Ibsens had been in preserving their respectable dead level. Even in that
inability to resist the call of the sea, generation after generation, if
there was a little of the dare-devil there was still more of the
conventional citizen. It is, in fact, a vain attempt to detect elements
of his ancestors in the extremely startling and unprecedented son who
was born to Knud and Marichen Ibsen two years and three months after
their marriage.

This son, who was baptized Henrik Johan, although he never used the
second name, was born in a large edifice known as the Stockmann House,
in the centre of the town of Skien, on March 20, The house stood on one
side of a large, open square; the town pillory was at the right of and
the mad-house, the lock-up and other amiable urban institutions to the
left; in front was Latin school and the grammar school, while the church
occupied the middle of the square. Over this stern prospect the tourist
can no longer sentimentalize, for the whole of this part of Skien was
burned down in 1886, to the poet's unbridled satisfaction. "The
inhabitants of Skien," he said with grim humor, "were quite unworthy to
possess my birthplace."

He declared that the harsh elements of landscape, mentioned above, were
those which earliest captivated his infant attention, and he added that
the square space, with the church in the midst of it, was filled all day
long with the dull and droning sound of many waterfalls, while from dawn
to dusk this drone of waters was constantly cut through by a sound that
was like the sharp screaming and moaning of women. This was caused by
hundreds of saws at work beside the waterfalls, taking advantage of that
force. "Afterwards, when I read about the guillotine, I always thought
of those saws," said the poet, whose earliest flight of fancy seems to
have been this association of womanhood with the shriek of the sawmill.