"If a work of the mind is born of Norse conditions and stands
before the ethical judgment seat--let it have its full action;
otherwise it will not produce its full reaction. If the faith
that gave shape to the piece is not the strongest force in the
society that gave it birth, it will evoke an opposing force of
greater strength. Thereby all will gain. But to ignore it, or
seek to crush it--that in a large society may not greatly matter,
so rich are the possibilities of other work taking its place;
but in a small society it may be equivalent to destroying the
sight of its only eye."

In the clean-cut phrases and moral earnestness of this _apologia
pro vita sua_, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length,
we have the modern Bjornson, no longer poet alone, but poet and
prophet at once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy
living, the Sigurd Slembe of our own day, happier than his
prototype in the consciousness that the ambition to serve his
people has not been; altogether thwarted, and that his
beneficent activity is not made sterile even by the bitterest
opposition.

Only a rapid glance may be taken at the books of the five
years following upon the publication of "The King." The
story of "Magnhild," planned several years earlier, represents
Bjornson's return to fiction after a long dramatic interlude.
There are still peasants in this story, but they are different
from the figures of the early tales, and the atmosphere of the
work is modern. It turns upon the question of the mutual duties
of husband and wife, when love no longer unites them. The
solution seems to lie in separation when union has thus become