in Bergen 

in 1852, soon after his appointment as theatre-poet and sceneinstruktør, 

the first place he went was to the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, where 

he met Heiberg, saw several of the theatre's productions, and spent six 

weeks as an intern learning stagecraft. When Heiberg died in 1860, Ibsen 

wrote a poem to honor his memory, in which he defended him against 

his critics, even though Heiberg had declined to produce Ibsen's best 

play at the time, Hærmændene paa Helgeland (The Vikings in Helgeland), 

when it was offered to his theatre. 

There is no anecdotal evidence that Ibsen ever attended any of the 

performances of live theatre in Skien while he was growing up. What 

argues against the possibility is that his family probably did not have 

money to spare on paid entertainments. What argues in favor of the 

possibility is not only the fact that children were sometimes allowed to 

attend rehearsals for free, but also that Ibsen's own theatrical activity, 

which we shall consider in what follows, suggests a stimulus from personal 

experience. 

The Danish players who visited Skien in the summer of 1843, when 

Ibsen was 15 years old, offered a season that was better, in terms of both 

repertoire and performance, than what had been presented in previous 

years. The season included Et Glas Vand (A Glass of Water), by Eugene 

Scribe; 56 Kean, by Alexandre Dumas père; 57 "Donna Clara, en natscene", 

by the Norwegian poet Andreas Munch; 58 and Indqvarteringen (“The 

Billeting”), by Henrik Hertz. 59 The reviews printed in the local newspaper 

praised the fine quality of the performances. 60 The performances 

were often held in “Limies Sal,” a large room that ran the full length of 

the second floor of a building in downtown Skien. [See Illustration 7.] 

Many of Scribe’s plays were performed in Skien, and Ibsen later participated 

in the staging of at least fifteen of them in Bergen. 61 Several of 

35

his early plays, notably Fru Inger til Østraat (Lady Inger of Østråt) and The 

Vikings at Helgeland, use the Scribean method of plot construction. The 

main character in Kean, a proto-realistic character study by Dumas pére, 

is a virtuouso Romantic actor, the same kind of actor who would have 

played the lead in Ibsen’s own first play, Catilina. This similarity does 

not imply a direct influence, but may suggest that Ibsen was aware of 

theatrical as well as literary styles before he wrote his first play. 

The main character in Andreas Munch’s play, Donna Clara, could 

have been a model for Margit in The Feast at Solhaug, since both characters 

are imprisoned in unhappy marriages and both are visited by men 

with whom they were in love before they were married. The two plays 

were performed in Bergen during the same season (1855-56), so Ibsen 

might first have read “Donna Clara, en natscene” at that time, although 

the fact that it was in the repertory at all could indicate that he knew the 

play earlier and had himself suggested it for the season. 

Hertz’s “The Billeting” is a farcical domestic comedy written in the 

tradition of the eighteenth century Norwegian-Danish dramatist Ludvig 

Holberg, whose works were widely available in Norway while Ibsen was 

growing up, and who was one of the only writers whom Ibsen later 

admitted he was reading. 62 It has not been easy to trace specific resemblances 

between Holberg and Ibsen, however, since the former is often 

crude where the latter is subtle. An exception is Peer Gynt. In any case, 

if one is looking for the origins of Ibsen’s comic style, it might be as 

enlightening to search for them in his Danish comic contemporaries, 

Heiberg, Hertz, and Christen Hostrup, all of whose plays he directed in 

Bergen, as in their common ancestor Holberg. 

It is hard to believe that the young Henrik Ibsen was not aware of the 

theatrical activity in Skien in 1843 and that he would not have done all 

he could to attend at least some of the performances. It is also unlikely 

that his mother Marichen, who was a lover of the theatre, would not 

have made an effort to attend at least the performance of the play by 

Andreas Munch, since its author was a Norwegian and a nephew of the 

former rector of the Gjerpen parish church, which the Ibsens attended 

regularly. 

Early creative activity 

The foregoing review of Ibsen’s education, reading, and cultural 

environment can provide a background for the following discussion of 

36

his two creative efforts in Skien about which we have the most evidence: 

a puppet play and a classroom essay. 

Ibsen had the use of a little porch off the kitchen in the farmhouse at 

Venstøp. He would closet himself with books and toys and play by himself. 

He had a model theatre, that is, a box with a stage on which he could 

set up small painted figures mounted on wood. 63 If he was reading a 

play, he could make a set of figures of the characters, and move them 

according to the requirements of the action. It is possible that the boy 

began to mix characters from one play with those from another, in a way 

combining imitation and repetition with invention. As his skill increased 

and his ingenuity sought more scope, he began to present his imaginative 

works before an audience. According to Einar Østvedt, a local historian, 

Ibsen gave puppet shows in a window of his porch that faced the 

yard. 64 Conceivably he placed his toy theatre in the window and moved 

the wooden figures on the tiny stage for a group of children standing in 

front of the window. The window was small, however, and at some point 

the theatre moved to a larger venue nearby. 

The Danish theatre companies did not visit Skien in either 1841 or 

1842, and during the summer of one of those years, in a shed or barn at 

Venstøp Ibsen produced a puppet play about Ferdinand and Isabella of 

Spain. The only known description of the play is by an elderly lady from 

Skien, Benedikte Paulsen, who as a child had been a member of the audience 

on the day the play was performed. 

At the start of the 1840's Ibsen operated his puppet theatre 

at Venstøp. There was an extension on the farmhouse 

towards the north, which included a washhouse, servants' 

quarters, a shed and several other rooms. The shed served as 

the theatre hall. At the far end a platform was set up, consisting 

of some wide boards, and behind these boards was a corridor, 

covered by a curtain. From this corridor the movements 

of the puppets were guided by means of strings. Henrik himself 

performed this work, with a highly trusted assistant--usually 

Theodor Eckstorm from the Grini farm. It cost half a 

shilling to attend the performance, but some individuals were 

allowed in free. People came a long distance to see the performances. 

Some of the boys came in order to make mischief. 

For the female part of the audience the attraction was the 

great puppet Isabella of Spain. Oh heavens, how fine she 

37

38 

was! Coal-black ringlets, and a crinoline of rose-red silk. She 

was able to move with artistic skill across the boards, and then 

the little girls shouted with delight. Then onto the scene came 

knight Fernando. A feathered hat, and a red costume with 

gold braid. He moved slowly and proudly towards Isabella. 

Then--oh woe!--as quick as a flash a black Moor appears, who 

seizes her and would like to run away with her. But knight 

Fernando pushes him away so vigorously that he ends up lying 

down, after which Fernando and Isabella salute the audience. 

--Thus went the play. 

But one Spring day when a great performance was announced 

at Venstøp, and the stage was painted with blue 

anemones, the whole event had an unexpected interruption. 

Ole Paulsen from Gulset and Peder Lund Pedersen from Limi 

cut the strings. Then Henrik got really angry. He rushed at 

Ole, even though the other was much bigger. Peder had to 

come and help his friend Ole, for even though Henrik was 

small of stature, he was tough. The young spectators yelled 

loudly, and the uproar was frightful. Then a voice was heard 

that drowned out everything else: "What is all this racket?" It 

was Knud Ibsen, Henrik's father. When he saw the combatants, 

he understood the situation at once, because he said: 

"Can you not leave Henrik and his puppets in peace!" 

Henrik did not lose courage, but got new strings for the 

puppets. His mother, the lady Marichen, said that she could 

well understand why she was so short of clotheslines. On 

Midsummer's Eve that same year there was a repeat performance. 

Then they had a bonfire on Venstøp Hill, and a great 

number of people were present, both adults and children. 

Henrik took advantage of the opportunity to earn a lot of money 

for his theatre. 65 

The figures were stringed puppets, or marionettes, and they were in 

period costumes which Henrik had probably made himself. He once 

painted a new face on Hedvig's doll, 66 so he very well could have made 

puppets in costumes, although it is possible that his mother helped him 

with Isabella's beautiful red dress. He also manipulated the puppets, 

together with an assistant, and spoke all the voices. 

Ferdinand and Isabella were king and queen of the united kingdoms 

of Aragon and Castilia, and they were known for having driven the Moors

5. Limie’s building, photograph (1971). Telemark Museum 

39

and the Jews out of Spain in 1492. If we ask why the young Ibsen should 

have been interested in Ferdinand and Isabella, we can speculate that it 

was because they were paradoxical figures: Christians who were guilty 

of intolerance and murder, heroes who were also villains. 

In the list of books from the Latin school, under “History,” there is a 

textbook by Hans A. Kofod. The story of Ferdinand and Isabella driving 

the Moors and the Jews out of Spain appears in Kofod's textbook, and that 

could have been where Ibsen read it. 67 There were at least four different 

history textbooks available to Norwegian students at the time, but Kofod's 

account is the most vivid of the four, and the only one that places Isabella 

on the battlefield. Moreover it was in the book used in Skien’s Latin 

school. 68 Of course, none of the accounts suggests that any Moor was so 

audacious as to attempt to carry off Isabella, so that motif could have 

come from some other source, for example, from folk tales or ballads in 

which trolls carry off brides from their weddings. 

It has recently been suggested that Ibsen's puppet play is similar to 

one in Don Quixote. 69 The latter features a Spanish lady held captive in a 

tower by the Moors. 70 One of them sneaks up, accosts her, and is whipped 

for his actions by his own people. The lady is rescued from the tower by 

her husband, a brave Spanish gentleman on horseback. There was more 

than one Danish translation of Don Quixote, but since the sequence of the 

puppet play in that book was famous, it might have been included in an 

anthology. 71 

Ibsen's inspiration could also have been another printed puppet play. 

Heiberg's first published play was a puppet play, entitled Don Juan. 72 Puppet 

plays also circulated in unpublished form when they were performed 

by puppeteers. 

Ibsen's puppet play was a ridderskuespil, that is, a play of chivalry, a 

play about knights and ladies. Plays of chivalry were a fashion rather 

than a genre in playwriting that derived to some extent from the Spanish 

theatre. They had been introduced to the German public by a series of 

translations of Calderon's and Lope de Vega's plays made by August 

Wilhelm Schlegel and others in the late eighteenth century. Plays in 

imitation of the Spanish style were written by Germans and then translated 

into Danish and performed at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. 

Some Danish dramatists also attempted the style, although their plays 

were not always set in Spain. 

How did Ibsen know enough about the theatre to invent a play of 

chivalry in the Spanish manner? He could have read such plays, but he 

40

also could have seen them in the performances given in Skien by travelling 

companies of Danish actors. In 1839 the company that visited Skien 

advertised a play of chivalry entitled Kjærlighed og Heltemod (“Love and 

Heroic Valor”), about a woman in a castle who is wooed by many suitors. 

73 To win her hand a suitor has to ride his horse all the way around 

the castle on top of the wall, and all the suitors except the last fail the test, 

and plunge to their deaths. 

While it is not possible to say with certainty what Ibsen's sources and 

procedures were for the composition of his puppet play, it is legitimate to 

suppose that he based the play partly on a historical source about 

Ferdinand and Isabella and partly on narrative elements, either from Don 

Quixote, from folk literature, or from other puppet plays that he had seen 

or read about. The idea of making a puppet play might have been merely 

an extension of his play with his toy theatre, but also it might have been 

influenced by his attendance at a puppet show. The fact that the play is 

a ridderskuespil in the Spanish manner shows that in some way Ibsen had 

been exposed to that theatrical style. In his very first piece, therefore, it 

is possible to discern techniques of composition that borrowed from several 

different sources: historical, narrative and theatrical. These were 

techniques that he was to use many times in his later works. 

Ibsen’s dream essay 

Ibsen wrote an essay while he was a student at the private school in 

Skien, and a version of it has been preserved. It is not from his own 

hand, but rather from that of a classmate, J. F. Ording, who was sitting 

next to Ibsen on the day he read it aloud in class. Ording remembered it 

so vividly that he was able to reconstruct it more than 30 years later and 

publish it in a newspaper article. 74 Ibsen read that article twice in proof 

when it was about to be reprinted in a reliable literary history; he remembered 

it, and he did not indicate that it was inaccurate. 75 He made 

the following note about the essay in the margin of the proof sheet: 

This Norwegian essay brought me into strained relations 

with my excellent teacher Stockfleth. You see, S. had got it 

into his head that I had taken the essay from some book or 

other and stated that to the class. I rejected his mistaken 

interpretation in a more energetic way than he liked. 

41

42 

This is a translation of the essay: 

During a journey “on the heights,” while confused and 

exhausted, we were taken by surprise by the fall of night. 

Like Jacob of old, we lay down to rest with stones under our 

heads. My comrades soon slumbered; I myself was unable to 

sleep. At last fatigue overcame me; then in a dream an angel 

appeared over me, and said: “Stand up and follow me!” “Where 

will you lead me in this darkness?” I asked. “Come,” he repeated, 

“I will show you a sign, human life in its reality and 

truth.” So I followed fearfully, and downwards it went over 

colossal steps, until the mountains arched themselves over 

us into mighty vaults, and there before us lay an enormous 

city of dead men with all the frightful sights and smells of 

death and corruption: a whole world lying corpse-like, sunken 

together under the power of death, a faded, withered, extinguished 

splendor. Over everything fell a faint, shimmering 

light, as pale as the light reflected over a graveyard by church 

walls and the cross on a whitewashed tomb, no more light 

than that was emitted by the bleached skeletons which filled 

those dark rooms in endless rows. The vision there by the 

angel's side brought upon me a freezing apprehension: “Here 

you see, all is vanity.” Then came a whisper like that of the 

first faint beating at the beginning of a storm, then like a thousand 

groaning sighs. It grew into a howling storm, so that the 

dead stirred and held out their arms to me . . . and with a 

scream I awoke . . . soaked by the night's cold dew . . . ! 

The form of the narrative in this piece is a dream within a story. A 

dream allows the writer to introduce non-realistic events like the appearance 

of an angel. Yet paradoxically, what the angel proposes to show the 

dreamer is "reality." There is a reference to Jacob, who in the book of 

Genesis lay down to sleep with his head on a stone, and in his dream he 

saw a ladder which reached to heaven, with angels ascending and descending. 

In that dream Jacob was called by God to be the father of His 

chosen people. 

Ibsen's dreamer, by contrast, is called not to carry out a great historic 

mission but rather to witness an apocalyptic vision. He is not shown a 

vision of heaven but instead is led down a stairway into the earth, where 

in the underworld he sees a dead city with corpses lying in rows every-

where. The angel calls this scene "human life in its reality and truth," 

and, again, "vanity". This latter refers to a passage from the book of 

Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! 

All is vanity!" 76 The term “whitewashed tomb” (or “whited sepulchre”) is 

also Biblical, an epithet Jesus applied to the Pharisees, to mean that they 

were hypocrites, i.e., white and pretty on the outside, dead and decayed 

on the inside. 77 The underground city of dead men might have been 

inspired by Ibsen’s reading of the Book of Enoch. The Apocrypha was 

sometimes included at that time in large family Bibles like the one Ibsen 

probably read. In that book Enoch recounts a number of apocalyptic 

visions, including one in which an angel leads him down to Sheol and 

shows him a valley where fallen rebel angels await judgment. 78 

Ibsen’s story evidently has a literary inspiration. It alludes to at least 

two different books in the Old Testament, to one in the New Testament, 

and perhaps also to the Apocrypha. Ibsen could have picked up something 

either from graveyard poetry or from horror fiction that shows up 

in the elaborate reference to the quality of the reflected light underground, 

as well as in the final shock-effect. 

The introduction of details from several different sources, the play on 

different dimensions of reality, the paradoxical way of juxtaposing the 

worlds of imagination and reality, and the portrayal of the dark side of 

life – all are features that are characteristic of Ibsen's technique throughout 

his career. To cite just one example, at the end of the third act of 

Brand, when Brand is thinking about travelling south to save his young 

son from having to spend another winter in the cold, dark place where 

they live, the Gypsy girl Gerd comes running in, and cries: 

Have you heard? The parson's flown away! 

The trolls and demons are swarming out of the hillsides, 

Black and ugly. Big ones, small ones--oh! 

How sharply they can strike . . . . 

Can you see the thousand trolls 

The village priest drowned in the sea? 

That grave can't hold them; they're groping their way ashore, 

Cold and slimy. Look at the troll children! 

They're only skin-dead; see how they grin 

As they push up the rocks that pinned them down. 79 

In this passage Ibsen introduces supernatural imagery about dead trolls 

coming back to life from the mouth of the half-mad Gypsy girl. The 

43

perceptions of the supernatural are those of the character, so the passage 

does not seem incredible, even though it appears in a realistic scene. 

Brand contains a complex pattern of conflicting imagery, in which Christianity 

is set against paganism. The idea portrayed in this scene is that 

when Brand considers leaving his home and calling, all the pagan forces 

that his strong faith and leadership have suppressed are released from 

their captivity. To be “skin-dead” was a notion from folk tales, like being 

a zombie. A comparison of this passage with Ibsen’s classroom essay 

shows that both contain the theme of coming back to life. In both cases 

the resurrection is uncanny, however, and those who are resurrected are 

monstrous. 

Summary 

Ibsen did not have as regular an elementary education as most people 

do today, but that does not mean that there were no educational resources 

in the area where he lived, nor that he could not have received a fairly 

decent preparation, including instruction in German, French, and Latin. 

He also had a sound and thorough religious education. His environment 

offered substantial literary and theatrical resources, which may have contributed 

to the fact that his literary and dramatic abilities had already 

begun to assert themselves by about the age of 13. The evidence of these 

abilities that survives shows that his creative activity was influenced by 

his study of the Bible, history, and classical as well as contemporary literature. 

44

IBSEN IN GRIMSTAD, 1844-48 

In the fall of 1843 the Ibsen family moved back to Skien, into a second-floor 

apartment in a complex of buildings at Snipetorp, on a bluff 

above the town. The new quarters were small, and there were five children. 

It was decided that Henrik, who was the eldest, would have to 

make his own way, even though he was only fifteen years old. At the 

turn of the year 1843-44, Henrik left his family and moved to Grimstad, a 

town about 75 miles down the coast, where a position had been found for 

him as a pharmacist’s apprentice. His plan at that time was to become a 

doctor. The ordinary route to that profession was closed to him, because 

his parents could not afford to pay for further education for him, but in 

Norway at that time it was still possible to qualify by examination to become 

a medical practitioner. The study of pharmacy was at least related 

to medicine, and what he learned might be useful in future medical studies. 

In 1844 about 800 people lived in Grimstad. Its main industries were 

shipbuilding, shipping, fishing, and timbering. The town had been built 

on a site where the land forms a natural harbor and is further shielded 

from the Skagerrak by an archipelago of small islands or skerries. The 

buildings of the town climb a slope above the harbor. The main street, 

Storgaten, also climbs this slope. 80 

The pharmacy was located in a house near the bottom of Storgaten. 

[See Illustration 8.] Ibsen lived in the house with the family and the 

other employees of the pharmacist, and shared a tiny bedroom on the 

second floor with two younger boys. He had to work in the shop every 

day except Sunday, and he was on call at night. If the doorbell rang 

during the night, he had to answer it. If he was in bed, he had to get up, 

climb down a steep staircase to the shop, and prepare whatever medicines 

were required. 

Ibsen wrote a letter to a friend in Skien, Poul Lieungh, dated 20 May, 

1844, less than five months after his arrival in Grimstad. This letter survives: 

45

46 

Dear Poul, 

You really must excuse that I am only now answering your 

letter, but I have had so much to do recently that it has not 

been possible before, and even now I do not have time to 

write a long letter. Hedevall has left by now, and I am sure he 

will be pleased, at least I am very well satisfied and have never 

regretted coming here, since Reimann is very good to me and 

does everything possible to awaken my interest in the pharmacy, 

which in the beginning was not very great. With his 

wife, on the other hand, I do not do nearly as well, and we are 

often at odds, since it is impossible to satisfy her in any way. 

Reimann is also the postmaster, so you can just as well let my 

brother Johan enclose your letters in the ones he writes, since 

in that way you can avoid paying anything. You know, 

Grimstad, and especially the surrounding area, is quite beautiful, 

and the ladies, even if they are not as attentive as Skien’s, 

are also quite acceptable, and you can be sure I do everything 

to earn their favour, which is very easy to obtain. Since the 

steamer passes Grimstad twice a week I hope to make a trip 

with it to Skien, if no obstacle prevents it, which I do not 

expect. I have several questions to ask you, which you must 

answer by the next post: First and foremost you must tell me 

how J.J. took the news of her sweetheart's death, and also let 

me know who is the lucky man who has taken his place; since 

I know her too well to suppose she is still grieving for him. 

Next you must tell me whether Carl Aamodt is still practicing 

writing poetry, and finally, if so, ask him not to forget to send 

me a little poem. Even though I could write more, I must 

now leave off through lack of time, but you can be sure that 

next time you will get a longer letter. Please send the book 

“William Tell,” which Hedevall has borrowed, up to us, since 

it does not belong to me. Farewell, and greet all our good 

friends from yours sincerely, Henrik J. Ibsen. 

Finally, do not let anybody see this since it is written in greatest 

haste. 81 

Hedevall was Poul’s brother; he had visited Ibsen in Grimstad before 

he himself also took up a position as a pharmacist’s apprentice. Apparently 

he had left Grimstad with Ibsen’s copy of “William Tell,” and Ibsen 

wanted to be sure it was returned. It is not clear from the letter which

version of the story of the Swiss hero he was referring to; the most likely 

version would have been Friedrich Schiller’s famous play in a Danish 

translation, 82 but it also could have been the original, since he used the 

German spelling of the name, Wilhelm. In Danish or Norwegian the spelling 

would have been Vilhelm. Ibsen was able to read German, and in 

Grimstad today there are single copies of plays in German by Lessing, 

Goethe, and Schiller old enough to have been seen in Ibsen’s time. 83 If 

Ibsen had a copy of the play, he was probably reading it. Since it was not 

his own copy, that means he was able to borrow books. The letter also 

shows that he was interested in poetry and wanted to continue a conversation 

about poetry that he had been having with another friend in Skien, 

Carl Aamodt. 

Ibsen lived in Grimstad for six years, until April 1850. The first three 

of those years are the darkest of his life. They were formative years for 

him, however, so it is worthwhile to try to establish what can be known 

with any degree of certainty about his circumstances and activities. He 

was ordinarily confined to the pharmacy, and he had no friends of his 

own age, so many of his impressions came to him through reading. He 

read voraciously, according to Maria Thomsen, one of the maids who 

worked at the pharmacy. Hans Eitrem interviewed her more than sixty 

years later, after Ibsen’s death, and she was quoted by him to have said: 

That Henrik was a great one for reading, believe me. He 

had a whole box chock-full of books, but no clothes. He read 

and wrote almost the whole night. On some nights he was 

surely not in bed before 2 A.M. - Did he have light? Yes, there 

was a tallow candle. I never heard it was refused him. Sometimes 

I called at the door and said: you go to bed now, boy. 

You will get confused from all this reading. - No, he never 

read anything aloud to us. 84 

This passage suggests that Ibsen had a place where he could read and 

write, and where he kept his books. Among the few possessions he had 

brought with him from Skien was a carton of books. We do not know the 

titles of the books, but they must have been of at least three types. Some 

were the books he needed to prepare for the certification examination in 

pharmacy. 85 Others were textbooks he had acquired as a boy in Skien, in 

subjects like French, German, Latin, Norwegian, history and religion. 

Still others were no doubt his favorite books from childhood. Others he 

had borrowed for pleasure reading. 

47

His reading material was not limited to what was in his box of books. 

Until 1845 the pharmacy was also the post office, and part of Ibsen’s job 

was to sort the incoming and outgoing mail. Newspapers and magazines 

from other cities arrived through the mail, and presumably Ibsen could 

read them before their owners came to collect them. There was no newspaper 

in Grimstad in the 1840s, but Vestlandske Tidende was published in 

Arendal, twelve miles up the coast; Christianssandsposten came from down 

the coast in Christianssand, and several newspapers were published in 

Christiania, among them Morgenbladet and Christiania-Posten. 

Grimstad’s location by the sea, and its shipping activities, helped to 

make it a fairly cosmopolitan community. The steamer plied the coast 

regularly between Christiania and Christianssand during the summer 

months. There were many shipowners in Grimstad, and their ships carried 

cargoes of timber and iron ore to more distant cities, and brought 

trade goods back with them. Residents of Grimstad were accustomed to 

travel abroad both for employment and trade. Most of Grimstad’s young 

men went to sea, and the children of wealthier families were often sent 

to school in Denmark, Germany, France, or England. 

There was no public library in Grimstad, but there was a reading society, 

founded in 1835. The collection of the reading society was housed in 

the building of the inactive Dahlske Skole, 86 a few blocks up Storgaten 

from the pharmacy. In the 1840s this building was used for the workingclass 

school, where the children of the town learned educational fundamentals. 

Its schoolmaster, Anders Isachsen, was the first librarian of the 

reading society. 87 The list of names of the members of this society included 

both Jens Arup Reimann, Ibsen’s first employer, and Niels Peter 

Nielsen, the father of Lars Nielsen, his second employer. It has usually 

been assumed, therefore, that Ibsen had access to its collection. 

Before and during the time that he lived in Grimstad the reading society 

acquired 664 titles. 88 Most of the books were translations of novels by 

authors like James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas 

père, Captain Marryat, and Walter Scott. There were also books by Danish 

and Swedish writers in their original languages, including K. L. 

Rahbek’s edition of the works of Ludvig Holberg. The collection also 

contained bound volumes of several magazines. From 1832 to 1838 Christian 

Winther had edited and published in Christiania the literary journal 

Bien (The Bee). This journal printed the work of some of the best writers 

in Norway, including Maurits Hansen, Henrik Wergeland, and Johan 

Sebastian Welhaven. The reading society had a fairly complete set of this 

journal. The issues of The Bee would have been 6-12 years old by the 

48

time Ibsen had access to them, but that would not have prevented him 

from reading what was in them. 

Corsaren (The Corsair) was also in the collection of the reading society. 

This magazine had been founded in Copenhagen in 1841 by Meir 

Goldschmidt and was edited by him until 1846, when he sold it, although 

the magazine continued to appear until 1849. The Corsair published articles 

on political and cultural topics, as well as reviews of books and 

plays. It was an excellent source of information on the leading figures of 

Denmark in its "Golden Age". It had a satirical style and often printed 

caricatures similar to those done by Ibsen when he worked as a journalist 

in Christiania in 1850-51. 

According to oral tradition, during the first two years he lived in 

Grimstad Ibsen was already satirizing his neighbors in verse. Following 

is a translation of a passage in Didrik Arup Seip’s introduction to the 

volume of poems in Ibsen’s collected works. It includes his earliest known 

attempt at versifying: 

An old shoemaker’s wife told H. Terland “that in her youth 

she often encountered Ibsen, or ‘the pharmacy boy,’ as they 

used to call him. The boys and girls of the town liked to gather 

around him, because where he was present, they could almost 

always be sure of entertainment. He could come out 

with such amusing remarks, and he was so good at rhyming, 

and in those days it was appreciated when one could make 

long rhymed strings of words about people.” One of these 

rhymes has survived in tradition and is quoted by different 

people with only slight variations in the names. H. Terland 

gives the following explanation of it: 

“The reason it has lasted must be that it deals with a 

distinguished citizen and his whole household in a completely 

harmless manner. I myself as a small boy was 

entertained at hearing it, and according to what the old 

shoemaker’s wife told me, she herself was present when 

Henrik fashioned it, as he stood in the midst of a crowd 

of girls and boys in a yard near the merchant’s house. It 

deals with Mathias Gundersen, his two shop-boys, of 

whom one was the later merchant and shipowner 

Gunder Holst; his wife, Anne Elisabeth, gets her name 

changed to Anne Lise, and their daughter’s name is Anne 

49

50 

Kristine. At that time, as we know, one had quill pens. 

The rhyme goes like this: 

‘Cut my pen,’ says Gundersen. 

‘I don’t have time,’ says Gunder. 

‘Are you serious?’ says Halvor. 

‘Come and eat,’ says Anne Lise. 

‘The food is not exactly tasty,’ says Anne Kristine.” 89 

Mathias Gundersen was a successful businessman, who in addition to 

his shop, which was in the family home on Storgaten, owned and operated 

a shipyard at Hasseldalen. He was only about 30 years old at the 

time this verse was composed, which was probably in 1845, but in 1844 

he had already been elected mayor of the town, and would be elected 

again in 1846. 90 

The action of the scene takes place in his shop. Mathias is doing 

some paperwork; he asks his clerks to sharpen his pen for him, but the 

first claims to be too busy, while the second wonders if his boss is only 

joking. Just at that moment Mrs. Gundersen invites everyone to come to 

dinner, while her daughter criticizes or apologizes for the food. 

There were probably more lines to the verse, but these are all that 

have survived. Still, they are enough to show the skill of the young satirist, 

who produced and performed a theatrical cartoon, which is deftly 

struck without being nasty. The verse is what has survived, but surely it 

was delivered with impressions of each character by the author. The 

piece is satirical and depends for its effect on the audience’s knowledge 

of the persons imitated. Since we do not know them, we can only imagine 

the reaction that greeted the performance. The anecdote that accompanies 

the verse shows that even during his first three years in Grimstad, 

Ibsen was a recognized participant in the town’s street life, and one whose 

wit would be remembered. 

Ibsen had Sundays off, and he liked to spend his free time painting 

and drawing. Sometimes he would take his painting equipment with 

him and go for walks, stopping to make pictures of the landscape. The 

walls of the pharmacy were soon covered with his works, some of which 

have survived and can be seen today in the Ibsen House and Grimstad 

Town Museum. One of the earliest has a religious theme. There was a 

print of Joshua and an angel in a picture Bible owned by the pharmacist’s 

family, and Ibsen made a painting of it, probably in 1845. [See Illustrations 

5 & 6.] The print shows Joshua kneeling in the desert and an angel

hovering nearby. The verse cited under the print is Joshua 5. 13. Following 

are verses 13-15 from the RSV: 

When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and 

looked, and behold, a man stood before him with his drawn 

sword in his hand; and Joshua went to him and said to him, 

‘Are you for us or against us?’ And he said, ‘No; but as commander 

of the army of the LORD I have now come.’ And 

Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and worshiped, and said 

to him, ‘What does my lord bid his servant?’ And the commander 

of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, ‘Put off your shoes 

from your feet; for the place where you stand is holy.’ And 

Joshua did so. 91 

We do not know why Ibsen copied this picture, but we can speculate that 

he was interested in its theme: a man searching for divine authority, or 

a man selected for a mission by a supernatural being. 

As Ibsen learned the trade of pharmacy, J. A. Reimann increasingly 

left him to tend the shop alone while he walked around the town. Reimann 

was alcoholic and fell into debts that he could not repay for the purchase 

of medicines. In those days many of the medicines dispensed by pharmacies 

were derived from plants and herbs collected locally. Both 

Reimann and his apprentice would often go out to collect such plants. 

They were naturally free for the taking, but prepared medicines ordered 

from Christiania were not. The pharmacy was put up for sale in order to 

satisfy the creditors, and on 26 August, 1846, it was bought at auction by 

a man from Christiania named Ole Andreas Haanshus. 

By that time a calamity had befallen the pharmacist’s young apprentice. 

In the winter of 1845-46, one of the maids at the pharmacy, a woman 

named Else Sophie Jensdatter, became pregnant. She was from a farm in 

Birkedal, about 20 miles inland, and she went home before the child was 

born. On 9 October, 1846, she was delivered of a baby boy, who was 

christened Hans Jacob Henriksen. In a complaint received on 25 November 

by the local county court, Else named Henrik Ibsen as the father. 

92 The magistrate, Johan Casper Preus, in turn asked Ibsen to submit 

a statement in answer to the alleged paternity, including information 

about his economic circumstances that would be used to determine the 

amount of support payments. Ibsen’s response has recently come to 

light: 

51

52 

Judge Preus: 

Required by Your Honor to explain whether I admit or 

deny being the father of a male child born to the maid Else 

Sophie Jensdatter Birkedalen, who at baptism the 25th of October 

last was called Hans Jacob, I must herewith respectfully 

state that despite the girl's intimacy at the time in question 

with other men [Mandspersoner] as well, I dare not definitely 

disclaim the aforementioned paternity, since unfortunately 

I have had physical intercourse with her, to which her 

tempting behavior and simultaneous service with me at the 

home of Pharmacist Reimann in equal degrees gave opportunity. 

I am now in my twentieth year; own nothing at all, except 

some shabby clothes, footwear and linen, and shall in a short 

time leave Grimstad Pharmacy, where I have supported myself 

as an apprentice, and accordingly without any other income 

than meals and the aforementioned necessities, since 

the summer of 1843. My still-living father, whom I am obliged 

for the time being to leave, is one of the lesser businessmen 

in Skien and finds himself in the most indifferent circumstances. 

Grimstad the 7th of December, 1846. 

Respectfully, Henr. Ibsen. 93 

There are several inaccuracies in the letter. In the first place, Ibsen 

had not been living in Grimstad since the summer of 1843, but rather 

since January of 1844. In the second place, at the time he wrote the 

letter he was not in his twentieth year, but rather in his nineteenth, that 

is, he was eighteen years old. If he thought he had something to gain by 

overstating either the length of his service or his age, it is not clear what 

that might have been, so these errors were possibly inadvertent, but their 

presence allows one to wonder whether any other statements in the letter 

are incorrect as well. 

It is not necessary to accept his characterization of Else’s behavior as 

“tempting” in order to understand that living conditions in the pharmacy 

were conducive to inappropriate intimacies. In addition to their apprentice, 

the Reimanns employed and housed two maids. When Ibsen got out 

of bed at night to answer the door, he had to pass through the room where 

the maids slept, since there was no other access to the stairs. On weekends 

one of the maids, Marie, whose family lived nearby, usually went

6. The building which housed Reimann’s Pharmacy as it is today, photograph. The Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum 

53

home, so Else was there alone. She was Ibsen’s husmor, which meant 

that she was responsible for looking after his personal needs, like the 

laundering and mending of his clothes. Their enforced proximity could 

have led to repeated acts of intimacy for the two years they were together 

in the pharmacy. Such activity on Ibsen’s part would have been unlike 

his customary behavior both before and after this time, which was highly 

reserved, even withdrawn. It is therefore at least equally possible that 

Else simply offered him warmth on a few cold nights when he climbed 

the steep stairs from the shop after waiting on a late customer, or that she 

made herself available to him for other reasons. 

Else had grown up on a farm, but when she left home she had joined 

a class of itinerant servants who worked in private homes or businesses 

for a year or more before they married and set up their own households. 

She may have left the farm in the first place in order to improve her 

chances of finding a husband. At the time in question, however, she was 

27 years old and still unmarried. A woman of her age and station had few 

chances of marrying, and therefore she could look forward only to continued 

employment as a domestic servant, unless she could find a better 

position. She was illiterate, however. She must have known that the 

pharmacist was in financial difficulties, and that these could jeopardize 

the position she had. She might therefore have entertained some hope of 

finding security in a relationship with the intelligent young apprentice. 

It was not unheard-of for young women from agricultural families to become 

pregnant before marriage; it could be regarded as a sign of 

productivity. 

Ibsen’s letter to the court states that he thought she had been intimate 

with other men at the time she became pregnant. The term he 

used, Mandspersoner, usually indicates male persons not known to the 

speaker or writer, and is often derogatory. In any event, Ibsen accepted 

legal responsibility in an ambiguous situation, but there was nothing 

ambiguous about the penalty. In a resolution dated 18 December the 

court required him to pay maintenance for the child until its fifteenth 

birthday. 94 This misfortune was traumatic for the young Ibsen and left 

its mark on his literary works, most famously in the portrait of the Green 

Woman and her son in Peer Gynt, but also in many other references to 

illegitimacy and its consequences. The immediate result of his disgrace 

was that he was barred from access to the better families in Grimstad, so 

that he felt not only isolated in the community but also alienated from it, 

déclassé. At the same time, he was regarded with admiration by some of 

the other young men of the town because he was sexually experienced. 

54

About a month after the paternity suit was resolved, on 13 January, 

1847, Ibsen took the certification examination in pharmacy at Arendal, a 

town about twelve miles up the coast from Grimstad. Following is an 

anecdote recorded by Hans Eitrem about the day Ibsen was to take that 

exam: 

One of the small boys who shared a room with him has 

told me that he can well remember the day Henrik left for 

Arendal in a sleigh, in crackling cold and snowy weather. The 

one who was driving could recall only one thing from the 

journey: the little fellow was so terrified, so scared to death, 

that the driver had to laugh. They drove over a [frozen] lake. 

The ice thundered as it usually does in extreme cold. Then 

Ibsen was seized by panic, got out of the sleigh and escaped 

to land. He was not willing to sit again until horse and sleigh 

had crossed the ice. 95 

Ibsen must have been anxious about the exam he was going to take, 

whose outcome would affect whether or not he could keep his job when 

the pharmacy was transferred to its new owner. One cannot blame him 

for being frightened at the booming of the ice, and for abandoning a vehicle 

in whose progress he had lost confidence. He had enough to worry 

about that day without having to imagine himself sinking into the freezing 

water under the ice. 

The pharmacy was soon sold again, this time to a resident of Grimstad 

named Lars Nielsen, who had been Reimann’s apprentice several years 

earlier, and who was barely four years older than Ibsen himself. The 

pharmacy was transferred to Nielsen's ownership on 21 February, 1847, 

and he was granted a pharmacist's license a month later. The furnishings 

and equipment from the pharmacy in Storgaten were moved to 

Østregate 13, in a different part of the town. [See Illustration 9.] 

Ibsen moved too, and in the next three years his living conditions 

were better in every respect. He was no longer merely an apprentice, 

but now a pharmacist's assistant, with a small salary. He had his own 

room, with a stove, a bed and a table, which during the daytime was part 

of the shop, but which at night he had to himself, since his employer did 

not live on the premises. Even at the new pharmacy, however, he still 

had to be on duty every day except Sunday. In the evenings and on 

Sundays he was free to read, study, and write. 

55

Early literary efforts 

Under the new arrangement, Ibsen’s morning and evening meals were 

brought to him, but he regularly ate the midday meal at the nearby home 

of his new employer's parents, Niels Peter and Ida Katrine Nielsen. 

Georgina Crawfurd, an elderly unmarried lady originally from Scotland, 

was a friend of theirs, and she often had lunch there, too. 96 She befriended 

the young man and used to lend him books from her family's 

library. 97 Perhaps in gratitude for this kindness, he gave her some of his 

poems in manuscript before he left Grimstad. Her great-nephew, Jens 

Pharo Crawfurd, who was a boy of 12-14 years at the time he knew Ibsen, 

reported to Eitrem in 1909 that he had often carried books between his 

aunt and Ibsen. 98 Only a few books old enough to have been in Grimstad 

in the 1840s survive today, but they include plays by Lessing, Goethe, 

and Schiller in German, and by Shakespeare in English. 99 

In the summer or fall of 1847, Ibsen began to study for the university 

entrance examination. He had to abandon his plan to take a preliminary 

exam that would have allowed him to pursue accreditation as a medical 

practitioner, because that avenue was closed by the Storting (the Norwegian 

parliament) in 1845 when it changed the rules, and required everyone 

to take the university entrance exam, which was called the examen 

artium. 100 The most serious consequence for him of this change was that 

it meant he would have to prepare for exams in Latin and Greek. 

There was no secondary school in Grimstad, and even if there had 

been, Ibsen could not have attended it because of his job. He was therefore 

in the position of having to learn on his own the subjects to be tested. 

There was some latitude in the choice of subjects, but not much; those 

on his syllabus were: Modersmaalet (i.e., native language), French, German, 

Latin (written, oral, and translation), Greek, religion, history, and 

arithmetic. As a boy in Skien he had been exposed to all of these subjects 

except Greek and arithmetic, and these were the two subjects he would 

fail when he came to take the exam in August of 1850. 

At about the same time that he began preparing for the artium, that is, 

during the fall of 1847, he also began to write poetry, or at any rate to 

keep copies of some of the poetry he was writing. 101 Before he left Grimstad 

he collected twenty-six poems in a notebook under the title "Blandede 

Digtninger fra Aarene 1848, 1849, 1850" (“Mixed Poems from the years 

1848, 1849, 1850”). He hoped to publish the collection once he got to 

Christiania, but he was not successful, and only two of the poems were 

56

published in his lifetime, both while he lived in Grimstad, and both in 

Christiania-Posten. 102 Most of the poems collected in “Mixed Poems” were 

written during his last year in Grimstad (1849-50), but four lyrics survive 

from the time before he wrote his first play, Catilina, in the winter of 

1848-49. The first of these, "Resignation," bears the date 1847: 

Er de Glimt fra Sjælens Dunkle, 

Der igjennem Mulmet brød, 

Og som Lynblink monne funkle 

Kun til evig Glemsel født? -- 

Var forgjæves al min Higen, 

Var min Drøm kuns et Fantom, 

Er mig nægtet Sjælens Stigen, 

Var min Digten kold og tom! -- 

Tier da I Undertoner! -- 

Kan jeg eder ei forstaa, -- 

Lad mig iblandt Millioner 

Leve glemt og glemt forgaa! -- -- -- 

[Are you glimmers from the dark of the soul, that broke 

through the dense darkness, and that sparkle like a lightning 

flash, born merely to be forgotten forever? Were all my yearnings 

futile, was my dream just a phantom, is the soul's ascent 

denied me, was my poetry cold and empty! Be silent, then, 

you undertones! If I cannot understand you, let me among 

millions live forgotten and forgotten die!] 103 

Despite the brevity of this poem, its argument is complex and may be 

summarized as follows: the speaker wants to know if the fleeting images 

that emerge from what we would call his unconscious mind are destined 

only for oblivion. In a series of rhetorical questions he poses four dilemmas: 

what if his longing to create is futile; what if his dream of poetic 

achievement is just an illusion; what if "the soul's ascent" (the poet's 

idealizing gesture) is impossible for him; and finally, and probably as a 

result of the first three dilemmas, what if his writing is without feeling? 

In the last four lines, the speaker appears to state the implications of 

defeat: he orders the "undertones" (the undercurrents of feeling) to be 

silent, because if he cannot understand them or make out what they 

mean, he would rather lose himself in the mass of humanity and die 

forgotten. 

57

Where could a 19-year-old in Grimstad in 1847 have acquired the conception 

of poetry that undergirds this poem? We do not know this, but it 

might have been from an anthology for Modersmaalet published in 1846 

by Henning Junghans Thue, a man who had been raised in Grimstad and 

educated at the university. 104 From 1844 to 1848 he served as the principal 

of a school in Arendal. 

Ibsen could have acquired a copy of Thue's anthology from a number 

of different people. As a boy growing up in Grimstad, Thue had been a 

pupil of the schoolmaster Anders Isachsen. While he was living in Arendal, 

he used come to Grimstad to visit his family, and at times he also visited 

his former teacher. Isachsen would probably have had at least one copy 

of his accomplished former pupil's anthology; he might even have used it 

as a textbook, although not in the working-class school. On alternate 

days he conducted a borgerskole (“middle-class school”) at the Dahlske 

Skole, which offered instruction to students whose parents were able to 

pay. As a boy Thue had received instruction in English from "a certain 

English lady," 105 who was probably Miss Crawfurd. If so, he could have 

visited her as well, and she might have been able to supply Ibsen with a 

copy of Thue's anthology. Ibsen's Latin tutor, Emil Bie, was a cousin of 

Thue’s, and was certainly acquainted with him. It is not impossible that 

Ibsen even met and talked with Thue himself, either at the pharmacy or 

on one of his Sunday strolls up to Fjære church, since the Thues lived on 

a farm at Frivold, on the way. By some accounts, one of Ibsen’s tutors in 

Grimstad was Søren Christian Monrad, a theology student at the university 

and the younger brother of the university professor Marcus J. 

Monrad. 106 Both brothers had been at university with Thue and had travelled 

with him later on the continent. 107 S. C. Monrad might have supplied 

Ibsen with a copy of Thue’s anthology, especially if he was helping 

him to prepare for the examination in composition. 

Ibsen would have had to have a textbook of some kind in composition. 

One that had been published by a man who was teaching nearby in Arendal, 

and who had family and friends in Grimstad, would have been the one 

most likely to be accessible to him. The fact that Ibsen wrote many different 

types of lyric poetry in the early period shows that he was thinking 

about poetry in terms of its different types, and experimenting with these 

types to see what he could do with them. Thue's anthology is organized 

according to genres and has several sections devoted to lyric poetry, with 

Oplysninger ("clarifications") at the beginning of each of the sections, so 

the book could have served Ibsen as a useful guide. Following is a translation 

of the first paragraph of the first of Thue's "clarifications": 

58

By the term Art one understands the ability to present 

soul-images in a sensuously comprehensible way; he who 

possesses this ability is called an Artist, and what he produces 

by its help, a Work of Art. Accordingly, to every work of art 

belong two things, namely, first a soul-image which shall be 

presented (this is called the art-work’s Idea), and next a means 

whereby the idea is presented and somehow embodied; this 

is called the art-work’s Form. The idea is an image of some 

reality created in the soul, but such an image, in which this 

reality impresses itself, not directly, but under an ennobled 

and perfected figure; the reality which in that way ennobles 

and perfects itself in the idea constitutes the art-work’s Subject. 

The idea arises in the soul in such a way that something 

pertaining to reality makes an impression on the feeling; this 

feeling develops with the help of the imagination into a complete 

soul-image; then when this soul-image is dressed in a 

sensible form, it becomes a work of art. Harmony or agreement 

must take place between idea and form, which like soul 

and body are fused into one; since herein lies the art-work’s 

Beauty. Art has no other purpose than to give a sensible form 

to ideas which create themselves in the soul, and thereby to 

produce beauty; if a work of art has another purpose beyond 

this, for example to teach or in general to be useful, then it is 

only partly or relatively a work of art. 108 

If Ibsen had read and thought about this passage, his first poem could 

be interpreted as a response to it, in which the speaker asks: given Thue's 

definition of art in general, and of poetry in particular, am I in any way 

able to participate in the creative activity? Can the images that arise 

from my soul be captured and shaped into form "in a sensuously comprehensible 

way," or are they destined to be forgotten? The title of the poem 

is apt, in that if the creative activity is beyond the reach or ability of the 

speaker, he might as well "resign," i.e., abandon such activity entirely, 

and lose himself in the masses of humanity. 

At about the same time that he began to save some of his lyric poems, 

Ibsen wrote a series of practice essays in preparation for the exam in 

composition. These he sent in a notebook to a reader in Christiania named 

Paul Stub. 109 The first of the three essays which survive, “Om Vigtigheden 

af Selvkundskab” ("On the importance of self-knowledge"), bears the date 

of 3 February, 1848; all three essays are in the same notebook, so they 

59

probably all date from about the same time. The first essay includes two 

ideas that were to be of permanent significance in Ibsen's thought: it is 

necessary to be honest about one's own nature, even one's moral failings, 

and the goal of life is the development of one's full potential. The second 

essay, “Arbeide har Lønnen i sig selv” ("Labor is its own reward"), turns 

the assigned topic to the subject of altruism, arguing that spiritual endeavor 

is also a kind of labor, and that only through the exercise of one's 

abilities can one develop them. This essay continues the theme of the 

importance of self-development. The third essay, “Hvorfor bør en Nation 

søge at bevare sine Forfædres Sprog og Minder?” ("Why should a 

nation seek to preserve the language and memory of its ancestors?"), 

argues that tradition is the inheritance of the achievements of the past, 

and that it is the responsibility of the present generation to preserve and 

carry forward this inheritance. This essay shows Ibsen's love of history, 

and his recognition of the importance of assimilating one's tradition. 

Ibsen's second surviving poem, and the first of three from 1848, is 

entitled "Ved Havet" ("By the Sea"): 

60 

Skummende Bølge 

Med kamplysten Hu! 

Hvo mægter dig følge? 

Hvor stævner du nu? 

Hvo mægter vel hæmme 

Din stormende Hast? 

Hvo dig at tæmme, 

At holde dig fast! 

Lig Yngling i vilde 

Stormfulde Dyst 

Mod Klippen at spille 

Var stedse din Lyst. 

Dog midt i din striden, 

Midt i din Harm, 

Din Søblomme liden 

Dig vinker til Barm! 

Ak, flygtig er Stunden; -- 

Din Storhed som den! -- 

Din Kraft er forsvunden, 

Da synker nu hen! --

See Grave dig vente 

I Klippernes Rift, -- 

Ha, Bølge! saa endte 

Din Drøm om Bedrift! 

O! bland kun din Klage 

Med Brændingens Sang! -- 

Hvad er vel tilbage! -- 

Ei Mindet engang! 

Thi mens i dets Himmel 

Du drømmer dig gjemt, 

I Bølgernes Vrimmel 

Du længst er forglemt! -- -- -- 

[Foaming wave with battle-loving mind! Who is able to 

follow you? Where are you heading now? Who is able to 

restrain your stormy rush? Who to tame you, to hold you 

fast! 

Like a youth in wild tumultuous brawl, your desire was 

always to play against the cliff. Yet in the midst of your 

struggle, in the midst of your anger, you beckon the little seaflower 

to your breast! 

The moment is fleeting; like your greatness! Your force 

has vanished, then you sink down! See, a grave awaits you in 

a break in the cliffs. Ha, wave! So ended your dream of 

achievement! 

Only mingle your lament with the breakers' song! What 

is left behind? Not even the memory! Because while in its 

heaven i your dreams preserve you, in the tumult of the waves 

you are long since forgotten!] 

This poem is a nature lyric, the poetic equivalent of a landscape painting. 

Norway's leading lyric poet in 1848 was Johan Sebastian Welhaven, 

who had written two nature lyrics with the title "Ved Havet." 110 Ibsen 

i i.e., the heaven of memory. 

61

might have used either or both of them in composing his poem. Here is 

just the first of them: 

62 

Der voxer ingen Busk paa denne Klippe; 

Dens Væg er lodret mod de dybe Vande, 

herfra mod Vest du øiner ingen Strande; 

her alle Skranker, all Grændser slippe. 

Hvor kjøligt vifter Luften over Voven, 

og letter kvægende dig Stoffets Lænker, 

mens Dagens Stjerne sig i Havet sænker, 

og Aftenstjernen tænder sig foroven. 

O, see den stille, deilige Forsoning, 

hvor Hav og Himmel mod hinanden gløde, 

og begges Grændser i det ømme Møde, 

forsvinde i en purpurvarm Fortoning. 

Saaledes daler i dit varme Indre 

en himmelsk Anelse, mens Hjertet bæver; 

du veed ei om den vandrer eller svæver, 

og Rummets Ørken kan ei meer dig hindre. 

Nu Havet aander slumrende. Hvor ømme 

henglide dog dets sommerlune Vover; 

thi nu har Himlen gydt sin Mildhed over 

dets underbare, vexelfulde Drømme. 

Dog drager endnu i den dybe Stilhed 

et dæmpet Drøn, en Sukken gjennem Rummet, 

og seer du, hisset glimter Bølgeskummet; 

og bruser endnu med den gamle Vildhed. 

Du aner, at en Klippebanke skjuler 

sin mørke Jettekrop, hvor Bølgen fraader; 

du veed ei, hvilken Trolddomsmagt der raader 

i denne Klippes hemmelige Huler. 

Ak, selv du bærer paa en lønlig Smerte – 

om Himlens Klarhed over Barmen daler,

om Haab og Kjærlighed din Kummer svaler, 

den voxer dog fra Bunden af dit Hjerte. 111 

[No bush grows on this cliff; its wall is perpendicular to 

the deep water. From here westward you see no beach; here 

all barriers, all borders stop. 

How cool the breeze wafts over the wave, and refreshingly 

releases you from the shackles of your body, while the 

day-star sinks in the sea, and the evening star kindles overhead. 

O, see the silent, beautiful union, where sea and sky make 

each other glow, and their border disappears in the tender 

meeting as a warm purple haze. 

Thus a divine impulse sinks into your warm inner being, 

while the heart trembles; you do not know whether you are 

walking or gliding, and the desolation of the place can no 

longer hinder you. 

Now the sea breathes as if asleep. Yet how gently its summer-warm 

waves glide away, since now the sky has poured 

its mildness over its wonderful, changing dream. 

Yet still a muffled roar breathes in the deep silence, a sigh 

through the place; and you see the sea-foam flashing yonder, 

and rushing still with the old wildness. 

You guess that where the wave is foaming a cliff conceals 

its dark giant's body; you do not know what magic power reigns 

in this cliff's secret caves. 

You yourself are harboring a secret pain: whether heaven's 

brightness will descend upon your bosom, whether hope and 

love will cool your sorrow, - it rises still from the depths of 

your heart.] 

It is possible that Ibsen borrowed the "soul-image" (in Thue’s sense of 

the term) of Welhaven's poem, a wave breaking against a cliff. The events 

63

of the two poems are quite different, however. In Welhaven's poem the 

landscape itself is the subject, and the reason for describing it is to evoke 

a mood of melancholy reflection in the reader. In Ibsen's poem, by contrast, 

the speaker challenges the landscape, addressing the wave as if it 

has a mind of its own and a lust for action. The speaker in his poem is 

aware of how quickly a wave's life is over. Whatever a wave might imagine, 

whether dreams of achievement or memories, the fate of all 

imaginings is oblivion. 

If it is the case that Ibsen used Welhaven's poetic landscape, he set it 

to a completely different feeling. Where the mood in Welhaven's poem is 

quiet and melancholy, in Ibsen's it is urgent, troubled, even frightened. 

It is interesting to compare the viewpoint in his first two poems, where 

the speaker expresses his doubt and anxiety, with that in his first two 

essays, written at about the same time, where Ibsen stresses the importance 

of self-knowledge and self-development. How can one develop 

oneself when all human aspirations are doomed to oblivion? These early 

pieces in poetry and prose have themes that become part of the writer’s 

permanent concerns, but they appear here only in embryo. They are 

sketches of landmarks in what will become his characteristic poetic landscape, 

whose main theme he described many years later as “the clash of 

ability and aspirations, of will and possibility, at once the tragedy and 

comedy of mankind and of the individual.” 112 

Ibsen's third poem has a religious theme. Unlike the first poem, which 

has no landscape, and the second poem, which takes place outdoors, the 

third poem takes place indoors, and during a storm. It is entitled "Tvivl 

og Haab" ("Doubt and Hope"): 

64 

Ha, hvilken Nat, saa rædsom, mørk! 

Derude stormer det! -- -- -- 

Som Løvens Brøl i vildsom Ørk 

Hør Stormens Aandedræt! -- 

Ha, komme I fra Dødens Dal, 

I Skygger hist, som gaa 

Lig Aander over natlig Val 

I Skygevandter graa? -- -- 

Og disse Tordenstemmers Klang 

I denne Midnatsstund! -- -- 

Som Mørkets vilde Seierssang, 

Som Dommedags Basun! --

O, Mangengang jeg spottet har 

Med Dommedagens Gru, -- 

Ha, Frugten, denne Haanen bar, 

Er vild Fortvivlen nu! -- -- 

Forlængst, forlængst, mens Barn jeg var 

Min Aftenbøn saa glad 

Til Himlens Gud for Mo’r og Fa’er 

Og søskend smaa, jeg bad; -- 

Men længst, ak, længst det er forbi, -- 

Jeg har min Bøn forglemt, 

Ei meer jeg søger Trøst deri, 

Er ei til Andagt stemt! -- -- -- 

Ha, svage Sjæl! saa skjælver du 

For disse Tordenbrag? -- -- 

Du troer i denne Stormnats Gru 

At skue Dommedag, -- 

Den Dag, som aldrig komme vil, -- 

Saa lød jo tit dit Ord; 

Og paa den Gud, du beder til, 

Forlængst du selv ei troer! -- -- 

Ha, Dæmon, er du atter vakt? -- 

Vig fra mig Frister fæl! 

O, som Orkaners vilde Jagt 

Det stormer i min Sjæl, -- -- 

Og ingen Leder, ingen Vei 

I dette Tvivlens Hav! -- -- 

Gud! For en barnlig Bøn til dig 

Al jordisk Kløgt jeg gav! -- -- 

Men ak, jeg er ei Barn meer, 

Og har ei Barnets Sind! -- 

For Veien, Uskyldsøiet seer 

I Troen, er jeg blind! -- 

O, rædselsfuld er denne Nat, 

Af Lynet kuns belyst, -- 

Og dog den er et Dagskjær klart 

Mod Mulmet i mit Bryst! -- 

65

66 

Dog end fortvivle vil jeg ei, 

Men følge Hjertets Bud: 

Til Haabet vil jeg klynge mig, 

Til Troen paa min Gud! -- 

Lad hyle kun Orkanens Sang, -- 

Jeg slumrer ind til Ro, 

Forvist jeg vaagne skal engang 

Gjenfødt med barnlig Tro. -- -- -- 

[What a night, so frightful, dark! A gale is blowing out 

there! Like the lion's roar in a desolate wilderness, hear the 

storm's breathing! Do you come from death's valley, you shadows 

yonder, you gray-shrouded spirits who walk like ghosts 

across a battlefield at night? 

These thunderous voices sound in this midnight hour like 

the darkness' wild victory song, like doomsday's bassoon! 

Many times I have scoffed at the terror of doomsday; the fruit 

this insult bore is wild despair now! 

Long, long ago, when I was a child, I made my evening 

prayer so gladly to God in heaven for mother and father and 

siblings small: but that was over long ago, I have forgotten 

my prayer, I no longer seek consolation there, I am not disposed 

to piety! 

Tossing soul! do you tremble so at these thunderclaps? In 

the terror of this stormy night you believe you will see doomsday, 

that day that never will come, thus your words often ran; 

and it has been a long time since you believed in that God 

you are praying to! 

Demon, j are you awakened again? Depart from me, horrid 

tempter! Like the hurricane's wild chase it storms in my 

soul, and no guide, no path in this sea of doubt! God! I would 

give all worldly cunning for a childlike prayer to you! 

j i.e., the demon of doubt.

But I am a child no more, nor have a child's mind! I am 

blind to the path the innocent eye sees in faith! This night is 

terrifying, illuminated only by the lightning, and yet it is as 

bright as day compared to the darkness in my breast! 

Yet I shall not despair, but follow the heart's command: I 

shall cling to hope, to faith in my God! Let the hurricane's 

song howl, I slumber in peace; certain I shall awaken again 

reborn with childlike faith.] 

The theme of a young man lost in a storm was a familiar one in the 

poetry of the time. Henrik Bjerregaard, a poet from the previous generation, 

had written a poem called "Ynglingen i Stormnatten" (“Youth in the 

Stormy Night”), whose main character, an outcast for some unnamed 

crime, ends by falling or jumping off a cliff. The shadowy figures seen in 

Ibsen’s poem are reminiscent of figures in Welhaven’s “Asgaardsreien,” a 

poem which was included in Thue’s anthology: 

Lydt gjennem Luften i Natten farer 

et Tog paa skummende sorte Heste. 

I Stormgang drage de vilde Skarer; 

de have kun Skyer til Fodefæste. 

Det gaaer over Dal, over Vang og Hei, 

gjennem Mulm og Veir; de endse det ei. 

Vandreren kaster sig ræd paa Veien. 

Hør hvilket Gny – det er Asgaardsreien! 113 

[Resoundingly through the night air rushes a procession 

on foaming black horses. In time of storm the wild bands 

move; they have only clouds as a foothold. It [i.e., the storm] 

goes over valley, over meadow and heath, through dense darkness 

and wind; they pay it no heed. The terrified wanderer 

throws himself down on the road. Hear what a clamor--it is 

Asgaardsreien! k ] 

While both poems evoke supernatural figures of death and the sounds 

and sights of a storm, the figures in Ibsen’s poem do not ride horses in 

k A company of dead spirits on horseback who ride through the air, especially at Christmastime, 

sweeping human beings along with them. 

67

the sky but rather “walk like ghosts across a battlefield at night.” The 

speaker in Ibsen's poem is spiritually lost, the stormy weather a reflection 

of his inner torment. The poem contains several echoes of biblical 

language, suggesting that Ibsen continued to read the Bible in Grimstad, 

just as he had done in Skien. Terms like “death’s valley” and “doomsday’s 

bassoon” could have been taken from the apocalyptic imagery in the Bible. 

For that matter, a landscape that could be described as “death’s valley” 

had earlier appeared in a classroom essay he had written in Skien. 114 The 

speaker says at one point that he no longer believes in God but at the end 

maintains that he will cling to the hope that when he awakens his childlike 

faith will have been restored. 

It is legitimate to wonder whether the religious ambivalence in “Doubt 

and Hope” has anything to do with the possibility that Ibsen visited his 

family in Skien during the Summer of 1848. 115 The contrast between the 

speaker's present doubt, and the faith that he recalls from his childhood, 

might have been influenced by fresh impressions of home, or by the 

anticipation of them. Both Ibsen’s mother and his sister Hedvig had become 

involved in the pietistic movement in Skien led by the preacher 

Gustav Adolph Lammers; his father had not. His parents' growing estrangement, 

which was emphasized by their religious differences, must 

have been disturbing for their eldest son. He had almost certainly lost 

the approval of his parents when he fathered an illegitimate child, and he 

might have felt that his mother’s religiosity placed a further barrier between 

them. 

All three of Ibsen’s earliest poems portray states of anxiety, even of 

despair. They might be read to suggest that he was experiencing an emotional 

crisis. It is perhaps more plausible, however, to suppose that his 

crisis, if any, had come earlier, in 1846-47, when his circumstances were 

truly adverse. By the time he was able to write about his state-of-mind, or 

at any rate, by the time he saved anything he had written, he was already 

better off: he had a salary, three meals a day, and a plan to attend the 

university once his apprenticeship had been completed. 

Ibsen and Scandinavianism 

Ibsen’s fourth poem, "Kjæmpeégen" ("The Giant Oak Tree"), was written 

in response to the dispute between Denmark and Germany over possession 

of the southern Danish provinces of Schleswig and Holstein: 

68

Høiest i Nord stod en Kjæmpeég, -- 

I Hedenold var den oprunden; -- 

Saa herlig dens Krone mod Himmelen stég 

Og Rod slog den dybest i Grunden. – 

De mægtige Grene, de frodige Skud 

Den bredte fra Nordpol til Eideren ud, 

Den skyggede stolt over Sveas Lande 

Og kransede Vesterhavs klippede Strande! -- 

Men Tidens Storme mod Kjæmpen foer, 

Den mægtige Stamme de knuste, 

Og over det splittede, sjunkne Nor 

Som Gravsange voldsomt de bruste, 

Og Østens rovgjærrige Ørne saae 

Med lystne Blik over Codans Blaa, 

Mens Tydsken strakte sin Haand efter Byttet, 

Der laa, som en Døende, ubeskyttet! -- -- 

Dog spirende Skud den Knuste bar, -- -- 

Let Gnisten vorder til Flamme! -- 

De Unge mindes, hvad Gubben var, -- 

Gad gjerne vorde det samme. – 

Snart søge den Skilte sin Broder igjen, 

Og række ham Haanden som trofast Ven, -- 

Snart vorde de Eet, snart smelte de sammen, 

Som Vinternats Himmel med Nordlysflammen! 

[In the farthest North stood a giant oak; its origins were in 

heathen times; its glorious crown rose towards heaven, and 

its roots struck deep into the earth. Its mighty boughs, its 

vigorous shoots it spread from the North Pole to the Eider, l 

proudly shaded the land of the Swedes, and crowned the Western 

sea's [the Atlantic Ocean’s] rocky shores! 

But the storms of time moved against the giant; they 

crushed its mighty trunk, and over that split, sunken Nor [goddess 

of the north] they roared violently like a funeral song, 

and the East's [Russia’s] ravenous eagle looked across the blue 

l A river which today is in Germany, but which then was considered by the so-called “Eider Danes” to 

be the limit beyond which German expansion should not be allowed. 

69

70 

Codan [the Baltic Sea] with a covetous eye, while the German 

stretched his hand towards its prey, which lay, like one dying, 

unprotected! 

Yet the crushed tree bore sprouting shoots, the living spark 

grows easily into a flame! Youth remembers what the 

graybeard was, and is readily disposed to grow the same. Those 

separated soon seek their brother again, and extend their hand 

to him like a faithful friend; soon they shall be united, soon 

they shall fuse together, like the Northern Lights' flame in a 

winter night's sky!] 

This poem contains a message or, more precisely, a prophecy: like 

the regeneration of an ancient tree, the sense of community of Scandinavians 

will be reborn and shine like the Northern Lights. The oak tree is a 

symbol of the ancient unity of Scandinavian culture; the reach of its 

branches shows the geographical extent of that culture. The fact that the 

tree grew far in the North may be an allusion to the theory propounded 

by Peter Andreas Munch that the Norwegians entered Norway from the 

North and are the most ancient and “purest” of the Nordic races, as well 

as the authors of the saga literature: 

The northern Teutons had wandered northward from the 

Volga region through Russia and up into Finland. A smaller 

group, “the weaker branch of the stock,” had crossed the Gulf 

of Bothnia and settled down in Sweden. The rest had found 

their way around the Gulf of Bothnia, and from there had 

spread out southward into Norway. 116 

A version of this theory had been published by Munch in a textbook 

that was used in one of the schools in Skien. 117 If Ibsen was alluding to 

this theory, he does not appear to have been interested at that time in its 

racial aspects, but rather in the idea that Nordic culture was once great 

and could be so again, were it united. 118 This is the central idea of Ibsen’s 

poem and the fundamental tenet of Scandinavianism. 

It seems clear that in this poem Ibsen supports the idea of 

Scandinavianism, not merely as a matter of ethnic pride but also as the 

best defense against the threats represented by Russia and Germany. 

This poem is the earliest evidence of Ibsen's interest in Scandinavianism, 

an ideology with which he was to be associated at various periods for the 

rest of his life. 119

Scandinavianism began in the early nineteenth century, perhaps most 

obviously in the writings of the Dane Adam Oehlenschlæger, who both in 

poetry and plays portrayed Scandinavia as a primordial unity, which once 

was glorious, and could be so again. This idea was part of the intellectual 

climate during the period of Romanticism, in which each emerging European 

state investigated its cultural origins as part of its search for a national 

identity. 120 Norwegians were aware that they were the least impressive 

of the three Scandinavian kingdoms in the nineteenth century, 

and the notions that they were the oldest and had been the most distinguished 

in ancient times were gratifying to their national pride. As research 

unearthed a store of uniquely Scandinavian literature, including 

sagas, legends, ballads, and folk tales, the recognition of a common cultural 

heritage gave impetus to the related idea of a political union. This 

idea was appealing to some Scandinavians, partly because of the vulnerability 

they felt as pawns in the realignment of Europe after the Napoleonic 

Wars. 

For almost 400 years prior to 1814, Norway had been administered as 

a province of Denmark. During the Napoleonic Wars, however, Denmark, 

as a neutral power, was trading with both sides. To prevent its 

supplying Napoleon, the English fleet shelled Copenhagen in 1807 and 

confiscated the Danish fleet. This action drove Denmark into the French 

camp. When the wars ended, Norway was taken away from Denmark 

and assigned to Sweden in the Treaty of Kiel, a treaty which was negotiated 

without Norway’s participation or consent. The Norwegians were 

allowed by the Swedish monarch to keep the constitution they had just 

written at Eidsvoll, but they were required under the threat of military 

force to accept union with Sweden. 

The idea of a triple Scandinavian union was supported by statesmen 

in all three countries, mainly because they believed that the imperial 

ambitions of larger states like Russia and Germany could more effectively 

be dealt with strategically from a position as a larger state. Throughout 

the first half of the nineteenth century, this idea was pursued at the 

highest levels of government, generally as a search for a common succession 

between the royal houses of Sweden and Denmark. Union was pursued 

with more or less energy depending on the ambitions of individual 

monarchs, as well as on the political situation at any given time in 

Scandinavia and among the larger powers. France and England tended 

to support in principle a triple union as a buffer against Russia, which for 

its part opposed the idea. Before Germany was unified, its potential influence 

was not focussed in any given direction. As its unification pro- 

71

gressed, however, the dispute over the appropriate national allegiance of 

the southern Danish provinces became a symptom of what Scandinavians 

feared would be a German expansion northwards into the Danish 

peninsula of Jutland, which controlled the entrance to the Baltic Sea. 

The situation in the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein was complicated 

by the fact that both had numerous German-speaking residents 

who would happily have been part of Germany. 

Scandinavianism was not merely a political program but also an ideology, 

a belief system. Different people responded to this ideology in 

different ways. For example, Nicolay Wergeland, who was the parish 

priest at Eidsvoll at the time the constitutional convention was held there 

in 1814, was strongly anti-Danish, because he felt that Norway had suffered 

in its 400-year union with Denmark, and therefore he could not be 

in favor of a political union that included Denmark. 121 His son Henrik, 

Norway’s greatest lyric poet, was nationalistic and a populist, but after 

meeting the Swedish king he expressed his support for the Scandinavian 

ideal. 

Johan Sebastian Welhaven, who opposed Henrik Wergeland in a famous 

press debate in the 1830s, had published a series of sonnets in 1834 

entitled Norges Dæmring (“Norway’s Dawn”), in which he advocated 

Norway’s breaking out of its cultural isolation and renewing its contacts 

with the Danish tradition. He was politically a conservative and an advocate 

of cultural Scandinavianism. M. J. Monrad, who was to become 

Norway’s most important literary critic, had published a long article entitled 

“The Scandinavian Idea” in Morgenbladet in September 1844. 122 It 

might have been from such a source that Ibsen first became aware of the 

movement. Monrad supported Scandinavianism culturally but thought 

it was premature to advocate a political union before Norway was able to 

stand on an equal footing with the other two kingdoms. Both Welhaven 

and Monrad would be Ibsen’s teachers during the year he spent at the 

university in Christiania (1850-51). 

In the 1840s Scandinavianism was most active among students at the 

universities in the three kingdoms. These were at Christiania, Copenhagen, 

Lund, and Uppsala. All of these cities hosted meetings attended 

by students from the other universities. In 1851 Ibsen recited a poem, 

“Til Danmark,” at the meeting of students held in Christiania, which is in 

much the same spirit as “The Giant Oak Tree.” 

An individual’s support of Scandinavianism often depended on his 

place in society. Members of the bureaucracy in Norway were often 

Scandinavianists, because they were appointed by the crown and per- 

72

ceived the augmentation of the royal power as an augmentation of their 

own. Norwegian farmers, on the other hand, often took little interest in 

international issues and preferred to exercise whatever influence they 

had in the parliament, which was usually at odds with the crown, since 

the parliament and the king of the union of Sweden and Norway were 

engaged in a struggle for power that lasted until the union was dissolved 

in 1905. 

Ibsen’s interest in the dispute over Schleswig and Holstein might have 

been stimulated by reading about it in the newspapers. One of the newspapers 

to which he probably had access was Fædrelandet, a liberal publication 

from Copenhagen edited by Carl Ploug, one of the leading spokesmen 

for Scandinavianism. Ploug wrote editorials about the Schleswig- 

Holstein question, and also published reports on gatherings of university 

students in support of Scandinavianism that were held during the middle 

and late 1840s. The Norwegian labor leader, Marcus Thrane, published 

an article in Morgenbladet in May 1848 (# 134) entitled “Om Schleswig og 

Danmark—Norges Deeltagelse i Krigen” (“On Schleswig and Denmark-- 

Norway’s participation in the war.”) He argues that Norway should stay 

out of the dispute over the southern Danish provinces. Thrane was not 

a Scandinavianist. Ibsen’s poem, by contrast, suggests that the German 

threat is best answered by a spirit of unity among Scandinavians. His 

was the Scandinavianist position. 

There were several reasons why Ibsen supported the Scandinavianist 

position, both culturally and politically. By 1848 he was preparing to 

become a university student, that group among which support for 

Scandinavianism was the strongest. Despite the fact that he was an apprentice 

at the time, he had been born into the Norwegian upper class, 

royalist by tradition. Scandinavianism was the ideology of the royalist 

party, since its members felt that their traditional privileges would be 

protected better by the king than by the country’s emerging democratic 

institutions. Ibsen’s former neighbor in Venstøp, Severin Løvenskiold, 

was the governor-general of Norway, and one of the strongest supporters 

of the king of the Swedish-Norwegian union. In 1849 Ibsen addressed a 

long poem to the king entitled “Vaagner Skandinaver!” (“Awake Scandinavians!”), 

urging support of the Danes. No criticism of the system of government 

is implied in this poem. The hero of his first play, Catilina, is, 

like its author, a déclassé aristocrat. Ibsen’s Catiline talks vaguely about 

freedom, but he looks not to the future but to the past, to a better time 

that he would like to restore, a time when his natural superiority was 

recognized and his privileges were unchallenged. 

73

Ibsen later wrote that he was strongly moved by the events of 1848, a 

year of turmoil both in Scandinavia and in Europe as a whole. 123 The 

February revolution in Paris that year was reported in the Scandinavian 

press. There was actual fighting both in 1848 and 1849 in the dispute 

over Schleswig-Holstein. Ibsen had been politicized by these events, or 

at any rate by reading about them and by discussing them in the evenings 

with his friends. His friend Christopher Due thought that Ibsen 

had become “a full-blooded republican.” It might be more accurate to say 

that Ibsen had become a Scandinavianist, although of course that does 

not show up directly in a Roman play. Nevertheless, it is important to 

understand that when he wrote his first play he had already found a personal 

ideology. Scandinavianism gave Ibsen a cause and a premise for 

connection with others that transcended his personal circumstances. In 

the years to come he was not merely an adherent of the ideology of 

Scandinavianism, but also one of its advocates and spokespersons. 

Ibsen’s circle of friends 

Soon after the pharmacy moved to its new location, that is, probably in 

the summer or fall of 1847, Ibsen’s isolation was to some extent relieved 

when he acquired a new friend of about his own age, a customs official 

named Christopher Due (age 24), who published a memoir more than sixty 

years later that provides some rare eyewitness information about Ibsen in 

Grimstad. 124 The next summer Ibsen made another new friend, Ole Carelius 

Schulerud (age 21), a law student at the university who arrived in Grimstad 

in June 1848 to spend a year with his family while studying for his exams. 

Schulerud's father was the head of the customs office where Due was employed. 

Due introduced Ibsen and Schulerud, and thereafter the three of 

them spent time together until Schulerud left for the capital in August of 

1849. They generally met in the evenings in the watchroom of the pharmacy. 

By the fall of 1848 they were joined by other young men of the town. 

Other members of the group included Gunder Holst (age 22), a shop 

clerk who later became a wealthy businessman and shipowner; his cousin 

Jakob Holst (age 28), a businessman who had been educated in Denmark; 

Andreas Isachsen (age 19), a son of the local schoolmaster Anders 

Isachsen; Daniel Martini (age 20), a son of the parish priest in nearby 

Landvik; Gude Smith (age 26), who was Justice Preus’ 125 law clerk; and 

Sigurd Ørbeck, a young man from Lillesand, a town a few miles down the 

coast, who was Preus’ office clerk. 126 

74

One source suggests that Mathias Gundersen (age 33), a businessman 

and the former mayor of the town, was also a member of the group. 127 He 

had bought a shipyard at Hasseldalen in 1843, and had built it into a thriving 

enterprise, but in 1848 he was forced to sell it. It was bought by another 

local entrepreneur, Morten Smith Petersen, 128 who was an officer of 

the local savings bank which held the mortgage on the shipyard. Smith 

Petersen was able to acquire the property for far less than it was worth. He 

built many ships there. Grimstad residents of today believe that the setting 

and incidents of Samfundets støtter (Pillars of Society), which deals with 

shipping fraud, are based on Ibsen’s memories of their town. 129 

Mathias Gundersen was married to Jakob Holst’s sister, Anne Elisabeth 

(age 30). Gundersen and his wife, as well as Gunder Holst, had all been 

mentioned in a lampoon of Ibsen’s from 1845-6, so he had probably known 

them for some time before the men began to gather as a group. Ibsen also 

had women friends: Jakob’s sister Sophie (age 18), Daniel’s sister Cathrine 

(age 22), and Clara Ebbell (age 19), to whom he later addressed a number 

of lyric poems. The women did not congregate with the men at the pharmacy, 

although the following summer both sexes participated in Sunday 

boating trips. Ibsen escorted Sophie to a ball held in the winter of 1849-50 

and dedicated one of the last poems he wrote in Grimstad to her and Cathrine. 

As was customary at the time among young men with some education, 

the group discussed and debated topics of the day, and they also read together. 

They sometimes drank punch at their gatherings, out of laboratory 

beakers which could be emptied hurriedly and would not attract attention 

in case anyone came to the door. Sometimes they played cards, and on 

occasion they would go out and play billiards. 130 Hans Terland was rector 

of the Dahlske Skole in Grimstad for several years after 1915, and used to 

collect information about Ibsen’s years in the town. He describes a prank 

they carried out one night, most likely in the summer of 1848: 

There lived in Grimstad at this time an unmarried businessman 

[Oluf Oppen Ebbell, age 58], who was something of 

an original. He was very small of stature and lame in the hip. 

One peaceful summer night he was suddenly awakened by a 

terrifying spectacle in the cellar underneath his rooms. It 

sang and whistled and crowed and cackled so that the poor 

man was on the verge of going out of his mind from terror. 

He got out of bed and went to the window, where he cried: 

“That’s enough, that’s enough.” Not until the following day 

did he discover from where the commotion had originated. 

75

76 

It was Ibsen and Schulerud, possibly also several other of the 

comrades, who wanted to indulge in a little fun and therefore 

had sneaked quietly into his cellar and suddenly given voice 

to that abominable caterwauling. The businessman did not 

take this fun graciously: he immediately set about composing 

a complaint to the conciliation commission, a complaint 

that was couched in such amusing language that the friends 

got a lot of enjoyment from it. It began like this: “Last evening, 

at 12 o’clock at night --.” A parody, which was certainly 

authored by Ibsen, began like this: “Last evening, at 12 o’clock 

at night, I was awakened from my sleep just as I was going to 

bed.” The conciliation commissioner Christian Holst succeeded 

in getting the matter settled, for which Ibsen should 

have been very grateful. 131 

One source maintains that Ibsen’s role in such pranks was usually to 

incite the others, and that he himself did not always carry them out. 132 If 

one were to ask why Oluf Ebbell was thus singled out for teasing, it might 

have been because he was a long-time member of the town tax board, to 

which Ibsen had to pay tax as a “pharmacist’s journeyman,” “to his teethgrinding 

irritation,” as Due puts it. 133 

The principals in the incident were all closely connected. Oluf Ebbell 

was a trustee of the Grimstad savings bank. The conciliation commissioner 

Christian Holst was the assistant manager of the bank, and therefore 

the supervisor of Ibsen’s employer Lars Nielsen, who in addition to 

operating the pharmacy was a teller at the bank. Holst was an uncle of 

Gunder and Jakob Holst, one or both of whom might also have been 

involved in the incident. The closeness of this cast of characters and 

their interlocking relationships demonstrate why it could be frustrating 

for Ibsen to rebel against his circumstances. 

The young men had a practice of writing satiric verses and making 

drawings. Some of these were evidently aimed at members of the group. 

Daniel Martini and Sigurd Ørbeck especially became the objects of Ibsen’s 

wit, partly because they were well-off, while he, Due, and Schulerud, 

were all three “as poor as church mice.” Due tells an anecdote about 

Ibsen’s satirization of Daniel Martini: 

Among those who gathered in the watchroom there were 

some, especially one of them [Martini], who by his foolishness 

and unsuccessful attempts to be witty became a very

useful and rather well-deserving object for Ibsen's wit and 

sarcasm, which were always rewarded afterwards with bursts 

of laughter. Among the many jokes, often in the form of poems, 

and illustrated by splendid drawings, whereby he held 

up to ridicule comic circumstances among the comrades, there 

is one which I have a desire to relate . . . . 

Ibsen had an astonishing ability to write fluent verse 

quickly, and he was also . . . very talented as an illustrator. 

His pen could quickly, tastefully and tellingly express the point 

when something was to be presented by illustration. Even 

though without seeing the altogether first-rate drawings one 

can scarcely take pleasure in what is comical in these presented 

circumstances, I shall even so attempt to give the reader 

an impression of them. 

In a notebook in a series of pages one saw as a first picture 

the young man, bowing and elegantly flourishing his hat in 

the entryway, as he takes leave after a visit to his adored heart's 

queen. But his horse, harnessed to a sleigh, has found the 

departure rather prolonged, so the impatient animal has 

ambled away on his own. Its master, who in his amorous 

mood has not noticed, is finally ready to depart and realizes 

to his astonishment that horse and sleigh have disappeared. 

The next picture shows him running wildly in order to 

catch his disobedient animal, but he cannot find it and must 

turn back in order to borrow a horse for the trip home, about 

half a mile. Then in a later picture he is seen riding as fast as 

he can in order to catch his horse. The latter, however, has 

stopped in at a nearby farm, from where in a new picture one 

sees the horse with a surprised expression (splendidly drawn) 

observing his master's hasty riding, while the latter does not 

notice the fugitive. 

Another picture shows a scene in the servants' quarters, 

where the master, having arrived at home, rousts the sleepdrugged 

stableboy out of bed by the hair. A new horse is 

taken out, and now both venture forth, each on his horse, in 

order to search for the one that has disppeared. In the last 

picture all three horses are seen, at the moment when the 

wandering horse comes walking calmly along and is met by 

the other two, etc. 

77

78 

This ridiculous situation was also depicted in a detailed 

poem in rhymed verse, of several stanzas, with tunes from 

the Danish vaudeville Genboerne [“Neighbors”], which was new 

at that time, and from which several songs were often sung 

by the above-mentioned young man. 134 The latter was then 

instructed by Ibsen to learn several of the songs from “Neighbors,” 

and Ibsen gave him a copy of several sections of the 

horse story. This proved to be a success. The young man in 

question learned the verses and sang about his own misfortunes 

in the belief that they belonged in the play. 

One cannot describe Ibsen's delight at the great amusement 

which reigned in the circle of comrades when we got 

the object of our teasing to sing the songs whose comic hero 

he himself was. Ibsen's eyes glittered like fire, and we all 

forgot that we were naughty boys. 135 

Another historian, Joseph Bergwitz, reports that in the final picture Martini 

was shown kissing his horse instead of his girlfriend. 136 Terland describes 

what happened when Martini realized the joke that had been played on him: 

[Daniel Martini’s] father did all he could to provide his son 

with a good education; but he did not take to book learning. 

However, he had a strong, massive body and--let it be said to 

his credit--he was not afraid to use his hands. He was therefore 

educated as an agronomist and helped his father to operate 

the parish farm. The young friends amused themselves 

by caricaturing this young man with the heavy spirit, the 

heavy body and the strong, shrill voice, especially when he 

appeared as the courteous and interesting cavalier. It did not 

take much to tease this good-natured but easily-angered fellow; 

--it was enough just to depict him with a pair of enormous 

gloved hands or to draw him, together with a couple of 

his horses, which stood and scolded him. When he found out 

that he had been the object of Ibsen’s cruel talent, he came 

storming into the pharmacy and threatened to thrash the sly 

little Ibsen, who through his ingenuity soon got him mollified 

again. 137 

Satire can be a dangerous weapon, especially when employed at close 

range. Ibsen must have learned something about authors and audiences

as Martini was chasing him around the shop; possibly he was able to 

escape only by giving Martini the manuscript or by destroying it himself. 

Sigurd Ørbeck, who had inherited money from his father and was one 

of those Ibsen characterized as having “empty heads with full pockets,” 

was the subject of a satiric verse entitled “Sigurd Von Finkelbecks Gravsted” 

(“Sigurd von Finkelbeck’s Cemetery Plot”), illustrated with a drawing of 

the tomb. Ibsen gave a copy of this verse to Jakob Holst, and it has 

survived: 

INSCRIPTIONERNE 

Ved Hovedet. 

Hans Fiender var tomme Kruus, 

Et fuldt, -- hans Ideal, -- 

Hans hele Livet var en Ruus, 

Hans Død, en Perial. 

Ved Fødderne. 

Her hviler Herr Sigurd med Øiet lukt, 

End fugtig af Bacchusgaven; 

Hans Hoved kneiser saa stolt og smukt, 

Som Monument over Graven. m 

Paa høire Side. 

En sagde: “Hans Hjerne forskruet er”, 

En Anden: “Dens Skruer er løse”, -- 

En Tredie fandt uten stort Besvær: 

“Den er af de Spirituøse”. 

Paa venstre Side. 

Da sidstegang Brændeviinsflasken var tom, 

Man bar ham til Graven hen; 

De Blomster som findes at voxe derom 

Dufte af Finkelen n end! -- 

m The last two lines of this stanza are corrupted, due to a fold in the paper of the manuscript. 

n “Finkel” is a term for cheap or inferior liquor. 

79

80 

[At the Head. 

His enemies were empty beakers, a full one was his ideal, -his 

whole life was a drunkenness, his death an intoxication. 

At the Feet. 

Here lies Sir Sigurd with eyes closed, still moist from Bacchus’ 

gift, his head rises so proud and handsome, as a monument 

over the grave. 

On the Right Side. 

One saying: “His brain is hysterical.” Another: “Its screws 

are loose.” A third states without further ado: “It is from the 

spirits.” 

On the Left Side. 

When the last brandy flask was empty, they carried him away 

to the grave; The flowers which grow on it still smell like 

rotgut!] 138 

Despite having been portrayed as a drunk, Ørbeck bore the costs of a 

“reformers’ banquet,” at which, according to Due, Ibsen gave “a fire-breathing 

speech against all kaisers and kings, these monsters of society, and 

for the republic, the ‘only possible’ form of government.” 139 One of Ibsen’s 

friends “with empty heads and full pockets,” who might have been Ørbeck, 

loaned him the money to buy a suit, so that he could go to a ball. According 

to Due: 

This at first astonished Ibsen, but then at the same time 

he found that it only confirmed the cited saying, and when at 

year’s end the bill for the cost of the clothing was presented, 

he found even more confirmation of it, as he declared in his 

humorous way: “First he is stupid enough to give me credit, 

and later he is stupid enough to expect the bill to be paid.” I 

can state, however, that this debt of Ibsen’s was paid. 140 

While Ibsen was occasionally at odds with some of the members of 

the group, their differences were resolved and the meetings continued. 

This would not have happened unless the participants were getting something 

out of them. The other young men were assured of entertainment, 

even if it was sometimes embarrassing for them. Ibsen had the chance to

air his views, to practice his creative skills on an audience, to read and 

discuss good literature, and to enjoy a companionship that must have 

been rewarding to him, given his ordinarily reserved temperament. His 

friends also helped him to overcome his confinement in the pharmacy 

by bringing him books, newspapers and other information they thought 

might interest him. For that matter, the pharmacy itself was a gatheringplace 

where townspeople would exchange gossip. At times Ibsen was 

irritated by some who would never leave, but he also must have learned 

a lot just by being present and observing what went on. 

Theatre in Grimstad 

Ibsen, Due, and Schulerud evidently shared an interest in the theatre, 

although reading plays together was not the only resource available to 

them in pursuing this interest. There were live theatrical performances 

in Grimstad as well. The town had an amateur theatrical society, of which 

Reimann was a member. 141 The society had been more active in the 1830s 

than it was in the 1840s, but it continued to stage performances and to 

maintain its collection of plays. 142 According to Eitrem: 

Amateur theatre thrived in the small towns long after it had 

declined in the capital. Especially at the end of the 1830s and 

the beginning of the 1840s, up to about the time when Ibsen 

came to the town [Grimstad], they were seriously involved 

with amateur theatre. In the older families there were stocks 

of all possible things which one could use on the stage - these 

older families were really buried under stuff. Here the young 

people found an arsenal when it came to putting on masquerades 

and comedies. What they played were not minor pieces. 

Around 1842 were performed Holberg’s Den Stundesløse [The 

Busybody], Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro, not to mention 

Kotzebue’s plays and Heiberg’s vaudevilles. 143 

The theatre in Grimstad, a room on the second floor of a hotel that 

had been converted for performances, was called "Demants Sal," and was 

located in a building on Storgaten, a few minutes' walk from the Nielsen 

pharmacy. 144 The operator of this theatre, Christian Demant, was originally 

from Copenhagen. As a young man he had come to Grimstad, 

where he married a widow who owned the building where the theatre 

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82 

9. Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum as it is today, photograph. The Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum

was later housed. Demant had a watchmaker's shop on the ground floor 

of the building, and he was also a daguerrotypist, the first in Norway. He 

also maintained a lending library, which because of his interest in the 

theatre might have included plays. 

Travelling Danish theatre companies sometimes stopped in Grimstad 

as they sailed along the coast between Christianssand and Arendal, and 

they performed part of their repertoire. Since there was no newspaper in 

Grimstad, it is impossible to say which plays these companies performed 

there, although advertisements for their performances were published in 

the newspapers of Arendal and Christianssand. 145 The repertoire of the 

travelling theatre companies was derived from that of The Royal Theater 

in Copenhagen and was a mixture of Danish translations of plays by foreign, 

mainly French dramatists, and original works by the dramatists of 

The Royal Theater: Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Thomas Overskou, Henrik 

Hertz, Christen Hostrup, and others. 146 

The quality of the acting in the travelling companies varied. The 

companies were assembled by audition in Copenhagen. The farther one 

intended to travel from the capital, the less enthusiastic many actors were 

about participating, so the widest-ranging companies often had the least 

accomplished actors. In the summer of 1848, however, just a few months 

before Ibsen wrote his first play, the company that toured Sørlandet included 

one of the leading men of the royal theatre, Frederick Printzlau, 

who had become famous by portraying characters like Don Juan, the 

Count of Monte Cristo, and other Romantic rebel-heroes. Since Catilina 

is a vehicle for just this kind of actor, one can speculate that Ibsen saw 

Printzlau in performance or at least met him. Printzlau was a fine actor 

and a very handsome man, but he was also moody and unpredictable. At 

that time he had abandoned performing in Copenhagen for a tour in the 

provinces. 

Summary 

During the first three years Ibsen lived in Grimstad he spent almost 

all of his time in the Reimann pharmacy, but he had access to current 

newspapers and magazines because the pharmacy was for a time also the 

post office. He had access to bound magazines and popular literature 

from the collection of the local reading society. He also had his own 

collection of books, and he spent much of his free time at night reading, 

studying, and writing. On his days off he would often go for walks and 

83

take his painting equipment along. After the pharmacy moved to 

Østregate, he acquired a new source for reading material in his friend 

Georgina Crawfurd, whose private library would have had books not included 

in the collection of the reading society. As part of their conversations 

about literature, she could have suggested to him authors to read 

and supplied him with those of their works that were in her collection. 

These would have included contemporary Norwegian poets like Henrik 

Wergeland, Andreas Munch and Johan Sebastian Welhaven, as well as 

the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. 

By the fall of 1847 Ibsen was reading for the university entrance examinations. 

In early 1848 he sent three practice essays in written composition 

to a reader in Christiania. His earliest surviving poems date 

from about the same time. By the summer of 1848, he had found two 

friends of his own age, Due and Schulerud, who shared his interests in 

literature and the theatre. They read together in the evenings in the 

watchroom of the Nielsen pharmacy, and they discussed what they read. 

Their group soon expanded to include several other young men of the 

town, some of whom became the objects of Ibsen’s satire. His rebellious 

attitude led to pranks directed against the citizens of the town, which got 

him into trouble with the authorities. The combination of circumstances 

and influences acting on the young man at that time contributed to the 

fact that around Christmas of 1848 he began work on his first play, Catilina, 

the subject of the next chapter. 

84

ON THE COMPOSITION OF CATILINA 

The preface Ibsen wrote for the second edition of Catilina (1875) contains 

his recollections of his circumstances at the time of its inception: 

Catiline, the drama with which I embarked on my literary 

career, was written in the winter of 1848-9, that is, in my 

twenty-first year. 

I was in Grimstad at the time, dependent on my own efforts 

for the necessities of life and to pay for the tuition which 

would enable me to reach university entrance standard. Those 

were turbulent times. The February Revolution, the uprisings 

in Hungary and elsewhere, the war over Schleswig—the 

powerful influence of all this furthered my development, 

however immature I may have remained for long to come. I 

wrote resounding poems to the Magyars encouraging them, 

in the cause of freedom and humanity, to hold out in their 

just struggle with the “tyrants”; I wrote a long series of sonnets 

to King Oscar primarily containing, as far as I remember, 

a plea to set aside all petty considerations and without 

delay to march at the head of his troops to the aid of our brothers 

on the very frontiers of Schleswig . . . . I could not refrain 

from expressing myself, on more elevated occasions, along 

the same passionate lines as in my poetry--from which, however, 

I derived only dubious benefit, both from those who 

were and those who were not my friends: the former acclaimed 

my talent for being unintentionally funny, while others 

found it utterly remarkable that a young man in my subordinate 

position should actively discuss matters which not 

even they themselves ventured to have views about. For the 

sake of truth I must add that my behavior on a number of 

occasions did not justify any great hopes that society had in 

85

86 

me someone in whom the solid middle-class virtues might confidently 

be expected to flourish, just as I also, through my epigrams 

and caricatures, quarrelled with many who had deserved 

better of me and whose friendship I in fact prized. The long 

and short of it was that, while big things were happening in the 

tumultuous world outside, I found myself at loggerheads with 

the small community in which I lived, cramped as I was by 

private circumstances and by conditions in general. 

Such was the position when, studying for my examination, 

I went through Sallust’s Catiline and Cicero’s speeches 

attacking Catiline. These works I simply lapped up and some 

months later my play was finished . . . . I did not at the time 

share the views of the two ancient Roman authors on Catiline’s 

character and conduct and I am still inclined to believe that 

there must have been much that was great or significant about 

a man whom Cicero, the indefatigable spokesman of the majority, 

did not find it expedient to tackle until circumstances 

had so changed that he could attack him with impunity. 147 

This preface has been the starting point for all later investigations of 

the play’s origins, but it does not tell the whole story. What follows is an 

attempt to give a more complete account of the origins of Catilina, both 

through a review of earlier scholarship on the play’s sources and through 

the evaluation of evidence about the poet’s circumstances and reading at 

the time of its composition. 

Known sources. 

Ibsen’s friend Christopher Due, who published a memoir of Ibsen in 

Grimstad sixty years after the reported events took place, notes that after 

the group of young men who liked to meet in the pharmacy where Ibsen 

worked would disperse of an evening, Ibsen stayed up to read and write 

far into the night. 148 By the fall of 1848, and perhaps earlier, Ibsen was 

studying Latin, the most important subject to be tested on the university 

entrance exam. 149 He had a tutor, a theological student named Emil Bie, 

who later had this to say about his experience: 

Because of his restricted position in the pharmacy, Ibsen 

could not come to me, so I had to go to him. We sat in a little

oom beside the shop, and I can well remember, that with 

him I went through a treatise [sic] o about Catiline and Cicero. 

The lesson was constantly interrupted, because as soon as 

the doorbell sounded--and it was not so long between each 

time that happened--Ibsen had to go into the shop. 150 

Bie does not mention their reading Sallust’s history of the Catilinarian 

conspiracy together, but in his 1875 preface Ibsen notes that he had read 

Sallust as well, so it is possible that he did so on his own. 

Eiliv Skard has provided an analysis of what Ibsen took from Cicero 

and Sallust for his play and shows not only that Ibsen used almost nothing 

from Cicero’s orations but also that the play departs considerably 

from the information given in Sallust’s history. 151 Even when a detail 

appears to have come from Sallust, Ibsen usually has changed it. In the 

first scene of the play, for example, which takes place “on a road near 

Rome,” Catiline meets the Allobrogian emissaries. The emissaries are 

historical, but Catiline never met them, because they did not arrive in 

Rome until after he had already left the city for the last time. Again, in 

the second scene of the play, one of the conspirators predicts that Catiline 

will be disappointed in his quest for the consulship and mentions that he 

has that day been attacked by his enemies. Historically, Catiline lost the 

election for the consulship a year before Cicero attacked him in the first 

of his four orations. 

The characters of Curius and Fulvia (whose name Ibsen changed to 

Furia) and their relationship are found in Sallust, but Ibsen changes their 

actions. In Sallust, Fulvia reveals the conspiracy to Cicero after learning 

of it from her lover Curius; in Ibsen’s play Furia similarly learns of the 

conspiracy from Curius, but then she persuades him to reveal it. Sallust 

reports a meeting between Catiline and the conspirators and contends 

that at the meeting Catiline incited the others to act. In Ibsen’s play the 

reverse obtains: they urge on a reluctant leader. 

Many of the changes the dramatist makes are for the purpose of streamlining 

the action, evidently so that he can concentrate on what interests 

him, the portrayal of Catiline, his main character. Ibsen fails to introduce 

any of Catiline’s historical opponents in the Roman senate. Since his conception 

of Catiline was different from what is in the historical record, Ibsen 

o The notation is Bergwitz’s, who includes the quotation in an essay on Ibsen in Grimstad. The term 

“treatise” (Avhandling) makes it sound like they read a book about Catiline and Cicero, rather than 

Cicero’s four orations against Catiline. That cannot be right, however. Ibsen would not have paid to 

be tutored in a text that was not on the syllabus. 

87

must have found it simpler to avoid letting Catiline’s opponents express 

their opinions. The play’s portrayal of Catiline’s relations with the female 

characters is not based on history, a subject to which we shall return. 

The play also includes a detail from another Latin source. The names 

of the Allobrogian emissaries, Ambiorix and Ollovico, are not taken from 

Sallust but rather from Caesar’s Gallic Wars, another Latin text on the syllabus 

for the university entrance exam. 152 The men who have these names 

in Caesar’s history are not Allobrogians. Nor emissaries. Nor are they 

even associated with one another. They are members of other tribes who 

opposed the Roman legions. Ibsen plucked out the names and used them 

in his play because neither Cicero nor Sallust had mentioned the names of 

the Allobrogian emissaries. This loose attempt at historicism on Ibsen’s 

part, to use the names of other Gauls instead of either inventing names or 

using the names of other persons mentioned by Cicero or Sallust, suggests 

that in his earliest period Ibsen at times preferred to borrow rather than to 

invent, even if he changed what he borrowed. 

It should also be mentioned that Skard argues persuasively that the character 

of Furia shows similarities with a character in the Danish poet Friedrich 

Paludan-Müller’s Vestalinden (“The Vestal”), a long poem from 1839 about a 

vestal virgin who has violated her vows of chastity and is condemned to 

death. Her punishment is to be buried alive in a vault, where she dies slowly 

of suffocation. Skard identifies enough similarities between Ibsen’s first play 

and this poem to allow us to be confident that “The Vestal” was a source. 153 

These, then, are sources that have been considered “certain.” None of 

them is a dramatic narrative, however, and Catilina is a drama. It is allwell-and-good 

for Ibsen to ask us to imagine him radicalized by the revolutionary 

events of 1848 and determined to rescue the character of the 

rebel Catiline from the portrait left of him by the historians. Such a spirit 

does not, however, by itself transform historical, rhetorical and epic texts 

into drama. A thorough investigation of the play’s origins should therefore 

inquire as to its possible antecedents in earlier dramatic literature. 

Antecedents in earlier dramatic literature 

Henrik Jæger interviewed Ibsen in the early 1880s and asked him 

about the sources of his first play. Ibsen replied that the only dramatists 

whose works he could remember having read at the time he wrote Catilina 

were Ludvig Holberg and Adam Oehlenschlæger. 154 Holberg was an eighteenth-century 

Danish-Norwegian dramatist who is considered to be the 

88

father of Scandinavian drama, but while his plays were in the collection 

of the Grimstad reading society and therefore available to Ibsen, they are 

mainly comedies. Since Catilina is not a comedy, their usefulness for his 

immediate purpose must have been limited. 

The plays of Oehlenschlæger were also available to Ibsen, and we 

know he read them. Due records that among other works the young 

men read the plays of Oehlenschlæger. 155 It is possible that they read 

them aloud, a possibility strengthened by the fact that one of the members 

of the group, Andreas Isachsen, became an actor and in 1852 was 

appointed at the theatre in Bergen where Ibsen was sceneinstruktør from 

1851 to 1857. Isachsen probably would have needed Ibsen’s support in 

order to secure that position, and the latter would not have recommended 

him merely on the basis of personal acquaintance. 156 

If one reads a series of plays by the same author, the recurring themes 

and patterns in the works are often foregrounded. Brian Johnston observes 

that when writing his first play, “the young Ibsen already has at 

hand a Romantic metaphysical vocabulary . . .”. 157 Reading the plays of 

Oehlenschlæger was one of the ways that Ibsen acquired this vocabulary. 

Oehlenschlæger was the most important Danish dramatist in the 

first half of the nineteenth century and the major figure of Scandinavian 

literary Romanticism. He had written about twenty tragedies, as well as 

other plays, over a period of more than forty years. These plays were 

available at the time in many single editions and in two collected editions. 

158 Those that have seemed to scholars to have left traces on Ibsen’s 

first play include Balder hin Gode, Hakon Jarl, Axel og Valborg, Stærkodder, 

and Væringerne i Miklagard (“The Vikings in Byzantium”). Although a 

few scholars 159 have attempted to demonstrate similarities between Ibsen’s 

first play and particular plays by Oehlenschlæger, and further research 

may find more evidence of this kind, it may be enough to regard those 

plays as a general influence, as a literary resource present in the poet’s 

mind, in the way that August Strindberg’s plays were present in the mind 

of Eugene O’Neill. 

Catilina’s theatrical conventions are similar to those employed by 

Oehlenschlæger, with their fluid changes of scene, presentational acting 

style, set speeches, and supernatural effects, although these conventions 

were the common resource of dramatists in the Germanic world after 

Friedrich Schiller and were derived from the theatre of Shakespeare and 

his contemporaries. Shakespeare’s plays had been translated into German 

in the eighteenth century and contributed to the development of 

the theatre in Germany both on the stage and in the form of new plays. 

89

Ibsen’s first play is fashioned with the conventions of the German Romantic 

theatre; he did not necessarily receive these conventions directly, 

however, but more likely through the mediation of Oehlenschlæger. 

Many of Oehlenschlæger’s plays cast a male character between two 

contrasting female characters, and since Ibsen does this as well in the 

triad of Aurelia-Catiline-Furia, it might safely be concluded that he got 

the idea from the Danish dramatist. 160 It needs to be said, however, that 

he explores the psychological dynamics of the triad more deeply than did 

his predecessor. 161 

Even if the play’s debt to the Danish dramatist is granted, scholars 

over the years have felt that Catilina shows evidence of Ibsen’s having 

read plays by other dramatists as well. They have suggested several candidates, 

including: Lord Byron’s Manfred, Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s 

Götz von Berlichingen and Iphigenie auf Tauris, Ben Jonson’s Catiline his 

Conspiracy, Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber, Fiesco, and Wilhelm Tell, 

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and Henrik Wergeland’s Sinclars Død. Because 

of the play’s frequent references to fate, it has been speculated that 

Ibsen was aware of the schicksalstragödie (“fate tragedy”) of early nineteenth-century 

German drama. 162 

In considering the play’s possible dramatic antecedents, one needs 

first to ask, can its apparently derivative details be explained on the basis 

of what we already know the poet read? For example, when Josef Faaland 

suggests similarities between the first speech by Aurelia and the corresponding 

speech by William Tell’s wife Hedwig in Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, 

the suggestion seems plausible, because we know that Ibsen had read 

Schiller’s play as early as 1844. 163 On the other hand, Francis Bull’s statement 

that “as far as dramatic technique in Catilina is concerned, it undoubtedly 

comes from Shakespeare . . .” is less convincing, because we 

have no circumstantial evidence that Ibsen had read Shakespeare at that 

time. 164 

Another question that needs to be asked is whether Ibsen had knowledge 

of any earlier plays on the theme of the Catilinarian conspiracy. 

Most scholars who have considered the issue have assumed that he did 

not, perhaps because he lived in a small town or because there were no 

such plays in Danish. 165 Ibsen’s access to literature was better than has 

been previously thought, however, and he could read both German and 

French. 166 When he took the university entrance examination in 

Christiania in August, 1850, he passed both German and French; in fact, 

his best grade in any subject was in German. He maintained his knowledge 

of German in later life, partly because he lived in Germany from 

90

1868 to 1880, and 1885 to 1891; his knowledge of French seems to have 

disappeared, most likely because he did not need it, and did not keep it 

up. Even if his knowledge of French in Grimstad was limited, he had 

friends who knew French, and they could have read to him books and 

plays written in French, translating as they went along. 

There were seven earlier plays about Catiline written in German and 

French. There were in all at least eleven Catiline plays published before 

Ibsen’s. 167 Of these, four include elements found in Ibsen’s play that are 

not in the historical sources. Two of them, Ben Jonson’s Catiline his Conspiracy 

(London: 1611), and Christophe Kuffner’s Catilina (Vienna: 1825), 

feature the ghost of Sulla. It is possible, but unlikely, that such an unusual 

detail not found in either Sallust or Cicero would have been invented 

twice. 

A French Catilina by Alexandre Dumas père and Auguste Macquet 

premièred in Paris on 14 October 1848, shortly before Ibsen started work 

on his own Catiline play, which Koht estimates was during the Christmas 

holidays of that year. 168 The French play was published. 169 Several scholars 

have noted the proximity in time of the Dumas and Macquet play to 

Ibsen’s first play. Edmund Gosse thought that Ibsen might have noted its 

appearance in a newspaper but concluded that the two plays are completely 

dissimilar. 170 Koht described the play as “a vapid pièce à intrigue 

that could not have had much influence on Ibsen.” 171 

All the same, several features of the Catilina by Dumas and Macquet 

are suggestive of features in Ibsen’s play. In the prologue to the French 

play, Catiline rapes a vestal virgin. None of the other earlier Catiline 

plays has a vestal virgin in it, although one is mentioned in Sallust’s history. 

172 The situation of the vestal virgin in the French play, Marcia, is in 

one important respect different from Ibsen’s Furia in that she bears a 

child by Catiline. Marcia is also temperamentally different from Furia in 

that she is kind and gentle, whereas Furia is passionate and vengeful. 

Marcia’s circumstances are similar to Furia’s, however, in that she is condemned 

to death and the method of execution is to be buried alive. Marcia, 

like Furia, survives. Ibsen could have found in the French play, either by 

reading it, by reading about it, or by hearing about it, details that he used 

in his own play and arranged differently. 

Koht notes that while no Norwegian newspaper had announced the 

publication of the play by Dumas and Macquet, it had been mentioned in 

the French press. 173 Grimstad was in touch with events in France through 

its shipping activities. The father of one of Ibsen’s close friends, Ole 

Schulerud, was chief customs inspector for the town, and Christopher 

91

Due worked in the customs office as well. News of cultural events in 

Paris could have come on ships, either first-hand from travellers or in 

newspapers and magazines. Due says that Ibsen read portions of his 

play to him and Schulerud as it was being written. 174 Once they knew of 

his project, they might have brought him any information about the subject 

of Catiline that they had. 175 Due was the local correspondent for 

Christiania-Posten, so he would have been a person who kept up with 

current events. 

Two other members of Ibsen’s circle of friends, Jakob and Gunder 

Holst, were shipowners. After about 1830 France was Norway’s principal 

market for timber, and many ships from Grimstad carried timber to France. 

Consequently, both officers and seamen would have found it useful to 

know at least some French, and one of them could have brought back a 

copy of the Dumas-Macquet play from a trading voyage to Paris in the fall 

of 1849. The Holsts were a large and prosperous family, many of whose 

members were seamen, ship captains and shipowners. 

Another French play, Catilina Romantique, by C. E. Guichard, had been 

published in Paris in 1844. Its portrayal of the title character is not completely 

negative, as is the case with nearly all the other Catiline plays 

except Ibsen’s. In the fourth act of this play, Catiline is in the field with 

his army and has a conversation with an old general Mallius. At the 

beginning of the last act of Ibsen’s play, Catiline is in the field with his 

army, and has a conversation with an old general called Manlius, the 

spelling of the name in Sallust. In both plays, the scene takes place on 

the eve of the final battle between the conspirators and the government 

forces. In both plays, the movements of nearby troops are discussed, and 

the old general mentions having known Catiline since he was a boy. Both 

Cicero and Sallust refer to Catiline and Manlius as being together with 

rebel troops outside Rome, but neither of them, and none of the other 

Catiline plays, shows them in that context. 

There are other similarities between the two plays: in a scene in the 

second act of Guichard’s play, three allegorical figures,--Pride, Poverty 

and Death,--appear to Catiline, urging him not to give up his ambition. 

These figures look quite different from the ghost of Sulla in Ibsen’s play, 

but the theatrical conventions used to portray supernatural effects are 

the same in both plays, and they have the same function, to provide a 

moralizing perspective on the main character. Ibsen could have adopted 

the idea of a scene in which the main character receives a supernatural 

visitation and replaced the allegorical figures used by Guichard with the 

ghost of Sulla. 

92

The character names in Guichard’s play are more like those in Ibsen’s 

play than those in any other Catiline play except Jonson’s, which is in 

English, and thus alien to Ibsen. Guichard’s play, like Ibsen’s, gives considerable 

stage time to the portrayal of the conspiracy from the conspirators’ 

point of view. In both plays the conspirators urge Catiline not to give 

up the leadership of the revolt at a moment when he feels discouraged. 

Both plays include the Allobrogian emissaries, who also appear in Jonson’s 

and Kuffner’s plays but are absent from Dumas and Macquet’s play. 

In the absence of direct evidence of Ibsen’s reading, the answer to the 

question of his dependence on earlier dramatic models will continue to 

be based on internal comparisons and consequently will remain a matter 

of individual judgment. It should be remembered, however, that Ibsen’s 

situation in Grimstad gave him more literary resources than has been 

generally recognized and that his command of languages was wider than 

has been thought. 

Søren Kierkegaard 

In a chapter of his memoir entitled “Ole Schulerud, Ibsen’s faithful 

friend,” Christopher Due writes “. . . in those years one studied seriously 

Kierkegaard’s books Either/Or [and] Works of Love, among others . . .”. 176 

Due’s characteristic discretion leaves a doubt as to exactly who is meant 

by the phrase “one studied,” but the sentence may indicate that the three 

friends read and discussed a number of the Danish philosopher’s books. 

Schulerud had just spent several years as a student at the university in 

Christiania; Due observes that in those years the town produced only 

two university students (the other was Emil Bie, Ibsen’s Latin tutor), so 

by local standards Schulerud was highly educated. His graduate specialty 

was law, so as an undergraduate he would have taken courses in 

philosophy and could have shared his learning in conversations and readings 

with his friends. 

While Francis Bull mentions Kierkegaard and the Don Juan theme as 

possible influences on Ibsen’s first play, Either/Or has not previously been 

carefully considered as a source for Catilina and therefore has not figured 

in the deliberations of scholars investigating its sources. 177 Either/Or was 

Kierkegaard’s first major work; it became a great success after it was published 

in 1843. 178 The work appeared in two parts, the first supposedly 

written by an aesthete, the second by an ethicist. The first part contains 

several chapters that could have contributed to Ibsen’s thinking as he 

93

was planning his play. These chapters are entitled: “The Immediate 

Erotic Stages, or The Musical-Erotic,” “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected 

in the Tragic in Modern Drama,” and “Silhouettes.” Let us consider 

each of these in turn, beginning with the chapter on tragedy: 

For Kierkegaard (“K”), the main difference between ancient and modern 

tragedy lies in the latter’s emphasis on situation and character. K is 

interested in the consciousness of the tragic character. In his view, what 

makes a character tragic in the modern age is the consciousness of guilt, 

and especially of inherited guilt. 179 Modern people are more isolated and 

individualistic than were the ancients but are also therefore completely 

responsible for their actions: 

94 

Whereas in ancient tragedy the destruction of the hero 

results from such strong external factors as state, family, and 

destiny, the hero of modern tragedy “stands and falls entirely 

on his own acts.” 180 

The modern tragic hero is more guilty than the ancient, and therefore 

modern tragedy is more painful. K contends that in modern tragedy 

“the tragic hero becomes bad, evil actually becomes the tragic subject . . 

.”. 181 While we do not know when Ibsen read this statement, it could have 

been at about the same time that he was reading the words with which 

Sallust introduces his narrative of the Catilinarian conspiracy: 

Lucius Catiline was of noble birth. He had a powerful 

intellect and great physical strength, but a vicious and depraved 

nature. From his youth he had delighted in civil war, 

bloodshed, robbery, and political strife, and it was in such 

occupations that he spent his early manhood. He could endure 

hunger, cold, and want of sleep to an incredible extent. 

His mind was daring, crafty, and versatile, capable of any pretence 

and dissimulation. A man of flaming passions, he was 

as covetous of other men’s possessions as he was prodigal of 

his own; an eloquent speaker, but lacking in wisdom. His 

monstrous ambition hankered continually after things extravagant, 

impossible, beyond his reach. After the dictatorship of 

Lucius Sulla, Catiline had been possessed by an overmastering 

desire for despotic power, to gratify which he was prepared 

to use any and every means. His headstrong spirit was 

tormented more and more every day by poverty and a guilty

conscience, both of which were aggravated by the evil practices 

I have referred to. He was incited also by the corruption 

of a society plagued by two opposite but equally disastrous 

vices—love of luxury and love of money. 182 

If Ibsen had read Ks theory of tragedy, which maintains that the modern 

tragic character is evil, while he was reading such a description of 

Catiline, the juxtaposition of impulses could have contributed to his idea 

of writing a play about Catiline, because the Roman rebel is an excellent 

example of a person who meets Ks definition of a tragic character, one 

whose tragedy is caused by the evil in his own nature. 

When K offers a prototype of a modern tragic character, the one he 

chooses is Antigone. Such a choice illustrates that modernity of character 

is not a matter of historical period but of spirit. Ks example might 

have helped Ibsen to see that he also could choose a classical subject, a 

choice which otherwise seems surprising. Not only were there no earlier 

Norwegian plays based on classical models, but there were very few such 

Danish plays. 183 Oehlenschlæger had written a Socrates, but it is not among 

his most important works. Almost all of his plays, although they are 

historical, have Scandinavian characters and settings. 

The situation of Ks Antigone is not entirely the same as that of 

Sophocles’. The significant difference is that she is the only one who 

knows her father’s secret, that he killed his father and married his mother. 

She does not even know if he knows it. Oedipus is imagined as being 

dead when K describes her, but he says that when Oedipus was still alive 

she could never bring herself to ask him, in case he did not know, since 

that would reveal to him his own disgrace: 

How she found out is extraneous to the tragic interest . . . 

. At an early age, before she had reached maturity, dark hints 

of this horrible secret had momentarily gripped her soul, until 

certainty hurled her with one blow into the arms of anxiety. 

Here at once I have a definition of the tragic in modern 

times . . . . 184 

Antigone keeps her secret to herself. The secret isolates her, even 

from the man she loves, and finally causes her to commit suicide rather 

than risk revealing it in a moment of intimacy or derangement. It also 

protects against the possibility that her father’s misfortune would be repeated 

in a succeeding generation. 

95

Ibsen’s Furia also carries a secret about a disgrace in her family, that 

her sister Tullia committed suicide after being seduced and abandoned 

by Catiline. Actually, while it is not mentioned in the play, Catiline presumably 

knows how and why Tullia died, so the only “secret” from his 

point of view is that Furia is Tullia’s sister. The only secret from Furia’s 

point of view is that the man with whom she is in love seduced her sister. 

Unlike Ks Antigone, Furia reveals her secret to the man she loves, 

whom she knows as Lucius, but only after having him swear to avenge 

the deed. When she learns that Lucius is in fact Catiline, she realizes that 

her lover is her enemy, and she dedicates herself to pursuing him thereafter, 

in order to avenge her dead sister. 185 Furia’s obsession becomes the 

mainspring of the plot, in the end replacing the play’s political action. 

For his part, when Catiline learns the nature of the crime he has sworn to 

avenge, he realizes that he has unknowingly made himself his own enemy. 

Ibsen has the characters recite this dilemma several times during 

the rest of the play in order to emphasize its significance. 

It could be argued that in defining Catiline’s dilemma Ibsen was applying 

Ks formula for the tragic situation to the circumstances in his play. 

According to K, it is the knowledge of guilt which defines the situation of 

the modern tragic character. While Catiline’s dilemma is similar to that 

of Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, who swears to avenge the death 

of the former king Laios without realizing that he himself is the killer, 

Catiline immediately realizes that he has sworn to avenge his own crime. 

In Sophocles’ play, Oedipus’ ignorance of his guilt generates a dramatic 

irony whose effect on the audience is to produce a sense of impending 

doom. Oedipus’ quest for knowledge carries the plot forward as 

our foreboding increases, until, with the revelation of the identity of the 

killer, and Oedipus’ recognition that it is himself, the action “veers around 

to its opposite,” and the catastrophe takes place, in which Oedipus as the 

avenger of his father’s death punishes himself as his father’s killer by 

putting out his own eyes. In The Poetics Aristotle describes the action of 

this play as the best for a tragedy, since recognition and reversal, the two 

elements of the tragic plot which are able to produce the strongest emotions 

in the audience, happen at the same time. This type of action is at 

the heart of the neoclassical conception of tragedy, since The Poetics became 

a handbook for dramatists after it was rediscovered in the fifteenth 

century. 

Dramatic irony of the kind found in Sophocles is absent from Ibsen’s 

play, because Catiline spends the whole play in the knowledge of his 

guilt, a knowledge which according to K is the essence of the modern 

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tragic character. This knowledge impedes his ability to act and causes 

him to vacillate between dreams of conquest and fantasies of escape. 

Because Catiline states the theme of his guilt in the opening monologue, 

a monologue which was pasted to the beginning of the manuscript after 

the original first scene had already been drafted, it is difficult to avoid the 

conclusion that Ibsen intentionally placed his main character in a situation 

equivalent to that of Oedipus in Oedipus the King after the recognition 

scene, or of Antigone as K describes her, i.e., in a state of anxiety 

caused by the consciousness of guilt. 

In Aristotle’s conception of tragedy, the action is a movement from 

ignorance to knowledge among those whom the poet has destined for 

good or bad fortune. This knowledge is of the true relations of the characters. 

Ordinarily it is revealed gradually, so as to sustain the interest of 

the audience in what will happen next. For example, in the course of his 

investigation of the death of Laios, the former king of Thebes, Oedipus 

first discovers that the man he killed at a place where three roads meet 

was Laios, and only later that Laois was his own father. 

By contrast, Catiline already knows everything of this kind at the beginning 

of the play, except for the fact that Furia, with whom he is romantically 

involved, is the sister of Tullia, whom he has seduced and 

abandoned. Once that information has been revealed, in the third scene 

of the first act, his character has exhausted its ability to move in the Aristotelian 

sense. Because of his paralysis, Furia becomes the active character 

in the play, driven as she is by her desire for revenge. The desire of a 

character for revenge produces a different type of dramatic action than 

the movement from ignorance to knowledge, and while it was known to 

Aristotle, since Aeschylus had used it in Choephoroi (The Libation Bearers), 

it was not his favorite kind of action, nor the type he discusses approvingly 

in The Poetics. 

It has been recognized ever since Ibsen’s play was published that his 

Catiline is a passive hero, more acted-upon than acting. 186 One could 

even argue that Furia is the protagonist, since she is the only one who 

commits a tragic action, stabbing Catiline. To be sure, Catiline kills his 

wife, but that action does not follow necessarily from the requirements 

of the plot. No doubt Ibsen intended Catiline to be the protagonist, but 

his choice of situation puts Furia in the active role, as the avenger of her 

sister’s death. It is her pursuit of Catiline which sustains the action once 

the plot of the conspiracy has been exhausted, which happens partway 

through the last act. 

97

Ks view of tragedy, and of the relatively greater importance of the 

inner life of characters than of their external circumstances, may have 

been part of what set Ibsen on a course to write the kind of drama he 

eventually did write, that is, psychologically complex and focussing on a 

small group of characters or on a single character. While he experimented 

with many types of dramatic action in his career, the type he eventually 

preferred in his mature realistic plays was the Sophoclean, such as is 

found in Oedipus the King, that is, an initial situation involving a group of 

characters who have been long known to one another, a situation which 

conceals a terrible truth whose nature is revealed gradually through the 

introduction of new information by one or more visitors who have known 

some or all of the participants for a long time but have not seen them 

recently. This type of action allowed him to explore the inner life of his 

characters in depth without having to introduce a great deal of physical 

activity. To cite just a few examples, the secret in A Doll House is that 

Nora forged her father’s signature; the secret in Rosmersholm is that 

Rebekka tormented Beate until she committed suicide. In both these 

plays, just as in Oedipus the King, the secret worms its way out during the 

course of the play and changes the relations of the main characters. In 

his mature plays Ibsen handled the secret with skill. In Catilina it came 

out right at the beginning, and thereby robbed the central character of 

the ability to act, requiring Ibsen to use an avenger to motivate his plot. 

One other detail from Ks chapter on tragedy is suggestive of Ibsen’s 

play. At the end, K asks rhetorically: 

98 

At whose hand does she [Antigone] fall, then? At the hand 

of the living or the dead? In a certain sense, at the hand of 

the dead, and what was predicted to Hercules, that he would 

be murdered not by a living person but by a dead one, applies 

to her, inasmuch as the cause of her death is the recollection 

of her father; in another sense, at the hand of the living, inasmuch 

as her unhappy love is the occasion for the recollection 

to slay her. 187 

This view of the causes of Antigone’s death is similar to what is prophesied 

for Catiline by the ghost of Sulla: “Though thou shalt fall by thine 

own hand, yet shall another strike thee down.” 188 

The purpose of the chapter of Either/Or entitled “The Immediate Erotic 

Stages” is to demonstrate why Mozart’s Don Giovanni is the best possible 

opera. The argument is that music is the best medium for the expression

of the sensuous (as opposed to the spiritual) aspect of human nature, and 

that Don Juan is the incarnation of the sensuous. 

As long ago as 1921, Erik Kihlmann observed that Ibsen’s Catiline is a 

Don Juan figure. 189 By reputation the historical Catiline was a libertine, 

but Ibsen’s version of the character emphasizes this aspect of his nature 

more than do the historical sources. He is sexually involved with all 

three of the named female characters in the play and spends more time 

onstage with the two who are alive than with the conspirators. Moreover, 

he dies not for his political actions but for seducing Tullia. 

In a discussion of non-musical versions of the Don Juan story, K makes 

the observation that while there have been many interpretations of the 

Faust legend, there have been few of the Don Juan legend: 190 

. . . [N]early all the interpretations of Don Juan . . . have 

clung to the element of the idea that as an erotic he must be 

triumphant. If, on the other hand, the other side is stressed, 

only then, I believe, is there any prospect of a significant interpretation 

of Don Juan that would form a counterpart to 

the musical Don Juan. 191 

Ibsen’s Catilina could be read as a version of the Don Juan legend in 

which the erotic is not triumphant. To be sure, in the tradition Don Juan 

dies at the end, but not through any human agency. The Commander 

returns as a ghost and hales him down to hell. Ibsen’s Catiline, however, 

is murdered by a living person in revenge for one of his seductions. 

Speaking of the Commander, the ghost of Sulla in Ibsen’s play could 

have been inspired by Ks discussion of the ghost of the Commander in 

Don Giovanni. 192 The ghost of Sulla performs a function similar to the 

ghost of the Commander by providing a moralizing perspective on the 

actions of the main character. This is how K describes the function of the 

ghost of the Commander: 

The second time he [the Commander] appears as spirit, 

and the thunderous voice of heaven sounds in his earnest, 

solemn voice. But just as he himself is transfigured, so his 

voice is transfigured into something more than a human voice; 

he no longer speaks, he passes judgment. 193 

The third chapter of Either/Or that appears to have a connection with 

Ibsen’s play is entitled “Silhouettes”. It is about portraying the inner state 

99

of a character, specifically one who has experienced the emotion K refers 

to as “sorrow,” but might also be called “grief,” or “loss”. “Silhouettes” 

describes three female characters whose response to their situation shows 

them, in Ks terms, to be capable of achieving tragic nobility. The first 

character described is Marie Beaumarchais, who was abandoned by her 

fiancé in Goethe’s Clavigo. The second is Donna Elvira, who was seduced 

and abandoned by Don Juan. The third is Margrete, who was 

seduced and abandoned by Faust in Goethe’s Faust. K provides an interior 

monologue for each of the three characters in the aftermath of her 

abandonment. Each character is alone, remembering the past and imagining 

or fantasizing about the future. The differences between the imaginations 

of the three characters show the difference in their natures. That 

is, in keeping with Ks emphasis on the psychology of the tragic character, 

they are portrayed not so much through their actions as through their 

imaginations. 

One can speculate that Ibsen took the advice recommended by 

Johannes Climacus (Ks persona in Part I of Either/Or) at the beginning of 

“Silhouettes,” and substituted other names for those of the three women 

described. 194 Aurelia, who continues to love despite evidence of betrayal, 

might correspond to Marie, who still loves the man who left her; Furia, 

the vestal virgin who seeks revenge for her dead sister, might correspond 

to Donna Elvira, the nun who calls down the vengeance of heaven on the 

head of her seducer; and Tullia, who commits suicide after being seduced 

and abandoned by Catiline, might correspond to Margrete, who kills her 

child after being seduced and abandoned by Faust. 

It is not quite that simple. The temperaments and circumstances of the 

three female characters in Catilina do not correspond exactly to those described 

by K. Ibsen seems to have taken from K the idea of three different 

types of women who have been deceived in love and then to have used 

details from the descriptions of Marie, Elvira, and Margrete in portraying 

his own female characters. He did not borrow these details consistently, 

however. For example, Elvira, the avenging character, plans to weave a 

garland of curses made out of everything that reminds her of Don Juan, 

just as Ibsen’s avenging character Furia weaves a garland of poppies for 

Catiline before she stabs him. It is Marie, however, the forgiving type, who 

imagines herself to be buried alive in “Silhouettes,” while it is Furia, the 

avenging type, who is buried alive in the play. Both Margrete and Tullia are 

types of women who internalize the aggression directed against them by 

committing a self-destructive action. We learn so little about Tullia, however, 

that Ibsen may have appropriated merely the idea of the type itself. 195 

100

There are enough echoes of “Silhouettes” in Ibsen’s play to allow us to 

suppose that he was thinking of Ks female characters as he was fashioning 

his version of the Catiline story. It is as though he posed to himself 

the questions: what would happen if the same man were to seduce three 

different types of women, and what if that man were Catiline? 

The notion that Ibsen had Ks essay in mind is corroborated by the 

fact that the female characters in his play are not similar to those in 

Sallust. The Roman historian said of Aurelia that no respectable man 

ever found anything in her to praise except her beauty. 196 Ibsen, by contrast, 

made of her such a virtuous and loving person that she is the agent 

of her husband’s salvation, even after he has stabbed her. Fulvia (the 

original name for Furia in Ibsen’s outline) is not a vestal virgin in Sallust 

but a courtesan. Ibsen made her a vestal virgin, the Roman equivalent of 

a nun, and the very opposite of a courtesan. Ibsen appears to have invented 

the character of Tullia, although not her name. Cicero’s patronymic 

was Tullius, and he had a daughter named Tullia. Catiline supposedly 

had affairs with a number of women, but there is no evidence that 

any of them committed suicide after being seduced by him. 

All of these choices have the effect of making the relevant parts of 

Ibsen’s play more closely resemble Ks model of three types of women 

reacting to their rejection. The effects of making Catiline the man who 

seduced all three women were, first, to focus the motivations of all three 

women on one person, the main character, and second, to strengthen the 

aspect of libertinism in his character, to make him more of a seducer, or 

Don Juan. 

The play as a whole has two different main actions: the plot of the 

conspiracy, which is handled as a conventional intrigue, and the competition 

of Aurelia and Furia for possession of Catiline’s will, which is portrayed 

as a contest between competing fantasies of his future. Aurelia 

wants him to leave Rome with her and live a quiet life in the country. 

Furia encourages his ambitions for power, in the hope that they will lead 

to his destruction. The plot of the conspiracy is over partway through 

the last act; for the remainder of the play the action is a tug-of-war between 

the two women for control of Catiline’s will. Catiline’s dream of 

two women playing chess for his destiny is a way of illustrating this action. 

By the end of the play the political theme has been forgotten, and 

the question is whether when Catiline dies he will go with Aurelia to 

Elysium, the heaven of the classical world, or with Furia to Tartarus, the 

classical hell. 

101

One other element of the play may derive from Ibsen’s reading of K, 

its ending. In the final confrontation among the three main characters, 

Catiline rejects Aurelia’s love; he feels confined by it and chases her offstage 

and stabs her. When he returns, Furia fulfills her revenge by stabbing 

him, but then Aurelia drags herself back onstage and declares that 

her love will save him. While at first Catiline is astonished by her appearance 

and replies that she will go to Elysium while he must descend to 

Tartarus, she insists on the power of her love to save him. She repeats 

the word twice: 

102 

“[M]y love (Kjærlighed) for you did give me strength at point 

of death, . . .” 

“[F]or ever love (Kjærlighed) dispels the terrors and the gloom 

of night.” 

Catiline is evidently impressed by the fact that Aurelia loves him even 

after he has mortally wounded her. He recalls the end of his dream, 

where the darkness is dispelled by light. In his final line he says to her: 

“All the powers of darkness you have vanquished with your love” 

(Kjærlighed). Furia withdraws into the background and disappears, tacitly 

accepting her defeat in the contest over possession of his soul. 

This ending is reminiscent of the endings of at least two of Ibsen’s 

other plays: Peer Gynt and Rosmersholm. After wandering the world for 

his whole life Peer realizes that his home has always been in Solveig’s 

“faith, hope and love.” At the end of Rosmersholm, Rosmer says that the 

only way he can believe Rebekka again is if she “goes the way Beate 

went,” i.e., if she gives up her life for him, just as Beate had done. Both 

plays contain the theme of sacrificial love expressed by a woman for a 

man. 

Due says that he, Schulerud and Ibsen read Ks Works of Love in 

Grimstad. That book, published in September of 1847, deals with the 

varieties of love or rather with the stages of love. There are two words for 

love in Danish, elskov, which is physical, and for K can indicate either 

erotic love or affection, and kjærlighed, which is spiritual love and can 

mean either idealized love or friendliness. Both of these words are used 

in the play, but the latter is the only one used in its last scene. 

K argues that most love is self-love, whether it is disguised or recognized, 

and that the great contribution of Christianity is the introduction 

of the conception of love as neighborliness, a love which must be ex-

tended to everyone, to the people one sees. He notes in Either/Or that it 

was Christianity which first “posited the sensuous-erotic as a principle.” 197 

Before Christianity sensuality had existed but was not reflective, not conscious. 

Christianity made people aware of their sensuality, and simultaneously 

distinguished it from the realm of spirit. 

As several scholars have observed, the final act of Catilina transpires 

in an increasingly symbolic landscape. 198 Catiline’s dream, the prophecy 

of the ghost, and the narrowing focus on the state-of-soul of the main 

character, all are intended to be received for their spiritual values. The 

political action of the play ends partway through the act, and the remaining 

issue is the spiritual destiny of the hero, first whether he will belong 

to good or evil, and, after he is mortally wounded, whether his soul will 

be saved or damned. 

Ibsen’s hero has spent the whole play in a post-Aristotelian consciousness, 

i.e., in the recognition of his own guilt. The resolution cannot, 

therefore, have recognition in the traditional sense of that term. Catiline’s 

recalling of the ending of his dream, however, where light triumphs over 

darkness, and his acceptance of the saving power of Aurelia’s love, may 

be intended as a new kind of recognition, one that has no practical consequences 

but that demonstrates that his consciousness has reached a new 

level, in which the power of Nemesis that earlier held him captive is 

vanquished by a higher conception of love, the kind represented by Ks 

conception of kjærlighed in Works of Love. In other words, Don Juan has 

recognized the limitations of sensual love and has accepted the reality of 

spiritual love. To that extent, and to use Ks language, the play is a new 

interpretation of the Don Juan legend in which the erotic is not triumphant. 

This conclusion does not imply that Ibsen himself has become a Christian 

or even a Kierkegaardian. 199 The new consciousness that Catiline 

expresses at the end is precisely that, his consciousness. Ibsen wants to 

show that Catiline learns a higher kind of love in the moment of his 

death. The forces of sensuality and vengeance represented by Furia are 

not disarmed, however, and the evidence of Catiline’s guilt for his various 

crimes is not suppressed in the play’s ending. In the play’s terms the 

conclusion makes sense. Catiline has enough good in him so that merely 

allowing Furia’s revenge to take his life, merely allowing his political and 

sexual crimes to determine the play’s ending, and thereby confirm the 

judgment of history, would not be a satisfactory ending to the argument 

of the play as a whole. 

103

Summary 

While the idea for the setting and the political theme of the play, i.e., 

ancient Rome and the Catilinarian conspiracy respectively, are derived 

from the Latin authors Cicero and especially Sallust, the psychological 

relations of the characters, and to a great extent the characters themselves, 

are adaptations of what Kierkegaard has to say about the Don 

Juan legend in Either/Or. Ks theory of the modern tragic character also 

appears to have influenced the play’s basic situation, in that the protagonist 

is guilty and conscious of it from the beginning. Catiline’s moral 

paralysis causes him to vacillate between the fantasies of the two women. 

When Aurelia’s fantasy of escape prevails in his mind, he declines leadership 

of the conspiracy. When Furia recalls to him his desire for freedom, 

he changes his mind and accepts the leadership. 

Because Catilina was written in a small provincial Norwegian town by 

a young man who until then had produced only four surviving lyric poems, 

it has sometimes been taken as an anomaly, or explained on the 

basis of its author’s later production. Some scholars have considered it to 

be an almost accidental creative outburst, the result of Ibsen’s brief Sturmund-Drang 

period, or have attributed it to unconscious forces in the poet’s 

psyche. 200 Ibsen himself has contributed to such interpretations by describing 

his supposedly revolutionary mood at the time the play was composed 

and by neglecting to acknowledge the extent and nature of his 

reading. The evidence, however, shows that his conscious dramatic design 

in the play was derived from reading Ks theory of tragedy, and his 

discussion of the Don Juan legend, and from interweaving these elements 

with the story of the Catilinarian conspiracy, a story he found in 

the Latin authors Cicero and Sallust, but which he might also have had in 

one or more earlier dramatizations. Beyond this, details in the play can 

be traced to other earlier literature, both dramatic and non-dramatic. 

However, because such other sources are often used fragmentarily, or 

because the details from them are changed, they are difficult to establish 

with certainty. 

Considering the fact that Catilina is Ibsen’s first play, it is an impressive 

achievement, especially if understood not only as an interpretation 

of the historical materials, which he “read through” in order to discover a 

different conception of the main character than they had preserved, but 

also as an application of ideas about the drama and of characters from Ks 

Either-Or. Kierkegaard is a first-rate philosopher, with a historically novel 

view of tragedy, and one can only imagine the excitement his ideas pro- 

104

duced when they were new. Ibsen’s ability to assimilate and apply these 

ideas in the construction of his drama is remarkable. The play’s many 

apparent borrowings from other literature, both dramatic and non-dramatic, 

not all of which may as yet have been identified, demonstrate the 

breadth of the poet’s reading. Finally, his practice of synthesizing and 

transforming materials from a variety of sources, historical, dramatic, 

poetic, and philosophical is typical of what would be his procedure for 

the next twenty-five years, until he made the transition to writing social 

problem plays in a contemporary setting. 

105

106

IBSEN’S LAST YEAR IN GRIMSTAD, 

APRIL 1849-APRIL 1850 

Henrik Ibsen finished writing Catilina in March or April of 1849. The 

draft manuscript contained many interlinear corrections, as well as several 

additional pages glued into it. 201 Christopher Due undertook to produce 

a fair copy, which Ole Schulerud carried with him when he left 

Grimstad to return to Christiania in late August or early September. 

Schulerud’s intention was to find a theatre to produce the play, but when 

this failed he decided to publish it instead. When he could not find a 

publisher willing to take the play, he had it published at his own expense. 

It appeared on 12 April 1850, about a year after it was finished, and just a 

few days before Ibsen himself left Grimstad for the capital. 

Writing Catilina was Ibsen’s most important creative achievement to 

date. It changed his life. The surviving evidence of his activities during 

his last year in Grimstad suggests that by then he had already decided to 

become a writer. While nominally still preparing for the university entrance 

examination, Ibsen’s literary activity continued as well and became 

more diverse. In the year before the composition of Catilina, Ibsen 

had written only 4 surviving lyric poems; from the year following, April 

1849-April 1850, there are at least 22 poems. Ibsen also composed the 

draft of a one-act play, “Normannerne” (“The Normans”), which he revised 

into “Kjæmpehøien” (“The Warrior’s Barrow”) the following May, 

after he had arrived in Christiania. He also drafted the first few pages of 

a novel, “Fangen paa Akershus” (“The Prisoner of Akershus”), although 

he set it aside to begin a play about Olaf Tryggvason, none of which has 

survived. 202 

Before Ibsen left Grimstad he gathered the 22 lyric poems, together 

with the 4 he had written earlier, into a notebook entitled “Blandede 

Digtninger fra Aarene 1848, 1849, 1850” (“Mixed Poems from the years 

1848, 1849, 1850”). 203 He took this notebook with him when he left for 

Christiania, hoping to find a publisher, but in this he was unsuccessful. 

107

Since most of these poems are unknown in the English-speaking world, 

both the originals and prose English translations of all the poems in 

“Mixed Poems” are included on the website. 204 

The poems in “Mixed Poems” appear to be arranged in order of composition; 

at the least they are grouped according to the year in which 

they were written. More than half of the poems are love lyrics addressed 

either explicitly or implicitly to a young woman named Clara Ebbell. The 

titles of the lyrics that can be associated with her are: 

108 

“Høstaftenen” (“Autumn Evening”), 

“Sjælens Solglimt” (“The Soul’s Glimpse of the Sun”), 

“Maaneskinsfart paa Havet” (“Moonlight Cruise on the Sea”), 

“Midnatsstemning” (“Midnight Mood”), 

“Til Stjernen” (“Tilegnet C: E:”) (“To the Star” (“Dedicated to C: E)”), 

“Aftenvandring i Skoven” (“Evening Stroll in the Forest”), 

“I Høsten” (“In the Autumn,” published in Christiania-Posten, 

29 September,1849), 

“Vaarens Minde” (“The Memory of Spring”), 

“Balminder. Et Livsfragment i Poesi og Prosa” (“Memories of a Ball. 

A Fragment of Life in Poetry and Prose”), 

“Det er forbi!” (“It is finished!”), 

“I Natten” (“In the Night”), 

“Maaneskinsstemning (Leveret den 7de April)” (“Moonlight Mood 

(Presented the 7 th of April (1850))”), and 

“Maaneskinsvandring efter et Bal (Skrevet paa Opfordring af Sophie 

Holst og Cathrine Martini)” (“Moonlight Stroll after a Ball (Written 

at the request of Sophie Holst and Cathrine Martini)”). 205 

Clara Ebbell was a member of one of the established families in 

Grimstad, to which Ibsen ordinarily did not have access. In the summer 

of 1849, however, possibly through the intercession of his friend Christopher 

Due, he was invited to join some of the other young people of the 

town for Sunday boating trips, and it may have been on one of these 

excursions that he noticed Clara. She was then 20 years old, talented in 

music, and of a spiritual temperament; later in life she became a pietist. 

She evidently did not love him, but she did allow him to give her some of 

his poems. Between the late summer of 1849 and his departure from 

Grimstad in April 1850, he produced the series of poems listed above. 

They document the birth, flowering, disappointment, and death of his 

love, as well as his subsequent desire to forget it. These love lyrics are

the first of three “waves” of such lyrics that he was to write, each one 

associated with a young woman with whom he was at the time in love. 206 

Interspersed with the love poems in “Mixed Poems” is a variety of 

other poems written during the same period. They include: a memory 

poem, a graveyard poem in which skeletons come to life and dance in a 

ring, a few experiments in the trend of National Romanticism, a poem 

honoring the embattled Magyars in their struggle for independence from 

the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a series of sonnets addressed to the king, 

Oskar I, urging him to go to the aid of the Danes in the Schleswig-Holstein 

dispute, and a memorial poem at the death of Adam 

Oehlenschlæger. There are also a conceit addressed to a perhaps imaginary 

young lady, offering her the opportunity to set up housekeeping 

in his heart, and two occasional poems dedicated to individuals other 

than Clara Ebbell. 

The titles of these poems, in the order mentioned, are: 

memory poem: “Erindringskilden” (“The Spring of Memory”); 

graveyard poem: “Dødningeballet” (“The Ball of the Dead”); 

National Romantic poems: “Til Norges Skjalde” (“To the Poets of 

Norway”), and “Møllergutten” (“The Miller Boy”); 

poem to the Magyars: “Til Ungarn” (“To Hungary”); 

sonnets to King Oskar: “Vaagner Skandinaver!” (“Awake 

Scandinavians!”); 

memorial poem to Oehlenschlæger: “Skjalden i Valhal, 

ved Efterretningen om Oehlenschlægers Død” 

(“The Skald in Valhalla, at the news of Oehlenschlæger’s death”); 

conceit: “Ledigt Logis” (“Vacant Lodgings”); 

poems addressed to individuals: “Afskedens Minde, ved O. Schuleruds 

Afreise” (“Memories of Leave-Taking, at O. Schulerud’s departure”); 

“Maaneskinsvandring efter et Bal, skrevet paa Opfordring af Sophie 

Holst og Cathrine Martini” (“Moonlight Stroll after a Ball, written at 

the request of Sophie Holst and Cathrine Martini”). 207 

The last poem appears in both the Ebbell list and the non-Ebbell list 

above, because it was probably written with Clara Ebbell in mind, even 

though it was not addressed to her. This poem is reproduced and discussed 

later in the chapter. 

Anyone interested in studying these poems should perhaps read them 

not in the order they are given in “Mixed Poems,” but rather in the order 

given in the two lists presented above. Their order in the collection tends 

109

to obscure the fact that some of them deal with the poet’s personal 

emotions, while others deal with aesthetic or political issues, or are occasional 

poems, in which the feelings expressed are formal or formalized. 

In the fall of 1849 Ibsen composed the first draft of what would become 

his second play, “Kjæmpehøien” (“The Warrior’s Barrow”), about 

the Christianization of Norway. It features a thematic contrast between 

the harshness of the Viking code and the gentleness of the Christian ideal 

of life. These two tendencies are harmonized in the conclusion through 

the union of Gandalf, the Viking king, with Blanka, a young Christian 

woman. This play shows evidence of the influence of Adam 

Oehlenschlæger not only in its conception but also in its verse, setting, 

and theatrical style. 208 

Three letters to Ole Schulerud from this period survive. He was by 

then in Christiania. 209 The first of these (dated 15 October 1849) deals 

mainly with the writer’s desire that his correspondent excuse him for the 

tone of an earlier letter, now lost, in which he evidently expressed suspicion 

of his friend’s actions with respect to Catilina. Ibsen was deeply 

concerned about the fate of the play and was apparently impatient at 

what seemed to him to be a delay in its acceptance by one of the theatres 

in Christiania. In the second letter (dated 5 January 1850), Ibsen mentions 

that he is working on a play about Olaf Tryggvason, a Norwegian 

king who had Christianized the Faroe Islands about the year 1000. Ibsen 

did not finish this play, and no trace of it survives. In the same letter he 

reports starting to write a novel about Christian Lofthuus, a man from 

the Christianssand area who had led a peasant rebellion against the Danes 

in the eighteenth century. Lofthuus was the grandfather of the unfortunate 

Else Sophie Jensdatter, the mother of Ibsen’s illegitimate son. Only 

the first few pages of the novel, which is entitled “Prisoner of Akershus,” 

survive. The third letter (10 February, 1850) accompanied a copy of 

“Skjalden i Valhal,” which Ibsen requested Schulerud to submit for publication 

to Christiania-Posten. 

The variety of this production and the circumstances that only the poems 

were actually completed, and that the only pieces published were two 

of the poems, show that Ibsen was casting about, searching for an appropriate 

form for his literary abilities. There might have been several reasons 

for this variety, not to say aimlessness, of invention. In the first place, 

while Ibsen was proud of his first play and believed in it, he was quite 

naturally surprised at its sudden appearance, and perhaps a little frightened 

as well. It is a responsibility to have talent, and perhaps Ibsen was 

not ready yet to accept it, or did not quite know what to do with it. In the 

110

second place, since he had been out of school for six years, what he knew 

about contemporary Norwegian literature was based primarily on what he 

had read on his own, either in books he had bought or borrowed or in 

newspapers and magazines that had come into his hands. The several 

genres that he attempted during his last year in Grimstad were therefore 

in some cases experiments, modelled after recently published works of 

various kinds, to see whether he too could produce a marketable piece of 

work. Ibsen must have recognized that Catilina was to some extent sui 

generis, or at the least unfashionable, and that this had influenced its reception 

both by theatres and by publishers. In the third place, he was in 

love during the summer and fall of 1849 and writing poems addressed to 

the object of his affections. In these poems his feelings are often anxious 

and overwrought, and he sometimes writes in a style he hopes his beloved 

will like, rather than one that reflects his tastes. Some of these poems 

convey a peculiar impression that they have been written by a ventriloquist, 

by someone who can imitate the voices of other poets with great and 

even disconcerting facility. By January 1850 he was describing his feelings 

for Clara as an “imagined infatuation.” 210 That may have been because 

at the Christmas season she had become engaged to another man, who 

was in fact her uncle, Henning Junghans Bie, and was 17 years her senior. 

Clara Ebbell was a fan of the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschlæger. According 

to one account, on a certain occasion, in Ibsen’s presence, she 

read his poem “Skjalden i Valhal” (“The Skald in Valhalla”), which had 

been written on the occasion of Oehlenschlæger’s death, and in imitation 

of the archaistic style the lattter had sometimes affected; it had been 

published in Christiania-Posten (16 February 1850). After reading it she 

expressed her approval of it to him. We are entitled to imagine that Ibsen 

himself had handed her the poem to read. In order for her to have done 

so while in the same room with him, she would have had to continue to 

associate with him even after she was engaged to marry someone else. 

We do not know what that occasion was. 

Ibsen had signed the poem with a pseudonym, “Brynjolf Bjarme,” but 

something that showed in his face as she was praising the poem made 

her say: “Oh, you are Brynjolf Bjarme.” He at first asked her not to reveal 

his secret, and then, since she now knew who Brynjolf Bjarme was, he 

looked around to be sure that nobody else was listening, and confided 

that he was about to publish a play, Catilina, under the same pseudonym, 

and asked whether she would allow him to dedicate the play to her. She 

supposedly replied, “No, give up such tricks!” (“Nei, la slige streger fare!”) 211 

She could not allow her name to be associated with him publicly, not 

111

merely because his play was about a notorious libertine, but also because 

she was engaged to marry someone else. 

He did not dedicate the play to her, but neither did he altogether give 

up such tricks. A number of scholars have speculated that Clara was a 

model for the character of Blanka in his second play, the one-act “The 

Warrior’s Barrow,” whose first draft, “The Normans,” dates from the fall 

of 1849, and whose form is strongly influenced by Oehlenschlæger, her 

favorite poet. Since Blanka is a positive character, the portrait of her, and 

indeed the whole play, can be construed as a compliment to Clara. She 

had reportedly attempted to convert Ibsen to Christianity, just as Blanka 

does Gandalf in the play. 212 

Clara was present in the audience when the play was first performed 

at the Christiania Theater in Christiania, on 26 September 1850, where 

she saw the young man she had known as a pharmacist’s apprentice and 

had rejected as a suitor applauded by an audience in the capital. The 

play was received with approbation despite the fact that it was much 

inferior to Catilina, which earlier had been rejected by the same theatre. 

By then she had broken off her engagement to Henning Bie, although 

she later married him. After Ibsen saw her in Christiania he sent another 

series of poems to her. 213 

In 1849, at the same time that he was in love, he was also playing the 

role of a rebel and critic of society. As has already been mentioned, at a 

“reform banquet” he gave “a fire-breathing speech against all kaisers and 

kings, these monsters of society, and for the republic, the ‘only possible’ 

form of government.” 214 The person he was on such an occasion was 

very different from the person he was at work, or the person he was 

while trying to communicate with Clara. The person who wrote poetry 

was also someone else, not only different from his other personae, but 

also different from one poem to the next. His changing self-concept is 

reflected in the changing styles and subject matter of the works he wrote 

at this time. In the space of a few short weeks in December and January 

of 1849-50, probably just after Clara became engaged to someone else, he 

apparently wrote both of his most political poems, “Til Ungarn” (“To Hungary”) 

and “Vaagner Skandinaver!” (“Awake Scandinavians!”) as well as 

“Til Norges Skjalde” (“To the Poets of Norway”), an exhortatory poem about 

what Norwegian poetry ought to be like: 

112 

Hvi sværmer I, Skjalde! For Fortidens Fjerne, 

For skrinlagte Old med de smuldrende Minder, --

Et Billed saa mat som den Lysning der rinder 

I dæmrende Nat fra en skysløret Stjerne? -- 

Er ikke den Gnist som I eie da kun 

En Gave jer skjænket til Nytte for Folket, 

Der kræver af Skjaldens begeistrede Mund 

Sin smærte, sin Lyst og sin Længsel fortolket. 

I sang jo saatit om “de kneisende Fjelde”, 

Hvor Granskoven voxer og Jøklen har hjemme, 

Men syner og Drømme som storme med Vælde 

I Brødernes Hjerter, -- dem kunde I glemme! 

Hvi lytte I ei til den Brusning, som rigt 

Fra Sjælene bæver før stille det vorder? 

Hvi flette I Synerne ei til et Digt, 

Hvi former I Tonerne ei til Accorder? 

O, fagre Gestalter i Nuet jo vinke, -- 

Fra Dalen, fra Fjeldet, fra Vinter og Sommer. 

Ha, see I ei Skatten saa glimrende blinke, 

En Folkelivsdigtning med deilige Blommer! 

De luftige Billeder kræve et Liv 

I skildrende Kvæder, Tilværelsens Panter, 

De savne kun Skjaldens beeandende: Bliv! 

For herligt at klædes i Kvadets Gevandter! 

[Poets, why do you daydream for the distant past, for entombed 

age with its crumbling memories, a picture as feeble 

as the light that rises at dawn from a cloud-veiled star? Is not 

the spark which you possess then merely a gift bestowed on 

you to use for the people, who demand that the skald's inspired 

mouth interpret its sorrow, its delight and its longing? 

You sang so often about "the towering mountain," where 

the spruce forest grows and the glacier has a home, but visions 

and dreams that storm majestically in your brothers' 

hearts, -- those you could forget! Why do you not listen to the 

rushing, which trembles richly from the soul before it grows 

calm? Why do you not weave the visions into a poem, why 

do you not form the sounds into chords? 

Beautiful shapes beckon here-and-now, you know, -- from 

the valley, from the mountain, from winter and summer. Do 

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114 

you not see the treasure so brilliantly sparkling, -- a poetic 

work of folk life with delightful flowers! Those fleeting images 

demand a life in descriptive poems, symbols of experience, 

they lack only the skald's inspiring: "Come into being!" 

to be dressed magnificently in the poem's draperies!] 

To dwell on the memories of a glorious past does not lead to genuine 

poetic inspiration. Images of present life can be just as poetic as those of 

the past, especially images found in nature. This affirmation, which is 

standard Romantic poetic theory, is almost immediately questioned by 

the poet himself in the most elegant poem from Grimstad, “Møllergutten” 

(“The Miller Boy”), composed during the Christmas holidays of 1849-50. 

In the second letter to Schulerud (5 January 1850) Ibsen reports 

I have used a few stories and descriptions from Telemark to 

write some short poems, adapted to fit well-known folk melodies, 

and have thus had a shot at nationalistic writing. 

In fact, the only poem from the project in nationalistic writing which 

survives is this one: 

MØLLERGUTTEN 

Hvor Fossen suser i Sommernat 

Henover Elvebundens Stene, 

Mens Taagen glider ad Elv og Krat, 

Der sidder Møllergutten ene; -- 

Imellem Oreløvet titter ind 

En sneebleg Lysning udaf Maaneskin, 

Spredende der 

Venligt sit Skjær 

Henover Nattens tause Scene. 

Det er saa sildig en Thorsdagskvel, 

Fra Fjeldet Hulderslotten klinger, 

Og Fossegrimmen i Strømmens Væld 

De gyldne Harpestrænge svinger, -- 

Og Møllergutten lytter til dens Spil, 

Tys, hør! da bæver, som en Gjenlyd mild, 

Hulderens Sang,

Fosharpens Klang, 

Let baaren hen paa Nattens Vinger. 

Og det er Thorgjerd som lokker fram 

Sin Feles underlige Kvæde, 

For han har offret det sorte Lam 

Til Fossegrimmen hist dernede, 

Og derfor har han ogsaa Spillet lært, 

Og derfor lyder fra hans Bue sært 

Skovtoppens Suus, 

Fjeldbækkens Bruus 

Med Hulderlok og Lurens Kvæde! 

Men Livet tykkes ham koldt og mat 

Og uden Gammen nu derhjemme, 

Thi hvad han hørte og saa inat 

Det kan han aldrig mere glemme, -- 

Og derfor strømmer fra hans Strænge hvad 

Hans Længsel sang for ham, -- et sorgfuldt Kvad; 

Tonernes Strøm 

Tolke den Drøm 

Midtsommernatten lod ham nemme! -- 

[On a summer night, where the waterfall roars across the 

river-bottom's stones, while the mist glides by river and thicket, 

there sits the miller boy alone; among alder foliage a snowpale 

dawn of moonlight peeps in, spreading its pleasant gleam 

across the night's silent scene. 

It is late one Thursday evening; from the mountain echoes 

the hulder's air, and in the stream's torrent the fossegrim 

plucks the golden harpstrings, and the miller boy listens to 

its playing. Hush, listen! Then, like a gentle echo, the hulder's 

song trembles, and the waterfall-harp's sound is lightly carried 

away on wings of night. 

It is Thorgjerd who calls forth his fiddle's marvellous lay, 

because he has sacrificed the black lamb to the fossegrim there 

below, and therefore too he has learned the magical playing, 

and therefore from his bow are heard strangely the foresttop's 

sighs, the mountain-brook's roar, with hulder-call and 

flute-song. 

115

116 

But life at home seems to him cold and weak and joyless 

now, since what he heard and saw last night he can never 

forget, and therefore from his strings pours what his yearning 

sang for him; a sorrowful song; the tones' stream interprets 

the dream that the midsummer night let him perceive!] 

This poem is modelled fairly closely on a poem of the same name by 

Johan Sebastian Welhaven which had appeared in Norsk Folkekalender in 

December of 1849: 

MØLLERGUTTEN 

ved J. S. Welhaven 

Møllergutten sad ved Kværnehuset 

under Haukeliens Fjeld, 

og han hørte der i Elvesuset 

Hallingslaatten fra det dybe Væld. 

Fossegrimmen sine Strænge rørte, 

Skummet sprang og hvirvlede dertil; 

Ingen uden Møllergutten hørte 

hvordan Elven gik med Strængespil. 

Og han kunde siden med sin Bue 

stryge Fossegrimmens Dands. 

Aldrig før i Hytte og paa Tue 

var der hørt saa gjevt et Spil som hans; 

aldrig gik der over Gulv og Enge 

saadan Halling som hvor han gav Klang; 

men han har vel og med sine Strænge 

gjort det stilt i Laget mangengang. 

Og der kom, hvorom han aldrig drømte, 

skjønt han gik saa tankefuld, 

Brev og Bud til ham fra den berømte, 

vidt bereiste Mester Ole Bull. 

Han, der turde selv ved Kongetronger 

Lade Slaatten over Strængen gaae, 

han erindred, at dens bedste Toner 

lød paa Fjeldet i en Hyttevraa.

Og da lod han Møllergutten bytte 

denne Hytte med en Hal, 

hvor vel Fler end Tusind kunde lytte 

til de underbare Toners Fald. 

Møllergutten sad som naar man stirrer 

overbøiet paa et Elvdybs Pragt, 

og som Broen, hvor man dvæler, dirrer, 

saadan rysted Sædet ved hans Takt. 

Men hans Spil var og som Fossefaldet, 

der i stride Hvirvler gaaer, 

og ved Spillet blev hver Tanke kaldet 

did hvor Fossegrimmen Harpen slaaer; 

kaldet fjernt hen til de grønne Dale, 

som har Kilder fra et snedækt Fjeld, 

hvor vor Kunst i Toner som i Tale 

altid finde kan sit friske Væld. 

The miller boy sat by the grinding mill under Houkelien’s 

Mountain, and he heard in the river’s sigh the Halling-dance 

from the deep spring. The fossegrim touched his strings, the 

foam gushed and whirled; nobody but the miller boy heard 

how the river flowed with the violin music. 

He was allowed then to accompany the fossegrim’s dance 

with his bow. Never before, in hut or on hillock, was heard 

such splendid playing as his. Never did there sound over 

floor and meadow such a Halling-dance as what he gave forth. 

Without a doubt he has many times silenced the company 

where he has played. 

And there came (what he had never dreamed of; it was so 

beautiful that he went thankfully) a letter and offer to him 

from the famous widely-travelled Master Ole Bull. He, who 

dared before the king’s throne to let the bow pass over the 

strings, --he remembered that the best sounds were heard on 

the mountain in the corner of a hut. 

And then the miller boy was permitted to exchange his 

hut for a hall, where more than a thousand people could lis- 

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118 

ten to the wonderful sounds cascade. The millery boy sat as 

when one gazes bent over on a river’s deep splendor, -- and as 

when one pauses on a bridge, trembling, so the company 

trembled at his bowstroke. 

But his playing was like the waterfall, which goes whirling 

in torrents, and by that playing every thought was drawn 

away to where the fossegrim plucks the harp, --drawn far away 

to the green valley, which has springs from a snow-covered 

mountain, where our art, in music as in speech, can always 

find its refreshing power.] 

Several scholars have remarked upon the similarity in theme of the 

two poems, but their sentiments are quite different. Both poems are 

based on a historical character, Thorgeir Augundson, a fiddle-player from 

Telemark who had been brought to Christiania the previous season and 

who had charmed an audience with his playing at a concert on 15 January 

1849. In Welhaven’s poem the musician’s close connection with nature 

is stressed, as is the idea that genine poetic inspiration comes from 

such a connection. Welhaven’s fiddle player is a representative of the 

natural man, a personification of the artist according to Welhaven’s aesthetic 

theory. In Ibsen’s poem, by contrast, there is the implication that 

creative talent involves a pact with the devil, represented as the fossegrim, 

a sprite who lives under waterfalls and to whom the fiddle player supposedly 

sacrifices a black lamb in order to acquire his musical ability. Ibsen’s 

poem also describes how the artist feels after the moment of inspiration 

is passed: lonely, exhausted, and disillusioned. Welhaven is interested 

in the miller boy as a symbol of the relationship between art and nature. 

Ibsen’s miller boy has symbolic value as well, but his real-life situation is 

also represented. The information Ibsen incorporates about the black 

lamb and about the miller boy’s impoverished background comes from 

articles published in the Christiania newspapers the previous winter. 215 

He invents nothing in the legend surrounding the miller boy, but he does 

include information not used by Welhaven that provides a more realistic 

and individualized portrait. 

The labor organizer Marcus Thrane visited Grimstad on 2 September 

1849, during a dispute that local shipyard workers were having with their 

employers. Some of Thrane’s strongest supporters were among apprentices, 

whose working conditions at the time were among the worst of any 

laborers in Norway. Ibsen had been an apprentice himself and conse-

quently could have been sympathetic to Thrane’s goals, even though he 

considered himself to be an aristocrat rather than a member of the working 

class. As a matter of fact, while he lived in Christiania in 1850-51 he 

had a job writing for the newspaper of the Thrane movement. One can 

write articles without necessarily believing in the positions they take, 

but it seems likely that with at least part of himself Ibsen was a supporter 

of Marcus Thrane. With this in mind, the two poems about the miller 

boy can be read in a way to reflect the differing class perspectives of the 

two poets: Welhaven was a leader of the so-called embetskultur, whose 

goal was to elevate the lower classes through education and the leadership 

of the upper classes. While Ibsen was never a populist in the way 

that Thrane was, his own experience could have made him skeptical of 

the well-to-do, who often take for granted their advantages and privileges. 

From the same period as “The Miller Boy” comes “Balminder. Et 

livsfragment i Poesi og Prosa” (“Memories of a Ball. A fragment of life 

in poetry and prose”), a long, overwrought mostly-prose poem in the style 

of Henrik Wergeland, with perhaps some influence from Søren 

Kierkegaard, about a young man disappointed in love who contemplates 

suicide. He also wrote “Det er Forbi” (“It is finished!”), a poem that 

memorializes the death of hope, and the death of love. 

Slukt er Haabet! Ja, for evigt slukket 

I min Barm hvor nys det flammed’ klart, 

Trylleborgens Blomsterport er lukket, -- 

Hulde Drøm! hvi flygted du saasnart? 

Harpetoner gjennem Sjælen vifted, 

Dybt i Aandens Tempel var Sabbat; 

Ak, nu har jo Tonebølgen skiften 

Med et Dødssuk gjennem Hjertets Nat! -- 

Aandeborgen ligger i Ruiner 

Steen ved Steen paa Hjertets golde Grund; 

Men naar ind dens Herskerinde Triner 

Reiser Hallen sig i Nattens Stund; -- 

Fra det Svundnes veemodsfulde Rige 

Rækker hun mig blidt den fyldte Kalk 

Og de blege Mindeskygger stige 

Ætherlet fra deres Catafalk. -- -- -- -- 

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120 

O, saa vil jeg drømme blidt og vanke 

Gjennem Borgen i den tause Nat, -- 

Fromme Mindeblommer vil jeg sanke, 

Gjemme dem, som Hjertets bedste Skat; 

Kom da, kolde Nu! med al din Smærte, 

Læg dig vinterligt om Barmen kun, -- 

Vaarligt staaer et Tempel i mit Hjerte, 

Der har Mindet bygget sit Paulun! 

[Hope is quenched! Yes, forever quenched in my bosom 

where just now it blazed brightly; the enchanted castle's flowered 

gate is shut. Lovely dream! why fled you so soon? Harp 

notes wafted through the soul, deep in the mind's temple it 

was sabbath; now the tone-wave has changed with a deathly 

sigh through the heart's night! 

The mind-castle lies in ruins stone upon stone on the 

heart's barren soil; but now at its mistress' steps the hall rises 

in the hour of night; from that mournful vanished kingdom 

she reaches me gently that full chalice and the pale clouds of 

memory ascend ethereally from their catafalque. 

Oh, then I shall dream gently and ramble through the castle 

in the silent night, pious memory blossoms I shall pluck, to 

keep them, as the heart's best treasure. Come then, cold 

Present! with all your pain, settle winter-like around my breast; 

a temple stands spring-like in my heart; there has memory 

built its tent!] 

It appears that even in poems not addressed to Clara Ebbell, Ibsen 

was using or at any rate reacting to the experience of love, and in some 

poems perhaps trying to impress her. The period of December 1849- 

January 1850 is remarkable for the number and variety of poems Ibsen 

wrote. At that time he was responding to the fact of Clara’s engagement 

to another man and also waiting to hear the fate of his first play, which he 

described on 5 January 1850 as its “death sentence.” This was the time of 

the one and only ball he attended in Grimstad, wearing a new suit and in 

the company of Sophie Holst, where they reportedly danced the gallop. 

While the poems addressed either directly or indirectly to Clara Ebbell 

document the birth, passion, disappointment, and death of the poet’s hopes,

they are written in a private code meant for her in particular. She was not 

so much a lover for him as a muse; what he wanted from her was a stimulus 

for and a response to his writing. He was a very private and emotionally 

withdrawn young man, despite (or perhaps because of) his early exposure 

to physical love. Clara was an intelligent, spirited and talented young 

woman, but she was not accessible to him as a potential life-partner. She 

was a member of one of the good families of Grimstad and was related to 

others. He was a mere pharmacist’s apprentice, and so was not perceived 

by her, and especially not by her family, as of her social class. He had also 

disgraced himself both through fathering an illegitimate child and through 

carrying on wild pranks in the streets at night. 

The last poem in “Blandede Digtninger” is “Maaneskinsvandring efter 

et Bal (Skrevet paa Opfordring af Sophie Holst og Cathrine Martini)” 

(“Moonlight Stroll after a Ball (Written at the request of Sophie Holst and 

Cathrine Martini)”) and dated 12 April 1850, the day before Ibsen left 

Grimstad forever: 216 

Tys, hvor stille! -- hist fra Salen lyder Glæden ikke længer, 

Ingen Stemme, ingen Tone gjennem Nattens Stille trænger. 

Langt i Vester kaster Maanen snart det sidste Blik henover 

Jorden, som i Glemselsdrømme under Sneens Lillier sover. 

Endt er Ballet; men i Tanken seer jeg end iblandt de hvide 

Skikkelser, som svæve gjennem Rækkerne, en let Sylphide! 

Snart er Maanen dalet, da skal Søvnens Arme mig omfatte, 

Da kan Sjælen glide frit paa Drømmens Hav med Mindets Skatte! 

[Hush, how still! Yonder from the ballroom the pleasure sounds 

no longer, no voice, no tone penetrates the night’s calm. 

Far in the West the moon shortly will cast its last glance across 

the earth, which sleeps under the snow-lilies in dreams of 

forgetfulness. 

The ball is ended; but in thought I still see among those white 

figures that glide through the ranks a graceful young sylph! 

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122 

Soon the moon will set, then sleep’s arms will embrace me, 

then the soul could drift freely on the sea of dreams with 

memory’s treasures!] 

We know Ibsen went to a ball accompanied by Sophie Holst, a good 

friend of his although not a sweetheart. This poem was written, or at any 

rate presented, several months after that ball, however, and appears to 

recreate a moment after the ball, during their walk home together afterwards. 

It is possible that he walked home with both of the young ladies to 

whom the poem is addressed, as would be proper. The focus of attention 

is not the walk, however, but rather the memory of one “graceful young 

sylph” inside the ballroom, whom the poet looks forward to remembering 

in his dreams, and whom without too much difficulty we can take to 

be Clara Ebbell. 

Ibsen left Grimstad on 13 April 1850. He spent two weeks in Skien 

with his family before continuing on to Christiania. He was not sure he 

would be welcome at home, but when his sister Hedvig wrote to invite 

him, he agreed at once. While he was in Skien, he went for a long walk 

with her. She reported in a letter written more than 50 years later that 

during the course of the walk, when they reached the top of Kapitelberget, 

she had asked him about his plans. According to her, he had replied that 

he wanted to achieve complete fulfillment “in greatness and in insight 

[klarhet].” “And when you have done that?” she asked. “Then I want to 

die,” he said. 217 

What made him think, at the age of 22, having just spent six years 

confined in a small Norwegian town, that he could achieve greatness? 

One is entitled to wonder. All the same, the years in Grimstad were 

important for Ibsen, and for an understanding of his later achievement. 

What he wrote there offers clues to his later production, but also is of 

significance because something about the town itself, about what he experienced 

there, made him a writer. He had close friends in Grimstad 

with whom he could share his thoughts, a circumstance that in later years 

was to be the case only rarely, and then only for brief periods. He used 

the opportunity imposed upon him by his physical confinement to read, 

and he must have had good advice about what to read: from Georgina 

Crawfurd, from his tutors, from Ole Schulerud, and no doubt from others 

as well: 

dramatists: Ludvig Holberg, Adam Oehlenschlæger, 

Friedrich Schiller, Alexander Dumas pére,

Christen Hostrup, and others; 

poets: Johan Sebastian Welhaven, Henrik Wergeland, 

Andreas Munch, Friedrich Paludan-Müller, and others; 

the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard; 

the Latin authors Sallust, Cicero and Julius Caesar. 

the historian Peter Andreas Munch. 

He must have read some of the novels in the Grimstad reading society 

as well, or he would not have begun writing his own novel, “The 

Prisoner in Akershus,” which is in the style of popular Romantic fiction 

of the time, and which Michael Meyer, his British biographer, describes 

as “Dickensian,” and Oskar Mosfjeld compares to the style of the first 

Norwegian novelist, Maurits Hansen. 218 Did he actually see any plays in 

performance? We do not know, but we can say that plays were being 

performed in Grimstad while he lived there. He did have a serious personal 

disaster when he fathered an illegitimate child at the age of 18, but 

he also had the chance to be in love, in his own way, with a real young 

woman, Clara Ebbell, even if he did not win her in the end. 

It is necessary to bear in mind that all his life Henrik Ibsen was different 

from everybody around him. He was more perceptive, more intelligent, 

more gifted than everybody around him, and usually withdrawn at 

the same time. He could not easily find friends who could understand 

him. He was already in the minority as a member of the small Norwegian 

aristocracy, but when his father lost his money and his social standing, 

Henrik became déclassé as well and had to reconstitute himself completely 

on his own, without resources, position, or much education. In 

Grimstad he was treated as a working-class person, a shop clerk, when he 

knew he was better than that. He was born for better things, and he was 

gifted for better things. His character Catiline has been read as a selfprojection. 

Surely there is a lot of Henrik Ibsen in his first protagonist, 

but he is not merely a positive figure. He is, a criminal, a libertine, and a 

wastrel who yet aspires to greatness. 

One poem from the early period more than any other defines the 

course and the character of Ibsen’s future career: “Bjergmanden” (“The 

Miner”). Although the earliest version of the poem is in the group of six 

poems that he sent to Clara Ebbell in late 1850, about eight months after 

he had left Grimstad, it was probably composed in Grimstad, because as 

already mentioned Due reports that while he was living in Grimstad Ibsen 

123

advocated the study of primitive miners. 219 Since it is his first really good 

poem, and one that he continued to revise and republish, to the extent 

that it became in a way his signature poem, there may be no better way 

to end this study than with a translation of it. What follows is a translation 

of the first version (1850); the last version appeared in Digte (1871): 

124 

Klippe! brist med Larm og Brag 

For mit tunge Hammerslag; 

Nedad maa jeg Veien bane 

Mod det Maal jeg kun tør ahne. 

Dybt i Fjeldets stille Nat 

Vinker mig den rige Skat, 

Diamant og Edelstene 

Mellem Guldets lyse Grene. 

Her i Dybet er der Fred, 

Fred og Nat fra Evighed, 

Snart i Jordens Hjertekammer 

Lyder Slaget af min Hammer. 

Engang sad som Barn jeg glad 

Under Himlens Stjernerad, 

Sad paa Vaarens Blomsterleie, 

Havde Himlens Fred i Eie. 

Men jeg glemte Vaarens Pragt 

I den midnatsdunkle Schakt, 

Glemte Fuglens flade Sange 

Dybt i Fjeldets hvalte Gange. 

Dengang først jeg steg herind 

Tænkte jeg med barnligt Sind: 

Dybets Aander skulle raade 

For mig Livets dunkle Gaade. 

De skal lære mig hvordan 

Blomsterknoppen spire kan, 

Hvorfor Engens fagre Blommer 

Sygne hen naar Høsten kommer.

Men mit Blik blev sløvt og mat 

I den evig dunkle Nat; 

Kun forstenede og døde 

Saa jeg Dybets Skatte gløde. 

End har ingen Aand mig lært 

Hvad mig tykkedes saa sært, 

End er ingen Sol oprunden, 

Som belyser det fra Grunden. 

Har jeg feilet? Fører ei 

Da til Klarhed denne Vei? 

Hvis Jeg søger i det Høie 

Blænder Lyset jo mit Øie! 

Nei, i Dybet maa jeg ned; 

Det er Nat fra Evighed, -- 

Ban mig Veien, tunge Hammer! 

Til Naturens Hjertekammer! 

-- -- -- -- 

Saadan gaar det Slag i Slag 

Til han segner træt og svag, -- 

Ingen Morgenstraale skinner, 

Ingen Klarheds Sol oprinder! 

[Cliff! burst with noise and crash under my heavy hammerblow; 

downwards I must make my way towards the goal I 

only dare suspect. 

Deep in the mountain's silent night the rich treasure beckons 

to me, diamonds and precious stones among the bright veins 

of gold. 

Here in the depths there is peace, peace and eternal night; 

close to the earth’s heartchamber the stroke of my hammer 

sounds. 

125

126 

Once as a child I sat happily under heaven's starry row, I sat 

on springtime's flowerbed, I had heaven's peace in my possession. 

But I forgot the spring's splendor in the midnight-dark shaft, 

forgot the bird's happy song deep in the mountain's suffocating 

tunnels. 

When first I strode in here I thought with a childlike mind: 

the spirits of the deep would master life's dark riddle for me. 

They would teach me how the flowerbud can spring forth, 

how the meadow's colorful flowers fall away when Autumn 

comes. 

But my sight became dulled and feeble in the eternally dark 

night; the treasure in the depth glowed dead and fossilized. 

No spirit has yet taught me what then seemed to me so certain, 

no sun has yet dawned, to illuminate it to the bottom. 

Have I failed? Does this way not lead to insight? If I search 

in the heights the light blinds my eye! 

No, I must down into the depths; there is eternal night; make 

my way, heavy hammer! To Nature's heartchamber! 

-- -- -- -- 

So it goes blow by blow until he collapses weary and weak, -no 

morning beam shines, no sun of insight dawns!] 

The miner is a laborer, but he has the temperament of a certain kind 

of artist, and to that extent he is a self-portrait. This artist is on a quest, 

but he does not search merely for beauty, although beauty attracts him. 

He searches also for insight. Paradoxically, he does not search in the 

light of day but deep in the earth, in the darkness, in the self. He aspires 

continually, although he doubts and has lost hope of illumination. The 

state-of-mind of Ibsen’s miner may owe something to Kierkegaard’s con-

ception of anxiety as the condition of the modern tragic character. It is 

reminiscent of John Keats’s definition of “what quality went to form a 

Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare 

possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a 

man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any 

irritable reaching after fact and reason. . .”. 220 

The theme of the miner was common in the literature of the time and 

the character-type of the miner is familiar to us from the fairy tale “Snow 

White and the Seven Dwarfs.” An early portrait of the type can be found 

in Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1800), a primitive novel by the German poet 

Novalis. The miner became a symbol of the working man in the early 

modern industrial period. Adam Oehlenschlæger had written a poem on 

the miner, as had several Norwegian poets, specifically Maurits Hansen 

and M. A. Bøye. 221 Oehlenschlæger’s miner is a natural hero, honored by 

the king for his discoveries yet indifferent to his own gain. In Hansen’s 

version he is happy-go-lucky. In Bøye’s version also he is cheerful and 

even sings while he works. Ibsen’s poem is a different version of the 

theme from his predecessors’. It refers to earlier versions but also departs 

from them through the characterization of the miner as an artist. 

Ibsen’s portrait is neither glorified nor sentimentalized. His is the only 

miner with a mind of his own. 

The poem is an allegory, like most of Ibsen’s works. An allegory is a 

text or image that can be apprehended in one way literally, and is also 

designed to be interpreted to reveal a deeper meaning. It contains a 

hidden message, or teaches a moral truth. It is a kind of parable. Parables 

are allegories, the most famous being Jesus’ parables of “The Good Samaritan” 

and “The Prodigal Son.” The former on the literal level is a 

story about a traveller who is set upon by thieves, and left for dead beside 

the road. He is rescued by a Samaritan, a member of a despised race, 

when more acceptable people have passed him by. This story has been 

interpreted as an allegory of how a Christian expresses brotherly love. 

The latter is a story which on the literal level is about an errant son who 

wastes his inheritance, and at last comes home and throws himself on his 

father’s mercy. This has been interpreted as an allegory to help people 

understand the love of God for the sinner. 

Despite his reputation as a social reformer, Ibsen was a craftsman 

rather than a polemicist. He proceeded from the recognition that readers 

or viewers apprehend a text symbolically, not rationally, and that 

interpretation is an essential part of reading or viewing a text. One of the 

127

most important factors constituting Ibsen’s “modernity” is this recognition. 

Ibsen’s texts have been subjected to many interpretations, but it is 

important to remember that any given interpretation is only that: an 

interpretation. It is not the original text, or even necessarily an explanation 

or illumination of that text. It is only another version, a separate 

artifact that points to it. 

In interpreting a text by Ibsen, one is only doing what one has been 

invited to do by the poet in the allegorical form of the piece. If one 

wishes to understand Ibsen’s art, one must have a way of seeing beyond 

interpretation to the workings of his craft. On the literal level, the miner’s 

activity of digging is a search for gold or precious stones, but on the allegorical 

level it is a search for insight, or illumination. In other Ibsenian 

texts where resurrection is sought, it is usually not found, and if it is 

found it is monstrous. So here, when illumination is sought, it is not 

found, although the quest for meaning does not for that reason come to 

an end. 

In this study the procedure for achieving leverage on Ibsen’s creative 

process has been to try to show his reading and his early cultural environment 

as they might have influenced his concerns, his themes, or the 

details of his works. The following section provides information about 

his reading and early cultural environment, in order to stimulate and 

perhaps facilitate further research. 

128

KEY TO WEBSITE 

The materials listed here have been loaded into a website: http:// 

Ibsen.org/larson/ These materials are copyrighted, and are for the use 

of individuals and educational institutions only. Any commercial use 

requires the permission of the author. 

RESOURCES IN IBSEN’S EARLY ENVIRONMENT. 

A. INTRODUCTION 

Henrik Ibsen was born in 1828 in Skien, where he lived until the turn 

of the year 1843-44, when he was 15 years old. At that time he left his 

family and moved about 75 miles down the coast to Grimstad, where he 

lived until 1850, when he was 22 years old. 

The early years of a poet’s life are important for his or her education, 

and for establishing the form and direction his or her talent will take. 

Therefore it would be valuable to know as much as possible about Ibsen’s 

early years, especially as regards the character and quality of his surroundings. 

It is unlikely that he could have reached the heights of intellectual 

and artistic achievement that he attained in his maturity unless 

his surroundings in his early years had offered him significant cultural 

resources. What were these resources? 

This database provides at least a partial answer to that question in 

that it presents the results of field research in the two small towns where 

Ibsen lived as he was growing up. The database includes lists of plays 

that were performed in his area by travelling Danish theatre companies, 

and lists of books that were available in collections to which he possibly, 

probably, or certainly had access. English translations of several Danish 

and Norwegian plays that were performed in his area are included, plus 

129

a few examples of contemporary journalistic writing, excerpts from a history 

of Gjerpen parish by Terje Christensen, and most of a memoir published 

in 1909 by Christopher Due, who had been a friend of Ibsen’s in 

Grimstad. Some of Ibsen’s earliest writings in poetry and prose that have 

never before been translated into English are also included. A bibliography 

of Ibsen scholarship that covers the years 1828-1850 is also supplied. 

The full contents of any file can be downloaded. Simply access the 

website on the Internet at http://Ibsen.org/larson/ then click on the highlighted 

and underlined word or phrase in each title. 

B. SKIEN 

130 

I. From Terje Christensen. Gjerpen Bygds Historie (“History of 

Gjerpen Parish”). Bygdehistorie Bind II: Fra Omkring 1700 til 

1964. Skien: Utgitt av Skien Kommune, 1978, 562 ff; 578 ff. 

Translations of passages dealing with Gjerpen parish: its religious 

life and educational system, including Ibsen’s possible 

educational background. 

II. Textbooks used in Skien’s lærd skole (“Latin school”) in 1840. 

From Norske Universitets- og Skole-Annaler. Udgivne af H. J. Thue. 

Anden Række. Første Bind. Christiania: Forlagt av J. Chr. 

Adelsted, 1842, 212-15. 

III. The book collection of the Løvenskiold family of Skien in 1844. 

From an unpublished bibliography prepared in 1961 by Anne 

Grete Holm Olsen. 

IV. Plays advertised for performance in the newspapers of Skien, 

1832-1843. 

V. Erik Bøgh. “En rejsende Teaterselskab” (“A travelling theatre 

company”). Erindringer fra mine unge dage. København: 

Gyldendal, 1894, 303-26. Translation of an account of a season 

spent by the actor, later writer and critic Erik Bøgh, in a theatre 

company that had earlier visited Skien. 

VI. Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Elverhøj (“Elves’ Hill”). Elverhøi, 

Aprilsnarrene, De Uadskillelige, af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Udgivet

med noter ved Henning Fonsmark. København: Hans Reitzel, 

1965, 5-82. The first English translation of Heiberg’s most famous 

play. 

VII. Andreas Munch. “Donna Clara, en Natscene (1840).” A. Munch. 

Samlede Skrifter. Udgivne af Prof. M. J. Monrad og Hartvig 

Lassen. Vol. 2. Kjøbenhavn: Forlagt af Universitetsboghandler 

G. E. C. Gad, 1888, 287-324. The first English translation. 

VIII. Henrik Hertz. Indqvarteringen (“The Billeting”). Dramatiske 

Værker af Henrik Hertz. Vol. 1. Kjøbenhavn: C. A. Reitzels Bo 

og Arvinger, 1854, 253-347. The first English translation. 

IX. Reviews of the 1843 theatre season in Skien, published in 

Skiensposten. Translation. 

X. “Ferdinand and Isabella,” from Hans Arch. Kofod. Nyere 

Historie. Anden Deel. Kjøbenhavn, 1816, 321-4. Translation of 

a possible source of Ibsen’s puppet play from 1840-41. 

C. GRIMSTAD 

XI. Chr[istopher] Due. Erindringer fra Henrik Ibsens Ungdomsaar 

(“Recollections of Henrik Ibsen’s youthful years”). København: 

Græbes Bogtrykkeri, 1909. Translation of a memoir of Ibsen in 

Grimstad by one of his best friends there. 

XII. The acquisitions record of the Grimstad Reading Society, 1835- 

1850. From the handwritten original in the Grimstad Public 

Library. Ibsen is thought to have had access to this collection 

while he lived in Grimstad, 1844-50. 

XIII. Ibsen’s essays in Norwegian composition (1848). From 

Hundreårsutgaven. Henrik Ibsen Samlede Verker. Ved Francis Bull, 

Halvdan Koht, Didrik Arup Seip. Vol. 15. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk 

Forlag, 1930, 21-7. The originals, and English translations. 

XIV. Marcus J. Monrad. “Den Skandinaviske Idé” (“The Scandinavian 

Idea”). Morgenbladet, September 1844. English translation. 

131

132 

XV. Plays advertised in newspapers in Christianssand and Arendal, 

for performance in Sørlandet, 1844-1850. Sometimes the touring 

companies that appeared in the larger towns up and down 

the coast stopped at Grimstad and performed part of their repertoire, 

although it is not known which plays. 

XVI. Jørgen Moe. “Indledning” (“Introduction”). Samling af Sange, 

Folkeviser og Stev. Norske Almuedialekter. Christiania: P. T. 

Mallings Forlag, 1840, v-xii. English translation of the introduction 

to a collection to which Ibsen is thought to have had access 

in 1849-50. 

XVII. Poems Ibsen wrote in Grimstad. From Hundreårsutgaven. 

Henrik Ibsen Samlede Verker. Ved Francis Bull, Halvdan Koht, 

Didrik Arup Seip. Vol. 14. Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1937, 43-87. 

The originals, and English translations. 

D. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

NOTES 

1 The Western Canon. The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt 

Brace, 1994) 355. 

2 The first half of the nineteenth century in Denmark is called Guldalderen 

(“the Golden Age”) because it featured significant achievements in many 

fields, including philosophy, poetry, fiction, theatre, and dance. 

3 Michael Meyer, Ibsen, a Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1971) 17. 

4 Erindringer fra Henrik Ibsens Ungdomsaar (København: Græbes 

Bogtrykkeri, 1909) 36. A translation of most of this book is on the website: 

http://ibsen.org/larson/ (click Due) 

5 Henrik Jæger, Henrik Ibsen 1828-1888: Et literært livsbillede (København, 

1888). English language edition: Henrik Ibsen 1828-1888, a Critical Biography, 

trans. William Morton Payne (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1890; 

repr. New York: Haskell House, 1972). 

Halvdan Koht, Henrik Ibsen: Eit diktarliv (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1928). English 

language edition: The Life of Ibsen, trans. Ruth Lima McMahon and 

Hanna Astrup Larsen, 2 vols. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1931; New 

York: W. W. Norton, 1931). Ny omarb. utg. (Oslo, 1954). This edition 

trans. and ed. Einar Haugen and A. E. Santaniello, pub. as Life of Ibsen. 

Halvdan Koht (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1971). 

Michael Meyer, see above, n. 3. 

6 See pp. 12-16. 

7 In 1902 Koht provided the “Bibliografiske Oplysninger” for vol. 10 of 

133

Henrik Ibsen Samlede Værker (København: Gyldendal). In 1904, together 

with the German scholar Julias Elias, he published the first edition of 

Ibsen’s letters: Breve fra Henrik Ibsen, udgivne med indledning og 

oplysninger af Halvdan Koht og Julias Elias, 2 vols. (København og 

Kristiania: Gyldendal). In 1909, again with Elias, he issued Henrik Ibsen 

Efterladte Skrifter, udgivne af Halvdan Koht og Julias Elias, 3 vols. (Kristiania 

og København: Gyldendal). He was also a co-editor of Hundreårsutgaven, 

Henrik Ibsens Samlede Verker, ved Francis Bull, Halvdan Koht, Didrik Arup 

Seip, 21 vols. (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1928-57). 

8 Meyer xv. 

9 Oskar Mosfjeld, Henrik Ibsen og Skien (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1949). 

10 See Francis Bull, A. Winsnes, H. Koht, “Henrik Ibsen og Skien. Innlegg 

ved lektor Oskar Mosfjeld’s doktordisputas [1949],” Edda 51 (1951) 81-121. 

11 See above, n. 4. 

12 Due 24. 

13 H[ans] Eitrem, Ibsen og Grimstad [utg. av Hallvard Lie] (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1940). 

14 The address of the website is: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ See “Key to 

Website,” above 129. 

15 Meyer 12. 

16 Haugen and Santaniello 24. 

17 Henrik Jæger, trans. Payne (1972) 18-24. 

18 “Fossum” means “by the waterfall.” 


20 Olaf Gjerlow, Stattholder Severin Løvenskiold, (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1948). 

21 Theodor Fossum, En beskrivelse av Fossum Jernverk i 1868 (Skien: Skavan, 

1997) 36. 

134

22 Mosfjeld 89; 223. 

23 Terje Christensen produced a three-volume history of Gjerpen parish: 

Gjerpen Bygds Historie (Skien: Utgavet av Skien kommune, 1971-79). A 

translation of portions of vol. 2 of this work can be found on the website: 

http:Ibsen.org/larson/ (click Christensen) 

24 Mosfjeld 98. 

25 Because there is an English translation on the website of that portion of 

Christensen’s history of Gjerpen parish that deals with the educational 

opportunities in the parish, that subject will not be reviewed here. For 

the website address, see n. 23. 

26 Meyer 18-19. 


28 From Bratsberg Amtstidende (23 Feb., 1841) 2: “Vi tage os herved den 

Frihed at bekjendtgjøre, at vor Drenge-og Pige-Skole vil, da et temmelig 

betydeligt Antal allerede har tegnet sig, tage sin Begyndelse 

førstkommende 15de Marts, paa hvilken dag Drengene anmødes om at 

møde kl. 9 formiddag, Pigerne kl. 3 eftermiddag, medtagende de af dem 

hidtil benyttede Bøger, hvorhos De, der fremdeles kunne ønske at intræde, 

bedes godhedsfuldt at melde sig inden benævnte Tid. W. F. Stockfleth, 

Cand. Theol.; Johan Hansen, Cand. Theol.” 

29 A complete list of the books used in Skien’s Latin school in 1840 can be 

found on the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click textbooks) 

30 An English translation of this article, entitled “On the Heroic Ballad and 

its Significance for Literature,” appears in The Oxford Ibsen, vol. 1, 672-684. 

31 “Fra Bygderne,” in Fædrelandet (1878) nos. 40, 45. 


33 Henrik Ibsen 1828-1888. Et Litterært Livsbillede (København, 1888) 22. 

34 J. B. Halvorsen, Norsk Forfatter-Lexikon 1814-1880, 6 vols. (Kristiania: 

135

Den Norske forlagsforening, 1885-1908); vol. 3 (1892) 3n. 

35 Sandhed til gudfrygtighed, udi en eenfoldig Forklaring over sal. D. Morten 

Luthers liden Catechismo (København, 1737). There are several English 

translations, e.g., Epitome of Erick Pontoppidan’s explanation of Martin 

Luther’s small catechism, translated from the Norwegian by Edmund Balfour 

(Chicago, 1877). 

36 See n. 23. Part of Christensen’s history deals with Rode’s tenure as 

parish priest in Gjerpen. 

37 Fr. Rode, Forklaring til Dr. M. Luthers Catechismus. 


39 See n. 23. 


41 Peer Gynt, for example, contains more than 270 allusions. See Henri 

Logeman, A commentary, critical and explanatory, on the Norwegian text of 

Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, its language, literary associations, and folklore, The 

Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1917. 

42 An English translation of that essay is included later in this chapter, 

37-8. 


44 Meyer 16 

45 Jæger, Henrik Ibsen, trans. Payne (1972) 29. 

46 Norske Folkeviser, samlede og udgivne av M. B. Landstad (Christiania, 

1853). Some of the ballads whose details can be detected in Gildet paa 

Solhaug are “Liti Kersti,” “Margit Hjukse,” “Gudmund og Signelita,” “Gaute 

og Magnhild,” “Bendik og Aarolilja,” “Kong Endel,” “Herre Per og Stolt 

Marget,” “Knut i Borgi,” “Storebror og Lillebror,” and perhaps “Dei tvo 

Systar.” See Philip E. Larson, Vision and Structure in Ibsen’s Early Plays 

(Ann Arbor: UMI, 1989). 

136

47 The Oxford Ibsen, vol. 1: Early Plays, trans. and ed. by James Walter 

McFarlane and Graham Orton (London: Oxford UP, 1970) 373. 

48 Rolf Fjelde, tr., Henrik Ibsen. The Complete Major Prose Plays (New York: 

New American Library, 1978) 393. 

49 A complete catalog of the surviving books in the Løvenskiolds’ collection 

that are old enough to have been in that collection during Ibsen’s 

time in Skien, can be found on the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ 

(click Løvenskiold) 

50 Halvdan Koht, The Life of Ibsen, trans. McMahon and Larsen, vol. 1, 19. 

51 Mosfjeld, 223. 

52 A complete list of the plays advertised in the Skien newspapers between 

1832 and 1843 can be found on the website: http://Ibsen.org/ 

larson/ (click plays) 

53 An English translation of a memoir by the Danish author Erik Bøgh of 

a season he spent as an actor in one of the companies that visited Skien 

can be found on the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click Bøgh) 

54 An English translation of Elverhøj (“Elves’ Hill”) can be found on the 

website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click Heiberg) 


56 Original title: Le verre d’eau, ou Les effets et les causes, comedie en cinq 

actes (Paris, 1840). An English translation, under the title A Glass of 

Water, appears in Camille and other plays, with an introduction to the wellmade 

play, by Stephen S. Stanton (New York: Hill and Wang, 1957). 

57 Original title: Kean, ou Desordre et genie, comedie en cinq actes, melée 

de chants, par M. Alexandre Dumas, representée pour la première fois, a 

Paris, sur la théâtre des Varietés, le 31 aout 1836 (Paris, 1836). The play 

was adapted by Jean-Paul Sartre as Kean (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), and 

translated into English as Kean: Disorder and genius, by Jean-Paul Sartre, 

based on the play by Alexandre Dumas, translated from the French by 

Kitty Black (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1954). 

137

58 An English translation of “Donna Clara, en natscene,” can be found on 

the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click Munch) 

59 An English translation of Indqvarteringen (“The Billeting”) can be found 

on the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click Hertz) 

60 An English translation of the play reviews published in Skiensposten in 

1843 can be found on the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click Reviews) 

61 For the repertoire of the Bergen theatre during Ibsen’s time, see The 

Oxford Ibsen, vol. 1, 670-2. 

62 Meyer 297. 

63 Jæger, Henrik Ibsen, trans. Payne (1972) 29. 

64 Henrik Ibsen og hans Barndomshjem i Skien og Gjerpen (Skien: Rasmussen, 

1990) 9. 

65 Mosfjeld 106-7. 

66 Meyer 34. 

67 Nyere Historie, vol. 2 (København, 1816), 321-4. 

68 An English translation of Kofod’s version of the story of Ferdinand and 

Isabella can be found on the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click 

Ferdinand and Isabella) 

69 Ellen Schjervig, Henrik Ibsens dukketeater (Skien: Skien Kommune, 1995) 

20. 

70 The puppet play in Don Quixote is in Book Two, Chapter 26. 

71 The most recent translation was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Den 

sindrige Adelsmand Don Quixote af Mancha’s Levnet og Bedrifter, oversatt 

fra det Spanske af Fred. Schaldemose, 4 vols. (København, 1829-31). 

72 In Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Marionettheater (København, 1814) 1-94. This 

volume also includes Pottemager Walter. 

138

73 J. M. Thiele (København, 1821). 

74 See above, n. 31. 

75 See Anne Holtsmark, “Ibsen og J. B. Halvorsen,” Edda 28 (1928) 136-40. 

76 Chapter 1, verse 2. 

77 “Woe to you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed 

tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are 

full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” Matthew 23. 27, The Holy 

Bible, Revised Standard Version (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1946) 29. 

78 See The Book of Enoch, Chs. VI-XXVII. 

79 Brand, trans. Michael Meyer (New York: Anchor, 1960) 105-6. 

80 A description of Grimstad in 1845 appears at the beginning of Christopher 

Due’s memoir, Erindringer fra Henrik Ibsens Ungdomsaar (København: 

Græbes Bogtrykkeri, 1909), a translation of which can be found on the 

website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click Due) 

81 Samlede Verker, vol. 16, 23. 

82 It had been translated by K. L. Rahbek, for example. 

83 W. von Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen mit der eiserne hand. Ein Schauspiel 

in funf Acten (Leipzig, n.d.). G. E. Lessing, Emilia Galotti. Ein Trauerspiel 

in funf Aufzugen (Leipzig, n.d.). G. E. Lessing, Nathan der Weise. Ein 

Dramatisches Gedicht in funf Aufzugen (Leipzig, n.d.). Fr. von Schiller, 

Die Jungfrau von Orleans. Eine romantische Tragödie (Leipzig, n.d.). Fr. 

von Schiller, Maria Stuart. Ein Trauerspiel (Leipzig, n.d.). Fr. von Schiller, 

Der Neffe als Onkel. Lystspiel in drei Aufzugen, aus dem Französischen 

des Picard (Leipzig, n.d.). 

84 Ibsen og Grimstad 24. 

85 For example, Pharmacopoeia Danica, a compendium of information about 

medicines first published in 1804. See G. Peter Bakke, “Nogen minder 

om Ibsens ungdomsår i farmacien,” Norsk farmaceutisk tidsskrift (1928) 

139

81-6; Eivind Koren, “Fra Henrik Ibsens farmaceuttid,” Pharmacia (Kristiania) 

3 (1906) 6-8. 

86 The Dahlske Skole had been established in 1796 with an endowment 

from a sea captain and ship owner named Peter Dahl. By 1817 the school 

could no longer be maintained with the proceeds of the endowment, and 

it was closed, not to reopen until 1857. 

87 Grimstad Bys Historie, paa kommunal foranstaltning utgit ved en komité 

(Grimstad: Grimstad Bymuseum (Grondahl), 1927) 688-9. 

88 A complete list of the books acquired by the Grimstad Reading Society 

between 1835 and 1850 can be found on the website: http://Ibsen.org/ 

larson/ (click Reading Society) 

89 This is the original language of the verse, as quoted from memory by 

Hans Terland: 

“Skjær min pen,” siger Gundersen. 

“Jeg har ikke stunder,” siger Gunder. 

“Er det dit alvor?” siger Halvor. 

“Kom at spise,” siger Anne Lise. 

“Retterne er just ikke fine,” siger Anne Kristine. 

Samlede Verker, vol. 14, 10-11. (For full citation, see n. 7.) The passage 

quoted by Seip is from Terland’s article “Ibsens Grimstad-tid,” in 

Medlemskrift 10 (Grimstad: Selskapet for Grimstad Bys Vel, 1930) 20 ff. 

90 Grimstad Bys Historie 694-6. 

91 See Harald Noreng, Henrik Ibsen og Billed-Bibelen i Grimstad (Grimstad: 

Ibsenhuset - Grimstad Bymuseum, 1990). The text of this monograph 

can be found on the Internet, at http://Ibsen.org/noreng/ 

92 The court served the counties of Nedenes and Råbyggelaget. 

93 See Per Kristian Heggelund Dahl, “Nytt stoff om Ibsens mørke år,” 

Aftenposten, 24 March, 1996. 

94 He was not always able to meet his responsibilities for child support. 

In 1850-51, while he was living in Christiania, Else pursued him through 

140

the courts. The record of this action has been published in the article 

cited in the previous note. 



97 The Crawfurd family lived in two adjoining houses on Bryggegaten, 

near the foot of Storgaten, not far from the Reimann pharmacy. Georgina 

worked in a tobacco shop there, and according to Marie Thomsen she 

gave the pharmacist’s wife some food one Christmas when they had none 

(Ibsen og Grimstad 25). She was therefore aware of Ibsen even during his 

first three years in Grimstad, and could have loaned him books during 

those years as well. 

98 Hans Eitrem, “Henrik Ibsen-Henrik Wergeland,” Maal og Minne 

(Kristiania, 1910) 47. 

99 For the German plays, see n. 82. Shakespeare’s plays were available in 

William Shakespeare’s Selected plays, from the last edition of Johnson and 

Steevens; with brief explanatory notes, extracted from various commentators, 

6 vols. (Avignon, 1809). 


101 Halvdan Koht is of the opinion that Ibsen had been writing poetry for 

several years before he kept any of it. See Haugen and Santaniello 39. 

102 “I Høsten” was published on 28 September, 1849; “Skjalden i Valhal,” a 

memorial poem written at the death of Oehlenschlæger, was published 

on 16 February, 1850. 

103 The poems Ibsen wrote in Grimstad are printed in Samlede Verker, vol. 

14 (1937) 43-87. All English translations of them in this text are by the 

present writer. 

104 Læsebog i Modersmaalet for Norske og Danske, tilligemed en Exempelsamling 

af den svenske Literatur og med æsthetiske og literaturhistoriske Oplysninger, 

udgiven af H. J. Thue, konstitueret Overlærer og Bestyrer af Arendals 

Middel- og Realskole (Christiania, 1846). 

141

105 According to his literary executor Marcus J. Monrad, who mentions 

this fact in his biographical preface to Efterladte Arbeider i Vers og Prosa af 

Henning Junghans Thue (Christiania, 1853) iii. 

106 Grimstad Bys Historie 631. See also the next note. 

107 Clara Thue Ebbell, I Ungdomsbyen med Henrik Ibsen (Grimstad: 

Grimstad Bymuseum, 1966) 33. 

108 Thue, Læsebog 3. 

109 An English translation of these three essays in Norwegian composition 

can be found on the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click essays) The 

originals are published in Samlede Verker, vol. 15: Artikler og Taler (1930) 

21-7. 

110 Earlier scholars have pointed to many similarities between Ibsen’s poems 

and Welhaven’s. On the basis of these similarities it can be assumed 

that Ibsen had access to several collections of Welhaven’s poetry in 

Grimstad, including Norges Dæmring (1834), Digte (1839), Nyere Digte 

(1845), and Halvhundre Digte (1848). 

111 Johan Sebastian Welhaven, Samlede Verker, utgitt med innledning og 

kommentarer av Ingard Hauge, vol. 1 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1990) 152. 

112 From the preface to the second edition of Catilina (1875), quoted in 

The Oxford Ibsen, vol. 1, 112. 

113 Translated from Hauge, vol. 2 (1990) 142-3. 

114 See above, 42. 

115 Meyer 40. 

116 Translated from John Sanness, Patrioter Intelligens og Skandinaver, Norske 

reaksjoner på skandinavismen før 1848 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1959) 50. 

117 Norges, Sveriges, og Danmarks Historie til Skolebrug (Christiania, 1838). 

118 In 1857 Ibsen wrote an article on the heroic ballad which does discuss the 

142

acial aspects of Munch’s theory of the origins of the Teutonic race. See n. 30. 

119 Ibsen was a strong supporter of Scandinavianism from 1848 until he 

left Norway in 1864. After this period his interest in the movement seems 

to have yielded to what he called “pan-Germanism.” However, after he 

returned to Norway to live, on 19 February, 1903, in an interview published 

in the newspaper Örebladet (Kristiania), Ibsen was quoted to have 

said, “The idea of a unified Scandinavia has my complete support.” This 

interview is published in Samlede Verker, vol. 15 (1930) 442-3. 

120 The German thinker Johann Gottfried Herder is sometimes credited 

with having first conceptualized this trend. According to one recent study, 

“Herder . . . vigorously opposed the notion of literature as an adornment 

for a ruler’s court, and as a game of intellectuals. Genuine literature 

springs from the Volk itself, the ethnic community that is the true cultural 

unit and the source for creative energy. Without such social and 

cultural community, based on a common language, there cannot be a 

nation, but only artificial and power-hungry states . . . . Folk songs and 

other forms of folk literature preserve the spirit of a Volk.” Wulf Koepke, 

Johann Gottfried Herder (Boston: Twayne, 1987), preface, n.p. 

121 See Nicolay Wergeland, En sandfærdig Beretning om Danmarks politiske 

Forbrudelse imod Kongeriget Norge fra Aar 955 indtil 1814 (Christiania, 1816). 

122 “Den Skandinaviske Idé.” A translation of this article can be found on 

the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ (click Monrad) 

123 In the preface to the second edition of his first play, Catilina (København, 

1875). See above, 86-6. 

124 For a translation of Due’s memoir, see n. 4. 

125 Justice Preus had heard the paternity suit against Ibsen in 1846. 

126 Joh. K. Bergwitz, Grimstad 1800-1850 som type paa norsk smaaby, med 

en indledning: “Henrik Ibsens ophold i Grimstad 1844-1850” (Kristiania og 

København: Gyldendal, 1916) 18. 

127 Clara Thue Ebbell, I Ungdomsbyen med Henrik Ibsen (Grimstad: 

Grimstad Bymuseum, 1966) 88. 

143

128 Morten Smith Petersen’s wife Cathrine was a cousin of Ibsen’s father, 

although they apparently did not recognize the connection while he lived 

in Grimstad. See Harald Noreng, “Samfundets Støtter—Henrik Ibsens 

Grimstad-stykke” (Grimstad: Ibsenhuset og Grimstad Bymuseum, 1994) 22. 

129 See Noreng (1994). 


131 H[ans]. Terland, “Ibsens Grimstad-tid,” in Medlemsskrift 10 (Grimstad: 

Selskapet for Grimstad Bys Vel, 1930) 33-4. 


133 Due 38. 

134 By Christen Hostrup (København, 1844). 

135 Due 39. 

136 Bergwitz 19. 

137 Terland 27-8. 

138 Samlede Verker, vol. 14, 12. 

139 Due 42. 

140 Due 43. 


142 In 1909, when Eitrem visited Grimstad, there were two trunks full of 

playscripts that had belonged to the theatrical society, but they have since 

disappeared. Ibsen og Grimstad 45. 


144 Halfdan Gundersen, “Hoteller og Festivalets-Lokale,” in Grimstad Bys 

Historie, 637. 

144

145 A list of the plays advertised for performance in Arendal and Christianssand 

between 1844 and 1848 can be found on the website: http:// 

Ibsen.org/larson/ (click Sørlandet) 

146 The repertoire of Det kongelige Theater was published in paperback 

after 1828. 

147 The Oxford Ibsen, vol. 1, 109-110. 

148 Due, 31. 

149 Some scholars contend that Ibsen’s first Latin tutor was Søren Christian 

Monrad, a theology student at the university with connections in 

Grimstad. In the early 1840s he had conducted a school in the town, and 

had also been tutor to the children of the Smith Petersen family. Others 

dispute this contention, however, on the grounds that at the time in question 

(1847-8) Monrad was elsewhere. 

150 Bergwitz, 23-4. 

151 In “Kjeldone til Ibsens Catilina,” Edda 21 (1924) 70-90. 

152 Roman Woerner may have been the first to point this out, in Henrik 

Ibsens Jugenddramen (München: C. H. Beck, 1895) 21 ff. 

153 Edda 21 (1924) 86-90. 

154 Henrik Jæger, trans. Payne (1972) 49. 

155 Due 38. 

156 For a discussion of Ibsen’s relationship with Anders Isachsen, see Harald 

Noreng, Samfundets støtter - Henrik Ibsens Grimstad-stykke (Grimstad: 

Ibsenhuset -Grimstad bymuseum, 1994) 6 ff. 

157 To the Third Empire: Ibsen’s Early Drama (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota 

Press, 1980) 44. 

158 The volumes of the first collected edition (Værker) appeared between 1831 

and 1848; another edition (Samlede Værker) came out between 1841 and 1850. 

145

159 Notably Samuel G. McLellan, in “On Catilina: A Structural Examination 

of Ibsen’s First Play and its Sources,” Scandinavian Studies 55 (Winter, 

1983) 39-54. He argues for the special relevance of Stærkodder, and 

also mentions Balder hin Gode. Thomas Van Laan, however, in Henrik 

Ibsen, Catiline and The Burial Mound (New York: Garland, 1992), notes 

more similarities between Stærkodder and Catilina than are mentioned 

by McLellan, and also argues (65-8) for similarities with several other of 

the Danish dramatist’s plays, especially Axel og Valborg and Væringerne i 

Miklagard. 

160 See McLellan 42 ff. 

161 Åse Hiorth Lervik has written an article entitled “Ibsens verskunst i 

Catilina,” that addresses the possible influence of Oehlenschlæger and 

others in the matter of the play’s verse. The article is in Edda 63 (1963) 

269-86. Sigurd Bretteville-Jensen has written two articles on the imagery 

in Catilina: “Blomstersymbolikken i Catilina,” Ibsen Årbok (1967), 61-71; 

and “Lys og Mørke i Catilina,” Edda 66 (1966) 225-35. 

162 See Van Laan 63-4. 

163 Josef Faaland, Ibsen og Antikken (Oslo: Tanum, 1943) 46-7. Ibsen mentions 

the title “Wilhelm Tell” in a letter to Poul Lieungh from May 1844. 

Since the Dano-Norwegian spelling would have been “Vilhelm,” it is reasonable 

to suppose that he was referring to Schiller’s play. The letter is 

published in Samlede Verker, vol. 16 (1940) 23. 

164 In Bull’s introduction to Catilina in Francis Bull, Halvdan Koht, and 

Didrik Arup Seip, Ibsens Drama: Innledninger til Hundreårsutgaven av 

Henrik Ibsens Samlede Verker (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1972) 11. 

165 See Bull 9; also Haugen and Santaniello 44. 

166 “(Ibsen’s) reading was much wider than his location and circumstances 

would lead one to suppose . . .”. Van Laan 59. 

167 The seven earlier Catiline plays not mentioned in this essay are: M. 

l’abbé [Simon-Joseph] Pellegrin, Catilina (Paris, 1742); Prosper Jolyot de 

Crèbillon, Catilina (Paris, 1749); Voltaire, Rome Sauvée, òu Catilina (Paris, 

1754); A. von Perglas, Katilina (Heidelberg, 1808); George Croly, Catilina 

146

(London, 1822); Henry M. Milner, Lucius Catiline, the Roman traitor (London, 

1827); Catiline, “by the author of The Indian Merchant” (London, 

1833). There is also a volume of Catiline’s letters, Catilinariske Bref, ed. 

A. I. Arvidsson (Uppsala, 1844). See also Hermann B. G. Speck, Katilina 

im Drama der Weltliteratur (Leipzig: Hesse, 1906). Christopher Due mentions 

that they were reading Voltaire in Grimstad, but probably not his 

Catiline play. The likeliest text of Voltaire’s would have been Candide, 

which was his most famous work to readers outside of France. There is 

nothing Ibsen wrote in Grimstad that shows the influence of Candide, 

although Peer Gynt from 1867 may reflect his reading of that work. 


169 The first edition is a pamphlet, and while it bears the date of the first 

performance on the title page, there is no indication of the date of publication. 

The likeliest date would be soon after the première. 

170 Edmund Gosse, Henrik Ibsen (New York: Scribner, 1908) 25-6. 


172 Sallust, The Jugurthine War; The Conspiracy of Catiline, trans. S. A. 

Handford (London: Penguin, 1963) 184. 

173 The Life of Ibsen, trans. McMahon and Larsen, vol. 1 (1931) 39. This 

reference does not appear in the translation of the revised edition (1954) 

by Haugen and Santaniello (1971). 

174 Due 45-6. 

175 It is worth noting that the issue of the Danish satirical magazine Corsaren 

for 9 February 1849 contains an article entitled “The Catilinarian Conspiracy,” 

which gives a brief summary of the historical facts, followed by 

a comparison of them with contemporary political events in Denmark. 

If in fact Ibsen began work on his play at the Christmas holidays 1848, he 

could not have seen this article before he started writing, but the tactic of 

using history as an analogy for contemporary events might have encouraged 

him. Corsaren was in the collection of the Grimstad reading society, 

which was kept in the Dahlske School, where one of the members of 

Ibsen’s circle of friends, Andreas Isachsen lived. The same building housed 

147

the collection of the inactive Dahlske Skole, which included single copies 

of plays by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, and Johan 

Wolfgang von Goethe. 

176 Due 38. 

177 Bull (1972) 11. 

178 Søren Kierkegaard, Enten-eller: et livs-fragment, 2 vols. (Kjøbenhavn: 

C. A. Reitzel). 

179 The viewpoint expressed in Part I is not necessarily Kierkegaard’s, 

since he is writing under the persona of a character who is an aesthete. 

He also writes Part II under a persona, that of a judge who is an ethicist. 

Ks whole view is presumably a synthesis of both viewpoints, or a third 

viewpoint that includes and transcends them both. 

180 Bernard F. Dukore, Dramatic Theory and Criticism: Greeks to Grotowski 

(New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1974) 549. 

181 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong 

and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987) 144. 

182 Sallust 177-8. 

183 The Norwegian Herman Wessel, an eighteenth-century writer resident 

in Copenhagen, had written a parody of neo-classical French tragedy 

called Kjærlighed uden Strømper (“Love Without Stockings”), and according 

to Due, he and Ibsen joked about this title in referring to the 

latter’s own lack of socks. 

184 Either/Or 154. 

185 A similar situation is found in Henrik Wergeland’s Sinclars Død (1828). 

The hero of that play, a Scottish nobleman named George Sinclair, while 

on a military campaign in Norway, falls in love with a young woman 

named Ragnhild Seiglestad, the daughter of a leader of the Norwegian 

resistance. Sinclair does not at first tell her his name or his purpose in 

Norway, and when he does, the disclosure places the lovers in a situation 

of deadly enmity. 

148

186 A review by Carl Müller published in Norsk Tidsskrift in October 1850 

calls Catiline “weak and without character,” and “his whole being is an 

indeterminate groping and longing for something he himself is not clear 

about.” The Oxford Ibsen, vol. 1, 582. 


188 The Oxford Ibsen, vol. 1, 89. 

189 “Det kan här påpekas, att Ibsens Catilina ej blott är en Schillersk 

rövarhjälte utan även en Don Juan.” Ur Ibsen-Dramatikens Idéhistorie 

(Helsingfors: Söderström, 1921) 206n. 

190 K mentions the versions by Molière, J. L. Heiberg, Carsten Hauch, and 

Lord Byron, among others. Either/Or 105 ff. 


192 It is also worth noting that Molière’s Don Juan had been performed in 

Christianssand and Arendal in the summer of 1847. Sometimes the travelling 

Danish theatre companies that toured the area stopped at Grimstad 

and performed part of their repertoire. 



195 The only specific information we have about Ibsen’s Tullia is that after her 

affair with Catiline she committed suicide by leaping into the Tiber, where she is 

described as floating on the surface wearing a wreath of green reeds. This image 

is strikingly reminiscent of the drowned Ophelia in Hamlet, who is described as 

floating on the water among the flowers with which she has adorned herself. 

196 Sallust 27. 


198 See Van Laan 86. 

199 Not everyone considered what K said about love to be good doctrine. 

149

K himself was evidently convinced that one of those for whom the work 

had been especially intended, Bishop Mynster, did not approve of it. See 

Works of Love, by Søren Kierkegaard, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and 

Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995) xvi. 

200 Pavel Fraenkl, Ibsens vei til drama, en undersøkelse av dramatikerens 

genesis (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1955). 

201 This draft survives, and is in the University Library, Oslo. 

202 In addition to these creative projects, three letters to Ole Schulerud 

from this year survive. Published in Samlede Verker, vol. 16 (1940) 26-30. 

203 Norwegian studies of the early lyrics include Pavel Fraenkl, Ibsens vei 

til drama, en underøkelse av dramatikerens genesis (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk 

Forlag, 1955); Herleiv Dahl, Bergmannen og Byggmesteren. Henrik Ibsen 

som lyriker (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1958). Both of these writers adopt the tactic 

of analyzing the poems from the perspective of psychological theories. 

For a discussion in English of two of the poems in “Blandede 

Digtninger,” “Aftenvandring i Skoven” and “Møllergutten,” see Philip E. 

Larson, “On Ibsen’s procedures of composition in two of his early lyrics,” 

in Proceedings of the Seventh International Ibsen Conference, Grimstad 1993 

(Oslo: Center for Ibsen Studies, 1994). 

204 Click poems on the website: http://Ibsen.org/larson/ Verse English 

translations by John Northam of the poems written in Grimstad have 

recently been published in Ibsen at the Centre for Advanced Study, edited 

by Vigdis Ystad, Oslo, Scandinavian University Press, 1997, 17-60. 

205 All of these poems, as well as the others cited below, are published in 

Samlede Værker, vol. 14 (1937) 3-87. 

206 The other two “waves” of love lyrics were written in Bergen in 1853 and 

1856-57, and were associated with Rikke Holst and Suzannah Thoresen, respectively. 

See H(ans) Eitrem, “Henrik Ibsens Stellanea,” Edda 3.5 (1915) 68-92. 

207 For publication information, see the note before the previous one. 

208 An English translation of “Kjæmpehøien” is published in The Oxford 

Ibsen, vol. 1, 127-152. 

150

209 English translations of most of the text of the first two letters can be 

found in Meyer’s biography, 45-7. 

210 Letter to Ole Schulerud, 5 January 1850. 

211 Clara Thue Ebbell, 121-2. 

212 Meyer 61. 

213 These poems are: “Ungdomsdrømme” (“Youthful Dream”); “Sonetter” 

(“Indledning til et Foredrag i den litterære Forening”), (“Sonnets” (“Introduction 

to a lecture at the literary society”)); “Bjergmanden” (“The Miner”); 

“I Natten” (“In the Night”); “Fugl og Fuglefænger” (“Bird and Birdcatcher”); 

“Blandt Ruiner” (“Among Ruins”). Published in Samlede Verker vol. 14 

(1937) 94-106. 

214 Due 42. 

215 The idea of the fiddle player’s pact with the devil is from an article in 

Christiania-Posten (12 January 1849); the idea that his life is poor and 

miserable is from another article, by Theodor Kjerulf, in the same issue. 

The idea that the fiddle player’s music is “sorrowful” comes from an article 

in Morgenbladet (19 January 1849) by A. O. Vinje. This contrasts 

with the music mentioned in Welhaven’s poem, which is a Halling-dance, 

and is lively rather than sad. 

216 The date is assigned to the poem by Meyer 50. 

217 The Life of Ibsen, trans. by McMahon and Larsen, vol. 1 (1931) 24. 

218 Meyer, 49; Mosfjeld, 144. 

219 “Til Jomfru Clara Ebbell” (1850). Manuscript in the University Library, 

Oslo. For publication information, see above, n. 213. 

220 Letter to George and Thomas Keats, 21 December, 1817. Quoted in 

English Romantic Poetry and Prose, selected and edited with essays and 

notes by Russell Noyes (New York: Oxford UP, 1956) 1211. 

221 Oehlenschlæger’s poem was entitled “Bergmands Liv, efter Novalis” 

151

(“The Miner’s Life, after Novalis”); Hansen’s was entitled “Bergmannen” 

(“The Miner”); Bøye’s was “Bergmandssang” (“The Miner’s Song”). Both 

of the latter poems had been published in Bien, a journal in the collection 

of the Grimstad reading society. 

152

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HENRIK IBSEN, 1828-50. 

EDITIONS: 

Ibsen, Henrik. Henrik Ibsen Brev 1845-1905. Ny Samling. Ved Øyvind 

Anker. 2 vols. I. Brevteksten. II. Kommentarene. Registre. Oslo: 

Universitetsforlaget, 1979; 1980. 

- - - - Early Plays: Catiline, The Warrior’s Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans, by Henrik 

Ibsen. Trans. Anders Orbeck. New York: The American-Scandinavian 

Foundation; London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford UP, 1921. 

- - - - Henrik Ibsen. Catiline and The Burial Mound. Trans. with intro. by 

Thomas F. Van Laan. New York: Garland, 1990. 

- - - - Henrik Ibsen. The Oxford Ibsen. 8 vols. Trans. and ed. James Walter 

McFarlane, et al. London: Oxford UP, 1960-1977. Vol. 1: The Early 

Plays. Trans. and ed. James Walter McFarlane and Graham Orton, 1970. 

- - - - Henrik Ibsens norske stilebog fra 1848. Forord av Brikt Jensen. Oslo: 

Gyldendal, 1977. 

- - - - Henrik Ibsen. Ouevres complètes. Trans. P[ierre] G[eorget] La Chesnais. 

Vol. 1 only. Paris: La Nouvelle revue française, 1914. Contents: Introduction: 

“La litteratur et la société en Norvège vers 1850.” “Ouevres de 

Grimstad (1847-1850).” “Notice biographique.” “Poèmes.” “Le prisonnier 

d’Akershus,” fragment. “Catilina.” Appendices: I. “Souvenirs d’enfance.” 

II. “Compositions norvégiennes.” A complete edition in 16 volumes was 

published later. Paris: Plon, 1930-45. 

- - - - Henrik Ibsen. Samlede Verker. Ved Francis Bull, Halvdan Koht, Didrik 

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176

INDEX 

A 

Abildgaard, Nicolai A. 184 

Aeschylus 33, 97 

The Libation Bearers 97 

allegory 127 

Antigone 95 - 98. 

apocalypse 42, 43, 68 

Arendal 11, 48, 55, 58, 83, 132 

Aristotle 96, 97 

The Poetics 96, 97 

Augundson, Thorgeir 118 

B 

Bamble 27 

Beaumarchais, Marie 100. 

Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin 

Caron de 81 

Marriage of Figaro, The 81 

Bien 48 

Bergen 8, 31, 35, 36, 89 

Bergwitz, Joseph 78 

Bible 26, 30, 43, 44, 50, 68 

Apocrypha 43 

Book of Enoch 43 

characters, biblical 

angel 15, 26, 32, 42, 43, 50, 115 

Jesus 43, 127 

Joshua 32, 50, 51 

Pharisees 43 

Ecclesiastes, book of 43 

Genesis, book of 42 

picture 50 

Bie, Emil 58, 86, 93 

Bie, Henning Junghans 111, 112 

Bjarme, Brynjolf (pseud.): 

Henrik Ibsen 111 

Bjerregaard, Henrik 67 

“Ynglingen i Stormnatten” 67 

Bloom, Harold 9 

Brandeis 18 

Bull, Francis 90, 93, 131, 132 

Bøye, M. A. 127 

C 

Caesar, Julius 88, 90, 123 

Gallic Wars 88 

Calderon de la Barca, Pedro 40 

catechism, Lutheran 27 

Cervantes, Miguel de 

Don Quixote 40, 41 

Christensen, Terje 21, 27, 130 

Christiania 9, 11, 21, 27, 32, 35, 48, 

49, 51, 56, 57, 59, 72, 84, 90, 92, 

93, 107, 108, 110 - 112, 118, 119, 

122, 130, 132, 184 

Christiania-Posten 48, 57, 92, 108, 

110, 111 

Christianity 27, 44, 102, 103, 112 

Christianssandsposten 48 

church 

Fjære 58 

Gjerpen 26, 27, 29 

Lutheran 27 

Cicero 86 - 88 

177

Catiline 87 

comedy, fairy-tale 35 

Cooper, James Fenimore 48 

Copenhagen 9, 15, 35, 40, 49, 

71 - 73, 81, 83, 184 

Corsaren 49 

Crawfurd, Georgina 56, 58, 84, 122 

Crawfurd, Jens Pharo 56 

D 

Dahl, Johan Christian 184 

database 129 

Demant, Christian 81, 83 

Demants Sal 81 

Denmark 9, 34, 48, 49, 68, 71 - 74 

Dickens, Charles 48 

Dresden 184 

Due, Christopher 10, 11, 14, 19, 74, 

76, 79 - 81, 84, 86, 89, 91 - 93, 

102, 107 - 110, 127, 130, 132 

Dumas père, Alexandre and 

Auguste Macquet 

Catilina 91 

Marcia 91 

Dumas père, Alexandre 35, 36, 48, 

91 - 93, 122 

Kean 35, 36 

Dutchman, the Flying 31 

E 

Ebbell, Clara 8, 35, 36, 75, 108, 109, 

111, 112, 120 - 123, 131 

Ebbell, Oluf Oppen 75 

Eckstorm, Theodor 37 

Eidsvoll 71, 72 

Eitrem, Hans 11, 47, 55, 56, 81 

Elverhøj See Heiberg, Johan Ludvig 

Elvira, Donna See Mozart, 

Wolfgang Amadeus 

178 

“embetsmen’s culture” 119 

Empire, Austro-Hungarian 109 

England 48, 71 

Eve, St. John’s 19 

examination 

university entrance 21, 22, 56, 84, 

86, 88, 90, 107 

examen artium 56 

F 

Faaland, Josef 90 

Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain 37, 

38, 40, 41, 131 

Flasrud, Iver 16 

Flintoe, Johannes 184 

Fossum Estate 7, 20, 21, 23, 33, 34 

Fossum Ironworks, painting by 

Peter Wergmann (ill.) 25 

France 48, 71, 91, 92 

Frivold 58 

Fædrelandet 73 

G 

Germany 21, 48, 68 - 72, 89, 90 

Gjerpen parish. See parish, Gjerpen 

Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von 33, 47, 

56, 90, 100 

Clavigo 100 

Beaumarchais, Marie 100 

Faust 100 

Margrete 100 

Götz von Berlichingen 90 

Iphigenie auf Tauris 90 

Goldschmidt, Meir 49 

Gordon, George, Lord Byron 90 

Manfred 90 

Gosse, Edmund 91 

Governor-general 20 

Grimstad 7 - 11, 17, 21, 32, 45 - 50, 

52 - 58, 68, 74, 76 - 79, 82, 85 - 89, 

91, 93 - 95, 105, 109 - 111, 113,

118, 121, 123 - 127, 132 

Guichard, C. E. 92, 93 

Catilina Romantique 92 

Gundersen, Anne Elisabeth 49, 50, 75 

Gundersen, Anne Kristine 49, 50 

Gundersen, Mathias 49, 50, 75 

H 

Halvorsen, Jens Bragge 184 

Hansen, Johan 7, 21, 22, 26 

Hansen, Maurits 48, 123, 127 

Harryson’s History of London 31 

Hasseldalen 50, 75 

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 31 

Heiberg, Johan Ludvig 34 - 36, 40, 

81, 83, 130, 131 

Elverhøj 34, 130 

Agnete 34 

Heiberg, Johanne Luise 34 

Henriksen, Hans Jacob 51, 52 

Hertz, Henrik 31, 35, 36, 83, 131 

Indqvarteringen 35, 36, 131 

Svend Dyrings Hus 31 

Holberg, Ludvig 33, 36, 48, 81, 88, 122 

Holst, Christian 76 

Holst, Gunder 49 

Holst, Jakob 74 - 76, 79, 92 

Holst, Sophie 75, 108, 109, 120, 121, 122 

Holstein 68, 72 - 74, 109 

Homer 33 

Hostrup, Christen 36, 83, 123 

Genboerne 78 

Hungarians 85, 109 

Hungary 85, 109, 112 

Haanshus, Ole Andreas 51 

I 

Ibsen family 13, 20, 27, 33, 36 

Ibsen, Hedvig 27, 38, 68, 122 

Ibsen, Henrik 

essays 

dream essay 41 

“Labor is its own reward” 60 

“On the importance of 

self-knowledge” 59 

“Why should a nation seed to 

preserve the language and 

memory of its ancestors?” 60 

novel 

“Prisoner of Akershus” 107, 110 

paintings 

Grimstad (cover) 

Joshua and the Angel 50 (ill.) 32 

plays 

Brand 

Brand 43, 44 

Gerd 43 

Catiline 36, 57, 73, 83 - 86, 

88 - 90, 93, 98 - 100, 103, 104, 

107, 110 - 112 

Aurelia 90, 100 - 104 

Catiline 73, 86 - 88, 90 - 93, 

95 - 104, 123 

Curius 87 

Emissaries, Allobrogian 87, 

88, 93 

Ambiorix 88 

Ollovico 88 

Fulvia 87, 101 

Furia 87, 88, 90, 91, 96, 97, 

100 - 104 

Sulla, ghost of 91, 92, 94, 

98, 99 

Tullia 96, 97, 99 - 101 

Doll House, A 98 

Nora 98 

Feast at Solhaug, The 30, 31, 36 

Margit 36 

Lady Inger of Østråt 36 

“The Normans” 107, 112 

Olaf Liljekrans 35 

Peer Gynt 36, 54, 102 

Woman, Green 54 

Gynt, Peer 31, 102 

179

Solveig 102 

Pillars of Society 75 

Pretenders, The 22 

puppet play 37, 40, 41, 131 

Rosmersholm 98, 102 

Rebekka 98, 102 

Beate 98, 102 

St. John’s Night 35 

Vikings in Helgeland, The 35, 36 

“Warrior’s Barrow, The” 107, 

110, 112 

Blanka 110, 112 

Gandalf 110, 112 

Wild Duck, The 33 

Ekdal, Hedvig 31 

Ekdal, Old 33 

Werle, Old 33 

poems 

“In the Autumn” 11, 108 

“Autumn Evening” 108 

“Awake Scandinavians!” 73, 109, 

112 

“The Ball of the Dead” 109 

“By the Sea” 60 

“To Denmark” 72 

“Doubt and Hope” 64, 65 

“Evening Stroll in the Forest” 108 

“The Giant Oak Tree” 68 

“To Hungary” 109, 112 

“It is Finished” 108, 109 

“Memories of a Ball. A 

Fragment of Life in Poetry 

and Prose” 108 

“Memory of Leave-Taking, at O. 

Schulerud’s Departure” 109 

“Memory of Spring” 108 

“Midnight Mood” 108 

“The Miller Boy” 109, 114, 115, 

119, 121 

“The Miner” 123, 124 

“Mixed Poems from the Years 1848, 

1849, 1850” 56, 107 - 109 

“Moonlight Cruise on the Sea” 108 

“Moonlight Mood” 108 

180 

“Moonlight Stroll after a Ball” 

108, 109, 121 

“In the Night” 108 

“To Norway’s Skalds” 109, 112 

“Resignation” 57 

“Sigurd Von Finkelbeck’s 

Cemetery Plot” 79 

“The Skald in Valhalla, at the 

News of Oehlenschlæger’s 

Death” 109 

“The Soul’s Glimpse of 

the Sun” 108 

“The Spring of Memory” 109 

“To the Star (Dedicated to C. E.)” 

108 

“Vacant Lodging” 109 

watercolor 

Follestad Estate 23, (ill.) 28 

Ibsen, Knud 13, 20, 22, 33, 34, 38 

Ibsen, Marichen 27, 34, 36, 38 

ideology 70, 72, 73, 74 

Internet 130 

intertextuality 30 

Ironworks, Fossum 20, 23, (ill.) 25 

Isachsen, Anders 48, 58, 74 

Isachsen, Andreas 74, 89 

Isaksen, Hans 20, 21 

J 

Jensdatter, Else Sophie 51, 52, 54, 110 

Johnston, Brian 89 

Jonson, Ben 90, 91, 93 

Catiline his Conspiracy 90, 91 

Jutland 72 

Jæger, Henrik 10, 26, 88 

K 

Keats, John 127 

Kiel, Treaty of 71 

Kierkegaard, Søren 31, 84, 93 - 104, 

119, 123, 126

Either/Or 93, 98 - 100, 103, 104 

Works of Love 93, 102, 103 

Kihlmann, Erik 99 

Kofod, Hans A. 40, 40, 131 

Koht, Halvdan 10, 20, 91, 131, 132 

Kongsberg 15 

Kotzebue, August Friedrich 

Ferdinand von 81 

Kristiansand 11 

Kuffner, Christophe 91, 93 

Catilina 91 

L 

Laios 96, 97 

Lammers, Gustav Adolf 27, 68 

Landstad, M. B. 31 

Languages 9, 21, 22, 48, 93 

Danish 11, 22, 31, 33 - 37, 40, 41, 

47, 48, 68, 71 - 73, 78, 83, 84, 

88 - 90, 93, 95, 102, 111, 129 

English 7, 33, 56, 58, 71, 93, 108, 

129 - 132 

French 21, 22, 44, 47, 56, 71, 83, 

90 - 92 

German 16, 21, 22, 26, 33, 40, 44, 

47, 48, 56, 68 - 73, 89 - 91, 127 

Greek 56 

Latin 14, 16, 21, 22, 26, 40, 44, 47, 

56, 58, 60, 86, 88, 91, 93, 104, 

123, 130 

Modersmaalet 22, 56, 58 

Norwegian 7, 8, 9, 11, 15, 19, 22, 

26, 31, 35, 36, 40, 41, 47, 56, 70, 

71, 73, 84, 88, 91, 95, 104, 110, - 

112, 122, 123, 127, 129, 131 

Larvik 21 

Lassen, Hartvig 131 

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 33, 47, 56 

Lie, Hallvard 11 

Lieungh, Hedevall 46 

Lieungh, Poul 45 

Linaae, Paul, watercolor 

Gjerpen church and parish house 

(ill.) 29 

Lofthuus, Christian 110 

Lorentzen, Christian A. 184 

Lund, Christen 8, 21, 38, 72 

Lutheranism 26, 27 

Løvenskiold, Ernst 20 

Løvenskiold family 20, 21, 130 

Løvenskiold, Severin 19, 20, 27, 73 

M 

Macquet, Auguste 91 - 93 

Mandt, Mikkel 184 

Marryat, Captain 48 

Martini, Cathrine 108, 109, 121 

Martini, Daniel 74, 76, 78, 79, 108, 

109, 121 

Meyer, Michael 10, 123 

Moe, Jørgen 132 

Molière 9, 33 

Monrad, Marcus Jacob 22, 58, 72, 131 

Monrad, Søren Christian 58 

Morgenbladet 48, 72, 73, 132 

Mosfjeld, Oskar 10, 21, 123 

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 98 

Don Giovanni 98, 99 

Elvira, Donna 100 

Munch, Andreas 8, 35, 36, 84, 123, 

131 

“Donna Clara, en natscene” 8, 35, 

36, 131 

Munch, Edvard 27 

Munch, Peter Andreas 22, 70, 123 

N 

Nielsen, Ida Katrine 56 

Nielsen, Lars 48, 55, 76 

Nielsen, Niels Peter 48, 56 

Novalis (pseud.): Friedrich von 

Hardenberg 127 

181

O 

Oedipus 34, 95 - 98 

Oehlenschlæger, Adam 33, 71, 

88 - 90, 95, 109 - 112, 122, 127 

Axel og Valborg 89 

Balder hin Gode 89 

Hakon Jarl 89 

Socrates 95 

Stærkodder 89 

Væringerne i Miklagard 89 

Olsen, Anne Grete Holm 130 

O’Neill, Eugene 89 

Ording, J. F. 23, 24, 26, 41 

Oslo 7, 8, 9, 11, 21, 28, 131 

Overskou, Thomas 83 

P 

paganism 44 

Paludan-Müller, Friedrich 88, 123 

Vestalinden 88 

parable 127 

parish, Gjerpen 20, 26, 27, 29, 36, 

130 

Paulsen, Benedikte 37 

Paulsen, Ole 38 

Pedersen, Peder Lund 38 

Petersen, Morten Smith 75 

Pharmacy 

Nielsen 10, 81, 84 

Reimann (ill.) 53, 83 

pietism 7, 26, 27, 68 

play of chivalry 40, 41 

Ploug, Carl 73 

Pontoppidan, Erik 26 

Preus, Johan Casper 51, 52, 74 

Printzlau, Frederick 83 

R 

Racine, Jean 33 

Rahbek, K. L. 48 

182 

Reading Society, Grimstad 48, 49, 83, 

84, 89, 123, 131 

Reimann, Jens Arup 51, 46, 48, 51, 

52, 81, 83 

revolution 74, 85, 88, 104 

Rode, Fredrik 26, 27 

Romanticism, National 109 

Russia 69, 70, 71 

S 

Sallust 86 - 88, 91, 92, 94, 101, 104, 123 

Conspiracy of Catiline, The 86, 87 

Catiline 87, 94 

Scandinavia 22, 68, 70 - 74, 89, 95, 

109, 112, 131 

Scandinavianism 68, 70 - 74 

Schiller, Friedrich 33, 47, 56, 89, 

90, 122 

Die Räuber 90 

Fiesco 90 

Wilhelm Tell 90 

Schlegel, August Wilhelm 40 

Schleswig 68, 72 - 74, 85, 109 

school 

Dahl´s 48, 58, 75 

Fossum 20, 21 

Latin 14, 16, 21, 22, 40, 130 

middle-class 58 

morking-class 21, 48, 58 

Schulerud, Ole Carelius 74, 76, 81, 

84, 91 - 93, 102, 107, 109, 110, 114, 

122 

Schweigaard, Anton M. 22 

Scotland 56 

Scott, Walter 48 

Scribe, Eugene 35 

Glass of Water, A 35 

Seip, Didrik Arup 49, 131, 132 

Shakespeare, William 9, 31, 33, 56, 

103, 110, 127 

Richard III 31 

Skagerrak 45

Skard, Eiliv 87 

Skien 7 - 11, 13 - 15, 18 -23, 27, 

34 - 37, 40, 41, 45 - 47, 52, 56, 68, 

70, 122, 129 - 131, 184 

Skiensposten 131 

Smith, Gude 74 

Snipetorp 45 

Sophocles 33, 34, 95, 96 

Oedipus the King 34, 96 - 98 

Stockfleth, W. F. 21, 30, 41 

Stockmann’s Court 14 

Strindberg, August 89 

Stub, Paul 59 

Sweden 19, 20, 70, 71, 73 

T 

Telemark 7, 8, 13, 25, 27, 29, 34, 

39, 114, 118 

Terland, Hans 11, 13, 49, 75, 78 

Testament, New 43 

Testament, Old 43 

Theater, Christiania 112 

theatre companies 

Danish 34, 35, 37, 41, 83, 129 

Theatre, The Norwegian (Bergen) 

31, 35 

Theatre, The Royal (Copenhagen) 

34, 35, 40, 83 

Thiele, J. M. 

Kjærlighed og Heltemod 41 

Thomsen, Maria 47 

Thrane, Marcus 73, 118, 119 

Thue, Henning Junghans 58, 59, 

63, 67, 130 

“tragedy of fate” 90 

Tryggvason, Olaf 107, 110 

Tysker, Peter 16 

U 

Ugeblad for Skien og Omegn 34 

V 

Vega, Lope de 40 

Venstøp 13, (ill.) 17, 20, 21, 31, 33, 37, 

38, 73 

Vestlandske Tidende 48 

virgin, vestal 88, 91, 100, 101 

W 

Wars, Napoleonic 71 

waterfalls 14 

website 8, 11, 12, 108, 129, 130 

Welhaven, Johan Sebastian 48, 61, 

63, 64, 67, 72, 84, 116 - 119, 123 

“Asgaardsreien” 67 

“Møllergutten” 116, 117 

Norges Dæmring 72 

Wergeland, Henrik 48, 72, 84, 90, 

119, 123 

Sinclars Død 90 

Wergeland, Nicolay 72 

Wergmann, Peter 25 

Winther, Christian 48 

Ø 

Ørbeck, Sigurd 74, 76, 79, 80 

Ørn, Knud 16, 22 

Østvedt, Einar 37 

Å 

Aamodt, Carl 46, 47 

Aarhus 21 

183

Addendum on Ibsen's Education in Drawing and Painting 

When the present work was in the final stages of typesetting, and it was too late to 

introduce new material into the main text, I came across the following passage in a 

letter Ibsen wrote in 1889 to J. B. Halvorsen, the editor of a Norwegian biographical 

dictionary: 

184 

As a boy I attended drawing school at Skien for a year and learned a 

little pencil drawing. At the same time, or a little later, I had some 

instruction in oil painting from a young landscape painter, Mandt, from 

Telemark, who sometimes stayed at Skien. a 

Mikkel Mandt (1822-82) was 20 years old in 1842, when he is thought to have 

been Ibsen's teacher. That same year he himself had received instruction from 

Johannes Flintoe (1786/87-1870), a teacher at Tegneskolen in Christiania. b While 

Mandt was a competent if not outstanding landscape painter, Flintoe's reputation 

has risen in the present century with the recognition that he was the founder of the 

Norwegian school of Romantic landscape painting, and the precursor of the much 

more famous painter Johan Christian Dahl (1788-1857), whom Ibsen sought out during 

a visit to Dresden in 1852. Dahl treated some of the same scenes as Flintoe, 

although the former's treatments were usually more passionate than the latter's. 

Flintoe had been educated at Kunstakadamiet in Copenhagen, where his teachers 

were Christian A. Lorentzen and Nicolai A. Abildgaard. Flintoe retained some characteristics 

of the classical style of landscape painting, called “prospect” painting, 

which tended usually to be dispassionate, while at the same time he showed the way 

towards a more Romantic, or emotional treatment of nature. c 

Since Mandt must have been Flintoe's student immediately before becoming 

Ibsen's teacher, it is not unlikely that he shared some of his fresh impressions of the 

ideas of his teacher with his own young student, whether or not he himself agreed 

with them, or could carry them out. A comparison of Mandt's landscapes with Ibsen's 

shows similarities of technique and subject matter, although Mandt's paintings often 

have figures in them, Ibsen's almost never. Ibsen was a copyist in painting just as he 

was to be in his early poems and plays. Many of his early poems are, indeed, “painterly.” 

The fact that Ibsen studied drawing and painting probably contributed to his 

recognition of the importance of the stage setting, and to his careful descriptions of 

the setting in his later stage directions. Whether his conception of the stage space 

itself, or his metaphoric landscape, owes anything to what he knew about Romantic 

landscape painting is another question. 

a Ibsen Letters and Speeches, edited by Evert Sprinchorn, New York, Hill and Wang, 1964, p. 14. 

P. E. L. 

b Norsk Biografisk Leksikon, Bind IX, red. A. W. Brøgger, Einar Jansen, Oslo, forlagt av H. Aschehoug 

& Co., 1940, pp. 59-60. 

c Aschehoug og Gyldendals Store Norske Leksikon, Er-F, Oslo, Kunnskapsforlaget, 1978, p. 363.

IBSEN IN SKIEN AND GRIMSTAD:

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