and
whoever attacks the German nation will find it united in arms, and in
every soldier's heart the firm faith "God will be with us."

BJOeRNSTJERNE BJOeRNSON

(1832-)

BY WILLIAM M. PAYNE

Of the two great writers who have, more than any others, made it possible
for Norway to share in the comity of intellectual intercourse so
characteristic of the modern literary movement, it must be granted that
Bjoernson is, more distinctly than Ibsen, the representative of their
common nationality. Both are figures sufficiently commanding to belong,
in a sense, to the literature of the whole world, and both have had a
marked influence upon the ideals of other peoples than that from which
they sprung; but the wider intellectual scope of Ibsen has been gained
at some sacrifice of the strength that comes from taking firm root in
one's native soil, and speaking first and foremost to the hearts of
one's fellow-countrymen. What we may call the cosmopolitan standpoint of
the greater part of his work has made its author less typically a
Norwegian than Bjoernson has always remained. It is not merely that the
one writer has chosen to spend the best years of his life in countries
not his own, while the other has never long absented himself from the
scarred and storm-beaten shores of the land, rich in historic memories
and "dreams of the saga-night," that gave him birth and nurture.
Tourguenieff lived apart from his fellow-countrymen for as many years as
Ibsen has done, yet remained a Russian to the core. It is rather a
difference of native intellectual bent that has left Bjoernson to stand
as the typical representative of the Norwegian spirit, while the most
famous of his contemporaries has given himself up to the pursuit of
abstractions, and has been swept along by a current of thought resulting
from the confluence of many streams. The intensely national character of
Bjoernson's manifold activity is well illustrated by a remark of Georg
Brandes, to the effect that mention of Bjoernson's name in the presence
of any gathering of Norwegians is like running up the national flag. And
it seems, on the whole, that the sum total of his literary achievement
must be reckoned the greatest to be set down to the credit of any one
Norwegian since Norway began to develop a literature of her own. Far
nobler and finer than that of either Wergeland or Welhaven, the two most
conspicuous of his predecessors, this achievement is challenged by that
o