"The best bard for his nation" is he who "does the prophet's
deeds," who "rallies now the present's hosts," and "frees,
--by right eternal." Poet and prophet Björnson was, but more
than all else the leader of the Norwegian people, "where loud
life's battles call," through conflict unto liberation and growth.
It has been said that twice in the nineteenth century the national
soul of Norway embodied itself in individual men,--during the
first half in Henrik Wergeland and during the second half in
Björnstjerne Björnson. True as this is of the former, it is
still more true of the latter, for the history of Norway shows
that the soul of its people expresses itself best through will
and action. Björnson throughout all his life willed and wrought
so much for his country, that he could give relatively little
time and power to lyrical self-expression.

But Björnson strikingly represented the past of Norway as well
as his contemporary age. He was a modern blending of the heroic
chieftain and the gifted skald of ancient times. He was the first
leader of his country in a period when the battles of the spirit
on the fields of politics and economics, ethics, and esthetics
were the only form of conflict,--a leader evoking, developing,
and guiding the powers of his nation into fuller and higher life.
In his many-sidedness Björnson was also in his time the first
skald of his people, almost equally endowed with genius as a
narrative, a dramatic, and a lyric poet; with talents scarcely
less remarkable as an orator, a theater-director, a journalistic
tribune of the people (his newspaper articles amounted, roughly
estimated, to ten thousand book-pages), a letter-writer, and a
conversationalist.