How was Ibsen's modern drama possible?

One of the major renewals in the history of drama is Henrik Ibsen’s “modern tragedy” of the 1880s and 1890s. Since Ibsen’s own time, this renewal has been seen as an achievement accomplished in spite, rather than because, of Ibsen’s Norwegian and Scandinavian contexts of origin. His origins have consistently been associated with provinciality, backwardness and restrictions to be overcome, and his European “exile” has been seen as the great liberating turning point of his career. We will, on the contrary, argue that throughout his career Ibsen belonged to Scandinavian literature and that his trajectory was fundamentally conditioned and shaped by what happened in the intersection between literature, culture and politics in Scandinavia. In particular, we highlight the continued association and closeness between literature and theatre, the contested language issue in Norway, the superimposition of literary and political cleavages and dynamics as well as the transitory stage of copyright

Tarjei Vesaas and Norwegian Literature in Nazi Germany

Artikkelen undersøkjer publiseringshistoria til Tarjei Vesaas i Nazi-Tyskland. Det nye materialet den tilfører, er i hovudsak basert på materiale etter Det litterære byrå på Lillehammer, ein aktør som knapt er nemnd i norsk litteratur- og bokhistorie. I det transnasjonale og bokhistoriske perspektivet som dette opnar, får vi eit breiare, meir differensiert og delvis anna bilete av Vesaas og nazismen enn det som har dominert i litteraturvitskapen, og som har vore mest konsentrert om kritisk nærlesing av Bufast-bøkene. Artikkelen drøftar Vesaas’ forhold til Tyskland og nazismen og undersøkjer aktørane som var med i dei tysk-norske litterære forretningane, handlingsrommet deira og korleis dette endra seg med «arisering», einsretting, krig og okkupasjon. The article examines Tarjei Vesaas’s publishing history in Nazi Germany. It offers new material, largely from the archive of Det litterære byrå in Lillehammer, a literary agency hardly noticed in Norwegian literature or book history. This opens transnational and history of the book perspectives that give us a broader, more differentiated, and partly different picture from that emanating from close readings of his Bufast books. Vesaas’s attitudes towards Germany and Nazism are analyzed, as well as the agents involved in the German-Norwegian literary business, their space of action and how it changed with Arizierung, Gleichschaltung, war and occupation

Framtida til Historisk tidsskrift

Framtida til Historisk tidsskrift var tema ved avslutninga av Norske historiedagar i Tønsberg i år. Som hovudredaktør av tidsskriftet 2015–2018 var eg invitert til å innleie. Innlegget her er basert på innleiinga, men også utvida som respons på synspunkt som kom fram i den påfølgjande panel- og plenumsdebatten

The de-dramatization of history and the prose of bourgeois life

Emperor and Galilean has received renewed interest the last decade. It has been revalued and upgraded, it has been attributed a major role in the development of Ibsen’s authorship, and it has been interpreted as an expression of the new uncertainties of modernity. The play definitely deviates from Ibsen’s earlier historical dramas; it does not hold up an exemplary past or try to emulate a classical style. Rather, it seems to question history as a rational discourse and man’s capacity to create history in a self-conscious way. It is argued that Emperor and Galilean reflects Ibsen’s own experiences, more precisely: his experiences of defeat, estrangement and reorientation connected to the Danish defeat to Prussia-Austria in 1864 and the unification of Germany in the years that followed. Ibsen’s historical experiences were primarily the experiences of counter-finality and historical irony. During the Franco-German war in 1870 he still hoped for a French victory, but a few years later he came to appreciate German unification as a world historical event. The resulting attitude was a kind of fatalism reminiscent of the one we find in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, published a few years earlier, but of course unknown to Ibsen. This fatalism fit well with Ibsen’s conservatism at the time. It left him in a rather ambiguous position, though, and there is no straight literary path leading from Emperor and Galilean to the contemporary plays of the 1880s and 1890s

Tromsø Museum: museum and university in the north

Muzeum w Tromso: muzeum i uniwersytet na północy Muzeum w Tromsa zostało założone w 1872 roku. Podczas oficjalnej inauguracji Uniwersytetu wTroms0 w 1972 roku, Muzeum mogło pochwalić się już stuletnią historią. Przez długi okres muzeum postrzegano jako centralną instytucję naukową na północy Norwegii, a także jako fundament dla przyszłego uniwersytetu. Po utworzeniu Uniwersytetu według założonych planów, okazało się, że plany te, odnośnie do muzeum, wykraczają daleko poza jego tradycyjną funkcję, a w samym muzeum wkrótce stwierdzono, iż pilniejszym zadaniem niż funkcja bazy dla wydziałów uniwersytetu jest obrona swej tożsamości i odrębności. W niniejszym artykule staram się nakreślić tło, charakter oraz główne linie rozwoju Muzeum w Troms0, jak i jego relacje z uniwersytetem

"Det moderne gjennombrotet" i lærarskulen. Ibsen-lesing hjå Tromsø-seminaristar

I motsetning til den utbreidde oppfatninga om at «det moderne gjennombrotet» i den skandinaviske litteraturen møtte motstand og fiendskap, syner opplagstal at Henrik Ibsens Et dukkehjem (1879), eit av dei sentrale gjennombrotsverka, blei hans største salssuksess, og at boka nådde nye grupper av lesarar. Eit rikt materiale frå lærarutdanninga i Tromsø gjer det mogleg å følgje Ibsen-lesinga der i noko detalj, frå dei fyrste innkjøpa i 1866 til byrjinga av 1880-åra. Som ein kyrkjekontrollert, konservativ institusjon lét seminaret vere å kjøpe inn mykje av den moderne litteraturen, men dei kjøpte nesten alt av Ibsen, til og med Et dukkehjem. Det omstridde familiedramaet blei Ibsens gjennombrot som elevlesing og skapte større interesse også for hans eldre titlar. Skulebibliotekets fyrsteutgåve av Et dukkehjem er bevart, og lesarkommentarane i margane syner at boka blei lesen på ein meir «engasjert» og «deltakande» måte enn dei Ibsen-titlane som var skulepensum

The Scandinavian Moment in World Literature, 2017

In the last part of the 19th century, a considerable Norwegian and Scandinavian literature emerged and by the turn of the century the main contributions to this literature had already become world literature. One part of the project (by Narve Fulsås and Tore Rem) focuses on Henrik Ibsen and the prerequisites for a peripheral author to advance to world literary status in such a short period of time. In the subproject "Book market and Reading", PhD researchers Maria Purtoft and Henning Hansen examine who were the readers of the modern breakthrough literature in Norway, Denmark and Sweden and what were the reasons for the significant growth in the Scandinavian book market from the 1870s

Networks, asymmetries and appropriations: Towards a typology

This article, a revised version of Tore Rem’s keynote lecture at the XIVth International Ibsen Conference in Skien on 5–8 September 2018, draws on pp. 140–174 in Narve Fulsås and Tore Rem, Ibsen, Scandinavia and the Making of a World Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2018). This version expands on the theoretical-analytical framework of our suggested typology