style, and in its intimate revelation of the Norwegian character.
It must be remembered that until the year 1814, Norway had
for centuries been politically united with Denmark, and that
Copenhagen had been the common literary centre of the two
countries. To that city Norwegian writers had gravitated as
naturally as French writers gravitate to Paris. There had
resulted from this condition of things a literature which,
although it owed much to men of Norwegian birth, was essentially
a Danish literature, and must properly be so styled. That
literature could boast, at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, an interesting history comparable in its antiquity
with the greater literatures of Europe, and a brilliant history
for at least a hundred years past. But old literatures are
sure to become more or less sophisticated and trammelled by
traditon, and to this rule Danish literature was no exception.
When the constitution of Eidsvold, in 1814, separated Norway
from Denmark, and made it into an independent kingdom (save for
the forced Swedish partnership), the country had practically
no literary tradition save that which centred about the Danish
capital. She might claim to have been the native country of
many Danish writers, even of Ludvig Holberg, the greatest
writer that the Scandinavian peoples have yet produced, but she
could point to nothing that might fairly be called a Norwegian
literature. The young men of the rising generation were
naturally much concerned about this, and a sharp divergence of
opinion arose as to the means whereby the interests of Norwegian
literature might be furthered, and the aims which it should have
in view. One party urged that the literature should break loose
from its traditional past, and aim at the cultivation of an
exclusively national spirit. The other party declared such a