"Four Hundred Years of Darkness"
Norwegian literature was virtually nonexistent during the period of the Scandinavian Union and the subsequent Dano-Norwegian union (1387—1814). Ibsen characterized this period as "Four Hundred Years of Darkness." During the period of union with Denmark, Danish replaced Norwegian. The university and cultural center of Denmark-Norway was Copenhagen, where young men went to study.
The reformation was imposed on Norway in 1537 and the Dano-Norwegian rulers used it to also impose Danish culture; this was effected through the pulpit as well as through written records, as pastors were trained in Copenhagen. Thus, written Norwegian became closely related to Danish, causing the literature to become essentially Danish. Geble Pedersson (c.1490—1557) was the first Lutheran Bishop of Bergen and a man of broad humanistic views; his adopted son, Absalon Pederssøn Beyer (1528—1575), followed in his footsteps as a humanist and a nationalist, writing an important historical work, Concerning the Kingdom of Norway (1567). Peder Claussøn Friis (1545—1615) was also a humanist who both revived the Heimskringla by translating it into the language of the period and wrote the first natural history of Norway as well as an important topographic study of Norway.
The seventeenth century was a period of meager literary activity in Norway, but there were significant contributions. Petter Dass (1647—1707) wrote Nordlands Trompet (The Trumpet of Nordland) which described in graphic verse the landscape, mode of life, conditions and character of the northern Norwegian people. Two other authors merit mention. Dorothe Engelbretsdotter (1634—1713), was Norways first recognized woman author who wrote powerful religious poetry. Her first work, Siælens Sang-offer, was published 1678. Taare-Offer was her second collected works and was published for the first time in 1685. Another gifted poet was Anders Arrebo who translated the Psalms into Norwegian and composed the creation poem, Hexaemeron.
Norway also contributed significantly to the joint literature of Denmark-Norway. One of the very first names in Danish literature, Peder Claussøn Friis (1545—1614), was Norwegian born. Other important Norwegian by birth 'Danish' authors of the period included Ludvig Holberg (Bergen, 1684—1754), Christian Tullin (Christiania, 1728—1765), and Johan Herman Wessel (1742—1785).
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Famous quotes containing the words years and/or darkness:
“And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not a distance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,—nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)