North. It is not only as
their first and greatest poet that the Norsemen love and hate him, but
also as a civilizer in the widest sense. But like Kadmus, in Greek myth,
he has not only brought with him letters, but also the dragon-teeth of
strife, which it is to be hoped will not sprout forth in armed men.

A man's ancestry and environment, no doubt, account in a superficial
manner for his appearance and mental characteristics. Having the man, we
are able to trace the germs of his being in the past of his race and his
country; but, with all our science we have not yet acquired the
ingenuity to predict the man--to deduce him _a priori_ from the tangle
of determining causes which enveloped his birth. It seems beautifully
appropriate in the Elder Edda that the god-descended hero Helge the
Voelsung should be born amid gloom and terror in a storm which shakes the
house, while the Norns--the goddesses of fate--proclaim in the tempest
his tempestuous career. Equally satisfactory it appears to have the
modern champion of Norway--the typical modern Norseman--born on the
bleak and wild Dovre Mountain,[1] where there is winter eight months of
the year and cold weather during the remaining four. The parish of
Kvikne, in Oesterdalen, where his father, the Reverend Peder Bjoernson,
held a living, had a bad reputation on account of the unruly ferocity
and brutal violence of the inhabitants. One of the Reverend Peder
Bjoernson's recent predecessors never went into his pulpit, unarmed; and
another fled for his life. The peasants were not slow in intimating to
the new pastor that they meant to have him mind his own business and
conform to the manners and customs of the parish; but there they
reckoned without their host. The reverend gentleman made short work of
the opposition. He enforced the new law of compulsory education without
heeding its unpopularity; and when the champion fighter of the valley
came as the peasants' spokesman to take him to task in summary fashion,
he found himself, before he was aware of it, at the bottom of the
stairs, where he picked himself up wonderingly and promptly took to his
heels.

[1] December 8, 1832.

During the winter the snow reached up to the second-story windows of the
parsonage; and the servants had to tunnel their way to the storehouse
and the stables. The cold was so intense that the little Bjoernstjerne
thought twice before touching a door knob, as his fingers were liable to
stick to th