course to be folly, contending that literature must be a
product of gradual development rather than of set volition,
and that, despite the shifting of the political kaleidoscope,
the national literature was so firmly rooted in its Danish past
that its natural evolution must be an outgrowth from all that
had gone before.

Each of these parties found a vigorous leader, the cause of
ultra-Norwegianism being championed by Wergeland, an erratic
person in whom the spark of genius burned, but who never found
himself, artistically speaking. The champion of the conservatives
was Welhaven, a polished writer of singular charm and much force,
philosophical in temper, whose graceful verse and acute criticism
upheld by both precept and practice the traditional standards
of culture. Each of these men had his followers, who proved in
many cases more zealous than their leaders. The period of the
thirties and forties was dominated by this Wergeland-Welhaven
controversy, which engendered much bitterness of feeling, and
which constitutes the capital fact in Norwegian literary history
before the appearance of Ibsen and Bjornson upon the scene. A
sort of parallel might be drawn for American readers by taking
two such men as Whitman and Longfellow, opposing them to one
another in the most outspoken fashion, assuming for both a
sharply polemic manner, and ranging among their respective
followers all the other writers of their time. Then imagine the
issue between them to be drawn not only in the field of letters,
but also in the pulpit, the theatre, and the political arena, and
some slight notion may be obtained of the condition of affairs
which preceded the advent of Bjornson and the true birth of
Norwegian literature with "Synnove Solbakken."