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INTRODUCTION xxi
at once simple and complex. It is in them that the skald
and chieftain so typically blend in one. Of this group the
influence has been widest and deepest. In his oration at
the unveiling of the statue of Wergeland in Christiania,
Bjornson spoke of him and of Norway’s constitution as
growing up together; with reference to this it has been
maintained that we have still greater right to say that
Bjornson and Norway’s full freedom and independence
grew up together, The truth of the statement is very largely
due to Bjornson’s patriotic poems. Through them the poet- _
prophet interpreted for his nation the historic past and the
evolving present, and forecast the future. Simplifying the
meaning of life, he accomplished the mission which he
himself made the ideal of The Poet, and became for his own
people the liberalizing teacher and molder, leading them to
freedom in thought and action, in social and political life.
Of this large and seemingly complex group of patriotic
lyrics, — whether they be on its history, or on contempora-
neous events and deeds of individuals with political signi-
ficance; or on men, both known and unknown to fame,
who had made and were making Norway great; or on his-
torical, political, and other national festivals; or on the
country, its land and sea and fjords and forests and fields
and cities, in aspects more genial or more stern, — whether
they be poems of the individual or social and choral songs,
memorial poems or ballads or lyrical romances, or descrip-
tions of Norway’s scenery,—the unifying simple theme
is Norway to be loved and labored for.
Not a single poem is, however, merely descriptive of
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