The Feast at Solhoug | Page 4

will be permitted to keep, in its entirety, what rightfully belongs to him.
In writing The Feast of Solhoug in connection with _Svend Dyring's
House_, George Brandes expresses the opinion, not that the former
play is founded upon any idea borrowed from the latter, but that it has
been written under an influence exercised by the older author upon the
younger. Brandes invariably criticises my work in such a friendly spirit
that I have all reason to be obliged to him for this suggestion, as for so
much else.
Nevertheless I must maintain that he, too, is in this instance mistaken. I
have never specially admired Henrik Hertz as a dramatist. Hence it is
impossible for me to believe that he should, unknown to myself, have
been able to exercise any influence on by dramatic production.
As regards this point and the matter in general, I might confine myself
to referring those interested to the writings of Dr. Valfrid Vasenius,
lecturer on Aesthetics at the University of Helsingfors. In the thesis
which gained him his degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Henrik Ibsen's
Dramatic Poetry in its First stage (1879), and also in Henrik Ibsen:
The Portrait of a Skald (Jos. Seligman & Co., Stockholm, 1882),
Valsenious states and supports his views on the subject of the play at
present in question, supplementing them in the latter work by what I
told him, very briefly, when we were together at Munich three years
ago.

But, to prevent all misconception, I will now myself give a short
account of the origin of The Feast at Solhoug.
I began this Preface with the statement that The Feast at Solhoug was
written in the summer 1855.
In 1854 I had written Lady Inger of Ostrat. This was a task which had
obliged me to devote much attention to the literature and history of
Norway during the Middle Ages, especially the latter part of that period.
I did my utmost to familiarise myself with the manners and customs,
with the emotions, thought, and language of the men of those days.
The period, however, is not one over which the student is tempted to
linger, nor does it present much material suitable for dramatic
treatment.
Consequently I soon deserted it for the Saga period. But the Sagas of
the Kings, and in general the more strictly historical traditions of that
far-off age, did not attract me greatly; at that time I was unable to put
the quarrels between kings and chieftains, parties and clans, to any
dramatic purpose. This was to happen later.
In the Icelandic "family" Sagas, on the other hand, I found in
abundance what I required in the shape of human garb for the moods,
conceptions, and thoughts which at that time occupied me, or were, at
least, more or less distinctly present in my mind. With these Old Norse
contributions to the personal history of our Saga period I had had no
previous acquaintance; I had hardly so much as heard them named. But
now N. M. Petersen's excellent translation-- excellent, at least, as far as
the style is concerned--fell into my hands. In the pages of these family
chronicles, with their variety of scenes and of relations between man
and man, between woman and woman, in short, between human being
and human being, there met me a personal, eventful, really living life;
and as the result of my intercourse with all these distinctly individual
men and women, there presented themselves to my mind's eye the first
rough, indistinct outlines of The Vikings at Helgeland.
How far the details of that drama then took shape, I am no longer able

to say. But I remember perfectly that the two figures of which I first
caught sight were the two women who in course of time became
Hiordis and Dagny. There was to be a great banquet in the play, with
passion-rousing, fateful quarrels during its course. Of other characters
and passions, and situations produced by these, I meant to include
whatever seemed to me most typical of the life which the Sagas reveal.
In short, it was my intention to reproduce dramatically exactly what the
Saga of the Volsungs gives in epic form.
I made no complete, connected plan at that time; but it was evident to
me that such a drama was to be my first undertaking.
Various obstacles intervened. Most of them were of a personal nature,
and these were probably the most decisive; but it undoubtedly had its
significance that I happened just at this time to make a careful study of
Landstad's collection of Norwegian ballads, published two years
previously. My mood of the moment was more in harmony with the
literary romanticism of the Middle Ages than with the deeds of the
Sagas, with poetical than with prose composition,