It was a gentle, clerically minded poet--himself the son of a
peasant--Joergen Moe (1813-82), long afterwards Bishop of Christianssand,
who, as far back as 1834, began to collect from peasants the folk-tales
of Norway. The childlike innocence and playful humor of these stories
were charming to the mind of Moe, who was fortunately joined by a
stronger though less delicate spirit in the person of Peter Christian
Asbjoernsen. Their earliest collection of folk-lore in collaboration
appeared in 1841, but it was the full edition of 1856 which produced a
national sensation, and doubtless awakened Ibsen in Bergen. Meanwhile,
in 1853, M. B. Landstad had published the earliest of his collections of
the folkeviser, or national songs, while L. M. Lindeman in the same
years (1853-59) was publishing, in installments, the peasant melodies of
Norway. Moreover, Ibsen, who read no Icelandic, was studying the ancient
sagas in the faithful and vigorous paraphrase of Petersen, and all
combined to determine him to make an experiment in a purely national and
archaistic direction.
Ibsen, whose practice is always better than his theory, has given rather
a confused account of the circumstances that led to the composition of
his next play, _The Vikings at Helgeland_.
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