In attempting to classify Björnson's writings for the purpose of
rendering some critical account of the man's work, the first impulse is
to group them into the three divisions of fiction, lyric, and drama. But
the most obvious fact of his long literary life is after all not so much
that he has done great work in all three of these fundamental forms, as
that the whole spirit and method of his work, whatever the form,
underwent a radical transformation about midway in his career. For the
first twenty years of his active life, roughly speaking, he was an
artist pure and simple; during the subsequent twenty years, also roughly
speaking, he has been didactic, controversial, and _tendentious._ (The
last word is good Spanish and German and ought to be good English.) For
the purpose of the following summary analysis, I have therefore thought
it best to make the fundamental grouping chronological rather than
formal, since the plays and the novels of the first period have much
more in common with one another than either the plays or the novels of
the first period have in common with the plays or the novels of
the second.

Björnson's work in lyrical and other non-dramatic poetry belongs almost
wholly to the first period. It consists mainly of short pieces scattered
through the idyllic tales and saga-plays that nearly make up the sum of
his activity in its purely creative and poetic phase. Some of these
lyrics strike the very highest and purest note of song, and have secured
lasting lodgment on the lips of the people. One of them, indeed, has
become pre-eminently the national song of Norway, and may be heard
wherever Norsemen are gathered together upon festal occasions. It begins
in this fashion:--

"Ay, we love this land of ours,