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Boston: Houghton and Mifflin Company, 1882. The Riverside Press, Cambridge. Translated by Rasmus B. Anderson. 202 Pages. Read it here.

ne of the wonders of physically old books (i.e. books actually printed a century or more ago) is that they sometimes contain surprises, marginalia, trails of visual breadcrumbs which may or may not lead anywhere; and when the provenance (ownership history) of the book is undocumented, which is most of the time, these surprises tend to not lead anywhere, lending more food to the imagination of unserious dilettantes like myself than the firm evidence of a book’s past useful to serious archive librarians. A case in point is the digital copy of Synnøve Solbakken I’ve been reading, printed (and probably nicely bound) by The Riverside Press in 1882, and translated by Rasmus B. Anderson, who a handwritten marginal note helpfully says is “the son of Hans Christen Anderson.” The author of this handwritten note has written a couple more curious things, noting the date and location “Madison, WI, 1881” (though this may merely be the date and location Anderson is writing from) and giving Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s birth year as “1832 — ” implying that Bjørnson was still alive at the time this person was reading the book. (As best I can figure, his name is pronounced byarn-stee-urn-uh byarn-sun.)

Being a dilettante, I need not have any more proof than this to imagine that the person reading this book in 1881 was a Norwegian-American who either was an immigrant or whose family had recently immigrated to the U.S. Upper-Midwest, as so many Scandinavian immigrants did in the 19th century. This conviction is strengthened in the “Biographical Sketch of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson” section that comes next, where amid a comma-separated list of descriptors—“the great Norse poet, novelist, dramatist, orator, and political leader,”—the reader has handwritten in the word “patriot.”

Who but a Norwegian would feel this list incomplete without the word “patriot”! (It seems possible, given the pointed check marking and added quotation later in this section, that this may be a student or colleague of Anderson’s.) But that perceived patriotism is a good starting point for us to understand the significance of Bjørnson’s first book, Synnøve Solbakken (1857), and why it is so much more than the simple, charming love story it seems to be on the surface.

In order to understand the significance of the nationalistic (or patriotic, if you prefer) element in Bjørnson’s writing, a quick history lesson is in order. All the way back in the year 1397, the intermarried nobility of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark decided to form one union, the Kalmar Union, to counter the rising power of the German city states and place the three countries under the rule of one monarch, Margaret I. But it quickly became clear that Denmark, the most developed of the three countries, would become the dominant member of the union, exacting higher taxes and abrogating the rights of people in Sweden and Norway. The people of Sweden and Norway revolted off and on over the course of the 15th century, until finally in 1523 Sweden revolted and achieved independence under a Swedish king. The Danish nobility responded to this by tightening their grip even further on Norway, surreptitiously declaring the latter a subject state of Denmark, and enforcing the absolute control of Danish monarchy until 1814, when a weakened Denmark handed control of Norway over to Sweden, Norway rebuffed this move and declared independence, a war broke out between Norway and Sweden which resulted in a treaty requiring Norway to nominally recognize itself as being under the Swedish king but for all practical purposes being independent.

Norway in the 19th century was a country mostly of rural farmers, though increasingly people flocked to towns like Bergen and Christiania (modern day Oslo), which nonetheless were hardly so cosmopolitan as cities elsewhere in Europe. (Gathering thousands of villagers in one place does not magically turn them into city dwellers, as Hjalmar H. Boyesen observes in his book on Henrik Ibsen.) The landscape of Norway is and was absolutely spectacular, verdant valleys and fjords nestled between towering green mountains, affording the sort of awesome beauty that would make an atheist utter the phrase “God’s country.” Then too, as we shall see, the inhabitants of this land were not urban sophisticates but simple farmers, Godly people, in the sense that they believed in an uncomplicated Christianity—centered not on nations or monarchs and kings, but rather on family, community, and the local parish church, in many ways the limit of the world as they thought of it; they were parochial in the literal sense of the word, but as we shall see, not yet in the negative sense.

This parochial community was precisely the milieu into which was born the man who would one day be known as the national poet of Norway. His father Peder, however, was a bear of man, a towering country parson who established mandatory schooling in in the harsh coastal area of Kviken, and he once cold-clocked a local hard man who organized a resistance to this effort, and ran the ruffian out of town. The elder Bjørnson received a placement in the more centrally located parish of Nesset outside the city of Molde, and this incredibly scenic location forms the setting of Synnøve Solbakken and the childhood home of our author.

The young Bjørnson, according to Boyesen, was “a youth of large, almost athletic frame, with a handsome, striking face, and a pair of blue eyes which no one is apt to forget who has ever looked into them.” He was not a bookish boy nor a good student, but rather a lusty and wild boy who loved to ramble through the hills and dales, up mountains and across streams, though he also took up writing poetry at some point during these years. At the turn of the 1850s he was sent out of the country and into the city to school in Christiania. It was there he became passionate about the theater, which was an odd disposition for a Norwegian country boy, especially since at this time, according to Boyesen, the entire theater business in Norway was completely controlled by Danish managers and Danish actors; if Norway was no longer directly under the political control of Denmark, culturally she was still under the sway of Danish playwrights like Jens Immanuel Baggesen (1764 – 1826) and especially the expansive (albeit somewhat artificial) Danish Romantic poet Adam Oehlenschläger. Norwegian theater was a foreign import, celebrating cosmopolitan Denmark. The irksome privilege of Danish cultural hegemony could scarcely have left Bjørnson’s mind in the years after he matriculated from the university and began work as a journalist and drama critic in Copenhagen. It must have the conspicuous lack of space for the Norwegian point of view that led Bjørnson to create his own newspaper in 1856, and to publish in its pages the book we are presently reviewing, Synnøve Solbakken.

Anyway, to the summary: a young man conspicuously like Bjørnson in both name and temperament, Thorbjørn called, lives on a gard (farm) in a rural parish like Nesset—so far, so autobiographical. Thorbjørn’s father is not a parish priest, though, but rather a simple farmer named Saemund, who, knowing that there was a family tradition of sons and fathers being alternately named Saemund and Thorbjørn, and knowing that there is a more desultory tradition of the ones named Thorbjørn being “unfortunate,” sets about to maintain his son on the rigid path to righteousness by being strict with him, and not sparing the rod. This had the opposite to its intended effect (as could have been predicted), teaching impetuous young Thorbjørn to handle problems with his fists, to get into endless fights with other boys in the village.

We may infer that Thorbjørn learns his violent ways from Saemund, and his mischievous ways from an older boy hired as a servant in the house named Aslak. Aslak talks in riddling ways to Thorbjørn, and taunts him over his obsession with the neighboring farm of Solbakken, telling fantastic tales about it.

And while Aslak was working fast he was telling still faster, and it was about Kari with the wooden petticoat, about the mill that ground salt at the bottom of the sea, about the devil with the wooden shoes, about the troll that got his beard caught in the branch of a tree, about the seven green maidens who pulled the hair out of Peter Hunter’s legs while he slept and could not possibly awaken; and it all took place over there at Solbakken.

And in the midst of all this nonsense, he mentions a girl, Synnøve Solbakken, about whom Thorbjørn asks his mother.

“A prettier child has never been seen than she is,” added the mother, “and that is her reward from the Lord, because she is always kind and good and is an industrious reader.”

By reader, of course, is meant reading the Bible, a point we’ll get back to, but the important point is that Synnøve is never any less noble than described. While the courtship between Thorbjørn and Synnøve is beautiful and full of much of the “charm” and shyness and awkwardness of youthful romance, the main problems Synnøve has in the book are Thorbjørn’s problems. She herself is a wonder of goodness and girlish devotion; Bjørnson doesn’t give her any weaknesses aside from the obvious one of being in love.

If there chanced to be a lamb, a kid, or some little pig on the gard that did not thrive, or a cow that anything was the matter with, it was always given over into Synnøve’s possession ; and the mother seemed to feel sure that from that moment it did well.

The unspoken premise here (which is not yet obvious to the reader, this being just the first chapter) is that Thorbjørn is like an unruly animal who will “do well” once given into the keeping of Synnøve; there’s definitely a gendered trope in here somewhere. From this time forward after hearing tell of this wonderful being from the farm across the way, Thorbjørn daydreams about winning the heart of Synnøve Solbakken.

One of things that struck me while reading this book—and should have, since Bjørnson emphasizes it quite strongly at the beginning of chapter II, but then shows its significance to us more subtly through the course of the story—is how important religion is in the life of this parish. Bjørnson’s language in this regard is lyrical, and almost challenging:

Here in the little mountain valley the church has its special language for each age, its peculiar look to each eye; much may have been built up between the individual and it, but never any thing over it. It stands full-grown and ready, in the eyes of the candidate for confirmation, with finger pointing upward, half threatening, half inviting, for the youth whose choice is made ; broad-shouldered and strong over the sorrows of manhood ; with plenty of room and full of tenderness for weary old age. During divine service, young children are brought in and baptized, and it is well known that during this act the devotion is greatest.

Therefore, it is impossible to describe Norse peasants, corrupted or uncorrupted, without coming into contact at one point or other with the church. There will seem to be a dull uniformity in this; but it is, perhaps, not of the worst sort. Let this be said once for all, and not especially on account of the church visit which here follows.

Bjørnson’s words, particularly about the “dull uniformity,” seem to be directed at a larger audience of not just Norwegian, but also Danish readers. This is who we are, he saying, and it’s not the worst thing in the world. It has positive qualities worth celebrating. Hence Bjørnson is very subtly pledging to represent the Norwegians not as the Danes (or the world at large) think they ought to be, but as they actually are.

Good things happen at church in this novel. When Thorbjørn is still a little boy, his father brings him to church, which ocassions the first encounter between Thorbjørn and Synnøve, who Saemund points out to Thorbjørn sitting in a pew across the room. As the two families walk home from church together, the two children have a conversation that illustrates some of the basic differences between their two families.

“Do you fight over there at your house ?” “Yes, sometimes, when — Do not you do bo over at your house?” “No, never.” “What do you do there, then ?” “Oh, mother gets the meals ready, knits, and sews ; Kari does these things, too, but not as well as mother, for Kari is so lazy. But Randi takes care of the cows; father and the boys work out in the field, or else keep busy at home.” This seemed to him a satisfactory explanation. “Then every evening we read and we sing,” she continued, “and we do so on Sundays, too.” “All of you?” “Yes.” “That must be tedious.”

Thorbjørn understands to the extend that he too lives a farm life. But his family is much more relaxed in their religiosity than Synnøve’s. If everyone in the parish is religious somewhat, especially devout the parents of the aforementioned Synnøve, Karen and Guttorn, who, we are told, are Haugeans, followers of the Lutheran Pietist preacher Hans Nirlsen Hauge. “They were called Readers, because they read the Bible more diligently than other people.” There aren’t any weird customs of this sect shown to us,; rather what gets conveyed to the reader is the piety and sense of grace of Karen and Guttorn; they are about the last Christians you could criticize for inconsistency, for insofar as Christianity can be said to follow a coherent moral system, they never stray from it.

Karen and Guttorn have not a malicious bone in their bodies. They are people—certainly in their own ideas of what they are about—of peace and contentment, the kind who give thanks for the weather and treat the Lord with the adoration of a beloved parent. (And you can be as religious or irreligious a reader as you want, but you are not being an honest one if you do not recognize such beliefs as sincerely held, and such a frank depiction of them as pretty much a true one, even if you are an Ibsen and you for damn sure have a few other things to say about it.)

But in Karen and Guttorn’s peace and contentment-based view of things, Thorbjørn’s rough and tumble, play hard and fight hard way of existing in the world is highly problematic. It is not that they bear him ill will, so much as they look toward the end—they are even generous in not at all blaming his parents for his ill conduct—and see him heading toward a bad one. This cannot be who they envision their daughter marrying. Meanwhile Synnøve, who falls in love with Thorbjørn, worries about whether his behavior will alienate her parents, but ultimately her goodness leads her to an overriding concern Thorbjørn’s well being; because getting into brawls with other boys isn’t exactly the safest hobby.

Thorbjørn, in the end, is the problematic character in the novel, the one whose actions seems to hold the whole story in the balance. So long as he is reckless and irresponsible, a satisfactory outcome is placed into doubt. But as the dramatic events of the book’s back-third move Thorbjørn closer to a sense of empathy and Christian humility (which is Bjørnson’s basic moral message in this story), the doubtfulness of whether he will end up with Synnøve turns more hopeful. It is then on the side of Synnøve’s parents, particularly her highly spiritual mother Karen, to have their objections to Thorbjørn allayed. To that end, there are some particularly effective scenes towards the end of the novel which show the evolution of Karen’s judgment, and which really do a great job of depicting how both Thorbjørn and Synnøve’s parents negotiate the life of neighbors and co-religionists in a way that seems characteristically Norwegian.

It should be noted that the dialogue throughout the book hews closer to terse than windy. The Norwegians are a laconic people, of few words, which (not to valorize them overmuch) are well-chosen and concentrated in meaning, at least in this book. Body language also speaks what words don’t. Consider the great scene toward the end depicting a conversation between Saemund and his wife Ingebourg and Guttorn and Karen outside the church. As both families approach toward the church, the Solbakkens seem to be trying to put distance between themselves and the Granlids. It is clear to all that Thorbjørn and Synnøve love each other. Yet Thorbjørn has just been recovering from a life-threatening encounter with another boy, and Karen Solbakken (who is such a strong personality in this book, strong in part because of her unpretentious, beatific air of genuine Christian piety) remains resistant to consenting to the match. Anyway, the two families awkwardly meet outside the church, and this scene unfolds:

But they all at the same time became conscious that their servants and acquaintances were every one observing them, and Saemund went right over and, without looking at hiin, took Guttorm by the hand.

” Thanks for last,” said he. [This is a traditional Norwegian greeting, a footnote tells us.]

” Thanks to yourself for last.”

To Guttorm’s wife too, he said, “Thanks for last.”

“Thanks to yourself for last,” but she did not look up as she spoke.

Thorbjorn followed, and did as his father had done. The latter had now come to Synnove, who was the first person he looked at. She looked up at him, too, and forgot to say, “Thanks for last.” Thorbjorn appeared just then; he said nothing, she nothing. They took each other by the hand, but lightly; neither could raise an eye, neither could stir a foot.

There is so much beautiful tension expressed here in body language. Saemund wants to get to the business of making the match with Guttorn, who is skeptical but receptive. Karen meanwhile does not look up; she is profoundly skeptical. And then there are the two lovers, in anguished anticipation while their parents discuss.

And as the discussion begins, it occurs in an oblique way; these farmers don’t necessarily say what they mean, but what they mean is understood. They are negotiating a marriage contract by means of small-talk about the weather:

“It is surely going to be blessed weather, to day,” remarked Karen Solbakken, and glanced hastily from one to the other.

It was Saemund who answered : “Oh, yes; that wind is driving the clouds away.”

Translation: The cloud over Thorbjørn is lifting.

“That is a good thing for the grain that is standing out and needs dry weather,” said Ingebjorg Granliden, and began to brush the back of Saemund’s jacket, probably because she thought it was dusty.

Translation: Your daughter remains unmarried, so it’s a good thing Thorbjørn now seems like a more suitable match.

“The Lord has given us a good year; but it is rather uncertain whether we shall get every thing under cover,” began Karen Solbakken, and glanced over again at the two, who had not stirred since the last time she looked.

Translation: I’m still not quite sold on this match. But then Saemund, Ingebjorg, and Guttorn seem to suddenly close in on Karen, trapping her with both rhetoric and physicality:

“That depends upon how strong a force we can muster,” replied Sesmund, and turned in such a way toward her that she could not very well look where she wanted. “I have often thought that a couple of gards might unite their forces; we would surely do better in that way.”

“It might happen that they would want to make use of the dry weather at the same time,” said Karen Solbakken, and took a step to one side.

“Yes, to be sure,” answered Ingebjorg, and stationed herself close beside her husband, so that Karen could not look where she desired now either. “But in some places the crop ripens earlier than in others ; Solbakken is often a fortnight in advance of us.”

“Yes, and so we could very well help each other,” observed Guttorm slowly, and drew a step nearer. Karen gave him a hasty glance ” However, there are many circumstances which can come in the way,” added he.

Without that much familiarity, I surmised that this indirect form of persuasion, with allusions and body language, must have some essentially Norwegian quality to it. This way of working out the story would resonate with Norwegians because they would see it as a mode of laconic persuasion they would be familiar with.

What I point out these features to suggest is that while Synnøve Solbakken seems like a “simple, charming” story with a storybook ending, its charms go beyond its simplicity. The book inaugurated a new era in Norwegian literature by showing the people of Norway in a realistic rather than an idealized way, or as Hjalmar H. Boyesen puts it, by showing their “true physiognomy.” It would be for another phase of the literature for Norway’s authors to offer criticism of her cultural traditions; Synnøve Solbakken was written in an earlier time for an audience that needed a poet to champion them and infuse them with national pride.