the Holy, accepted baptism, and fell at Stiklestad righting for
Christianity and the King. From this suggestion, the imagination of the
poet has worked out a series of episodes in Arnljot's life, beginning
with his capture of the fair Ingigerd--whose father he slew, and who,
struggling against her love, took refuge in a cloister--and ending with
the day of the portentous battle against the heathen. It is all very
impressive, and sometimes very subtle, while occasional sections, such
as Ingigerd's appeal for admission to the cloister, and Arnljot's
apostrophe to the sea, must be reckoned among the finest of Björnson's
inspirations. Since 1870 Björnson has published little verse, although
poems of an occasional character and incidental lyrics have now and then
found their way into print. 'Lyset' (The Light), a cantata, is the only
recent example of any magnitude.

Björnson first became famous as the delineator of the Norwegian peasant.
He felt that the peasant is the lineal descendant of the man of the
sagas, and that in him lies the real strength of the national character.
The story of 'Synnöve Solbakken' (1857) was quickly followed by 'Arne'
(1858), 'En Glad Gut' (A Happy Boy: 1860), and a number of small pieces
in similar vein. They were at once recognized both at home and abroad as
something deeper and truer of their sort than had hitherto been achieved
in the Scandinavian countries, and perhaps in Europe. In their former
aspect, they were a reaction from the conventional ideals hitherto
dominant in Danish literature (which had set the pace for most of
Björnson's predecessors); and in their latter and wider aspect they were
the Norwegian expression of the tendency that had produced the German
and French peasant idyls of Auerbach and George Sand. They embodied a
return to Nature in a spirit that may, with a difference, be called
Wordsworthian. They substituted a real nineteenth-century pastoral for
the sham pastoral of the eighteenth century. They reproduced the simple