No subject that has ever been discussed in the north has met with such an immense and lasting interest as this one. Beneath the pressure of Björnson the movement for the emancipation of women assumed a form of open enmity against man, and introduced a pietistic doctrine of the superiority of women into the literature and public life of Sweden. Should the movement ever force its way into the outposts of declining militarism in Germany, the signs are already to hand that there also the spirit of Björnson will rule.
How was it possible that this manly author with his impetuous and progressive nature should lose his way in the cul-de-sac of Christian asceticism—in the covert places of degeneration—and that having arrived at the time of life when a man’s opinions are matured, he did not find his way out again?
Here we come to the spot where the many conflicting threads of Björnson’s life are knotted together, from whence we arrive at the various stages of his creation, and from them find our way back again to the central point of his being.
A piece of contemporary history and class biography is unfolded in these numerous phases of Björnson’s life, reaches its climax here, runs its course and finds its ending. The political and social type of the ruling middle class is sharply outlined in him, and clearly stamped as though it were in a bronze medal.
But before we come to this chapter, we must examine the course of his development and the appreciation accorded him by his countrymen.
II
It cannot be said that Björnson meets with an unquestioning recognition in the middle classes. The influence of agitators is always most strongly felt by those who are a little below them in the social scale, that is perhaps the reason why Björnson has succeeded in exerting such a great influence upon the Scandinavian peasantry and upon women.
A few years ago I was travelling on foot through Norway, aided by the national means of locomotion, the “skyds.” It was slow work, but it afforded me numberless opportunities of coming in contact with the sons of the soil. On one occasion I met with a peasant on his way home from the “saeter,” who was content to be my guide for hours together, and he gave me some insight into his admiration for Björnson as a political speaker; another time, while I was waiting for horses in a “skyds station,” I examined a little book-case which was hanging over the writing table in the superintendent’s room, and there I found an almost complete set of Björnson’s works. And once it was the “skyds” boy himself who asked me if I knew Björnson. All the women teachers and book-keepers who, with knapsacks on their backs, wander across the mountains of their native land, carry his name upon their lips and his books in their hearts. High up at the foot of Skineggen in Jötunheimen, in the midst of eternal snow, I asked a haggard-looking old Valdres peasant who kept the tourist’s house there during the six weeks of summer, which was my nearest way to Björnson, and he answered with an approving smile addressing me in the second person singular: “Thou knowest Björnson, thou art an intelligent young lady. Trust me and I will tell thee all that thou wouldest know.” Whereupon he went indoors and fetched a large map of the Norwegian mountains, which he spread out on the short grass between us, and proceeded to point up and down with his finger into Gudbrandsdal and from thence to the south till he came to a spot where he stopped short, and said: “Here is Aulestad, Björnson’s place. Every one who wishes to go there may do so, thou also.” Then he began a long complicated account of the why and the wherefore Björnson is beloved by the peasant, said that he was a “homely man” who went “straight ahead”; and then he told me of the difficulties that he and his neighbours had encountered in order to hear him speak, and how they had gone long journeys to attend meetings in distant places.
Far from there, in comfortable Denmark, where the peasants are short and round but none the less zealous readers of newspapers and earnest politicians, I met a certain self-confident Sören Sörensen in a third-class railway coupé who bestowed on me the honouring epithet of “intelligent young lady,” because I let him know of my acquaintance with Björnson. Björnson’s name was a sure letter of recommendation among the peasantry of the three Scandinavian countries. It is not very long since he spoke in Jutland in favour of arbitration, universal disarm-ment and public peace, and with his usual cunning, called upon his old antagonists, the pastors, to help him in the name of their religion in the great work of peace. His name had been sufficient to collect around him no less than thirty thousand listeners, even in those years of the apathy and despondency of the Danish people. What is the cause of this immense influence?