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The poem had occupied him, off and on, for more than ten
years, the Sturm und Drang period of his early manhood.
It had done him the service of the Aristotelian katharsis.
Of this we read in Collin’s biography: “It was indeed for
Björnson as if his own sufferings were lightened by
comparison with those of Arnljot Gelline and Sigurd Slembe.
He could yield up his own little sorrow to these two
step-children of destiny, and let it be remoulded into
sympathy—just as Shakspere had transferred his disappointment
and pain in a time that was out of joint to Hamlet and
Troilus, to Timon and Lear, and thereby freed his mind
from brooding upon his own fortunes. Or as the old blind
Milton, who after the overthrow of the Puritans was like
blind Samson, a captive among the Philistines, could yield
up his grief to the Old Testament hero, and through
compassion with his suffering, endowing him with the poet’s
eloquence, was able to rise out of his own despondency.
Thus it was that Björnson, in the course of the tempestuous
winter of 1859—60, began to shape Arnljot Gelline’s figure,
making it a conduit for all his thoughts of the wrong of
which he was himself the victim. What an emancipation for
a poet to free himself from self-compassion, and bestow
it upon one far more sorely afflicted by adverse fate,
endowing him with all his own vigor of soul, all his own poetic
eloquence, erecting in him a monument upon the ruins of
a sorrow that the poet had himself experienced!”
The long-promised poem achieved a notable success,
although it met with much adverse criticism, especially in
Denmark, where it was issued by the house of
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