At first all went well, but from the very beginning of the visit he
observed, or thought he observed, awkward phenomena. The country was
thrilled with political excitement, and it vibrated with rhetorical
resolutions which seemed to Ibsen very empty. He had a constitutional
horror of purely theoretical questions, and these were occupying Norway
from one end to the other. The King's veto, the consular difficulty, the
Swedish emblem in the national flag, these were the subjects of frenzied
discussion, and in none of these did Ibsen take any sort of pleasure. He
was not politically far-sighted, it must be confessed, nor did he guess
what practical proportions these "theoretical questions" were to assume
in the immediate future.
That great writer and delightful associate, the Swedish poet, Count
Snoilsky, one of the few whose company never wearied or irritated Ibsen,
joined him in the far north. They spent a pleasant, quiet time together
at Molde, that enchanting little sub-arctic town, where it looks
southward over the shining fjord, with the Romsdalhorn forever guarding
the mountainous horizon.
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