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, with the
word-melody of the ballad than with the characterisation of the Saga.

Thus it happened that the fermenting, formless design for the
tragedy, _The Vikings at Helgeland_, transformed itself temporarily
into the lyric drama, _The Feast at Solhoug_.