Narve Fulsås

Ibsen Misrepresented: Canonization, Oblivion, and the Need for History

In Det moderna genombrottet i Nordens litteratur [The modern breakthrough in Nordic literature ] Gunnar Ahlström paints a gloomy picture of the conditions governing the modern literature and its authors. Ahlström’s study, which is still regarded as a classic, and which has recently been described as “perhaps the best book ever about this period of Scandinavian literature” (Rønning, 2006, p. 378), stresses the idea of the persistence of the old institutions, a traditional world view, and cultural conservatism in the Nordic countries. While liberalism was triumphing on the continent, time had stood still here, and the institutions of orthodox traditional Christianity had retained their power. When, inspired by Brandes, the new literature began to make itself noticed, it met with massive hostility, and in a short period of time it was thoroughly suppressed. The optimistic belief that a new era was beginning quickly gave way to collapse, demoralization, and total isolation. When the matter was put to the test, it became evident that there was no real understanding between the authors and their domestic public. Disillusioned, these writers left Scandinavia in order to lead lonely lives in European cities. According to Ahlström, the reversal found its principal expression in Ibsen, in his depiction of society as infected public baths in An Enemy of the People, and in what Ahlström claims to be the message of The Wild Duck: that people were not mature enough to hear the truth and should instead be left in peace with their stupid life-lies (Ahlström, 1974, pp. 9–11, 65, 209–219, 257–283).

What did the Weather Forecast do to Fishermen, and what did Fishermen do to the Weather Forecast?

Abstract In the wake of the First World War, Vilhelm Bjerknes and his colleagues in Bergen established their so-called front meteorology. With their new concepts and models they “appropriated” the weather – to use Robert Marc Friedmans expression – for physics and for Norwegian science. A regular weather forecasting service was established at the same time for the whole of the Norwegian coast, and fishermen soon became the meteorologists’ primary allies in their struggle for state support and resources. This article examines how the alliance was established, how weather forecasting was “appropriated” by the coastal population, particularly in the north, and what difference this made.

Ibsen and Dilthey: evidence of a forgotten acquaintance

Henrik Ibsen came to Gossensass in southern Tyrol for the first time in 1876. He returned on his way to Italy in 1878, and then again in 1882, 1883, 1884 and 1889. The last stay is probably the best known, mainly because of Ibsen’s encounter with the young Austrian Emilie Bardach. Some sort of romance developed between them. She began to think that she had a future as his collaborator, and that she would travel the world with him and partake in his triumphs. The following winter they corresponded until February 1890, when Ibsen asked her to stop writing to him. Directly after Ibsen’s death in 1906 Georg Brandes published Ibsen’s letters to Miss Bardach. It seems that she had been pushing him to do so, threatening to do it herself if he did not, and the publication was greatly resented by the Ibsen family. Since then the relationship between Ibsen and Emilie Bardach has been a favourite theme for Ibsen biographers and even the topic of two plays and a novel. But Ibsen also made other acquaintances that summer which have passed practically unnoticed. Emilie left Gossensass on 28 September 1889. In a letter to her dated 7 October, written after his return to Munich, Ibsen tells her about the last week in Gossensass. He says that it had been sad without her, and that the hotel had been almost empty: “Auch im grossen Saal habe ich es öde und trostlos gefunden. Die Gäste, Familie Pereira und der Professor mit Gattin, erschienen nur bei den Mahlzeiten.” The professor and wife were Wilhelm and Katharina Dilthey. The philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) was at that time professor in Berlin, since 1882 occupying the chair in theoretical philosophy formerly held by Fichte and Hegel and before Dilthey

Ibsen, Scandinavia and the Making of a World Drama

Henrik Ibsen’s drama is the most prominent and lasting contribution of the cultural surge seen in Scandinavian literature in the later nineteenth century. When he made his debut in Norway in , the nation’s literary presence was negligible, yet by  Ibsen had become one of Europe’s most famous authors. Contrary to the standard narrative of his move from restrictive provincial origins to liberating European exile, Narve Fulsås and Tore Rem show how Ibsen’s trajectory was preconditioned on his continued embeddedness in Scandinavian society and culture, and that he experienced great success in his home markets. Ibsen, Scandinavia and the Making of a World Drama traces how Ibsen’s works first travelled outside Scandinavia and studies the mechanisms of his appropriation in Germany, Britain and France. Engaging with theories of book dissemination and world literature, and re-assessing the emergence of ‘peripheral’ literary nations, this book provides new perspectives on the work of this major figure of European literature and theatre.

How Was Ibsen’s Modern Drama Possible?

One of the major renewals in the history of drama is Henrik Ibsen’s “modern tragedy” of the 1880s and 1890s. Since Ibsen’s own time, this renewal has been seen as an achievement accomplished in spite, rather than because, of Ibsen’s Norwegian and Scandinavian contexts of origin. His origins have consistently been associated with provinciality, backwardness and restrictions to be overcome, and his European “exile” has been seen as the great liberating turning point of his career. We will, on the contrary, argue that throughout his career Ibsen belonged to Scandinavian literature and that his trajectory was fundamentally conditioned and shaped by what happened in the intersection between literature, culture and politics in Scandinavia. In particular, we highlight the continued association and closeness between literature and theatre, the contested language issue in Norway, the superimposition of literary and political cleavages and dynamics as well as the transitory stage of copyright.

The de-dramatization of history and the prose of bourgeois life

Emperor and Galilean has received renewed interest the last decade. It has been revalued and upgraded, it has been attributed a major role in the development of Ibsen’s authorship, and it has been interpreted as an expression of the new uncertainties of modernity. The play definitely deviates from Ibsen’s earlier historical dramas; it does not hold up an exemplary past or try to emulate a classical style. Rather, it seems to question history as a rational discourse and man’s capacity to create history in a self-conscious way. It is argued that Emperor and Galilean reflects Ibsen’s own experiences, more precisely: his experiences of defeat, estrangement and reorientation connected to the Danish defeat to Prussia-Austria in 1864 and the unification of Germany in the years that followed. Ibsen’s historical experiences were primarily the experiences of counter-finality and historical irony. During the Franco-German war in 1870 he still hoped for a French victory, but a few years later he came to appreciate German unification as a world historical event. The resulting attitude was a kind of fatalism reminiscent of the one we find in Tolstoy’s War and Peace , published a few years earlier, but of course unknown to Ibsen. This fatalism fit well with Ibsen’s conservatism at the time. It left him in a rather ambiguous position, though, and there is no straight literary path leading from Emperor and Galilean to the contemporary plays of the 1880s and 1890s.

“…af stort est du kommen”. Henrik Ibsen og Skien (Acta Ibseniana Vol. 8)

In 1882 Georg Brandes wrote a portrait of Ibsen in which he stated that the author had been born “i smaa og fattige Forhold i en lille norsk By” [in petty and poor circumstances in a small Norwegian town]. The portrait was later included in Brandes’ Det moderne Gjennembruds Mænd (1883). Thanking Brandes for the portrait, Ibsen could not resist commenting on what he took to be a devaluation of his background:

The University of Tromsø

When Norway got its first university in 1811, the country was still in union with Denmark. The main arguments for establishing the university were that Norwegians should be given the same educational opportunities as Danes, Norwegian society should have a better supply of universitytrained professionals and that a university would benefit the development of the country’s industries. In addition, some academics saw a new university as an opportunity to reform the university curriculum. The University of Copenhagen was considered to be old-fashioned and out of touch with the development of newer and more utilitarian branches of knowledge.