bear, but it is Gunnar who reaps the advantage. It is only fair to say
that there is more than this to applaud in _The Vikings at Helgeland_;
it moves on a consistent and high level of austere romantic beauty. Mr.
William Archer, who admires the play more than any Scandinavian critic
has done, justly draws attention to the nobility of Oernulf's entrance in
the third act. Yet, on the whole, I confess myself unable to be
surprised at the severity with which Heiberg judged _The Vikings_ at its
first appearance, a severity which must have wounded Ibsen to the quick.

The year 1857 was one of unsettlement in Ibsen's condition. The period
for which he had undertaken to manage the theatre at Bergen had now come
to a close, and he was not anxious to prolong it. He had had enough of
Bergen, to which only one chain now bound him. Those who read the
incidents of a poet's life into the pages of his works may gratify their
tendency by seeing in the discussions between Dagny and Hioerdis some
echo of the thoughts which were occupying Ibsen's mind in relation to
the married state. Since his death, the story has been told of his love-
affair with a very young girl, Rikke Holst, who had attracted his notice
by throwing a bunch of wild flowers in his face, and whom he followed
and desired to marry. Her father had rejected the proposal with
indignation. Ibsen had suffered considerably, but this was, after all,
an early and a very fugitive sentiment, which made no deep impression on
his heart, although it seems to have always lingered in his memory.

There had followed a sentiment much deeper and much more emphatic. A
charming, though fragmentary, set of verses, addressed in January, 1856,
to Miss Susannah Thoresen, show that already for a long while he had
come to regard this girl of twenty as "the young dreaming enigma," the
possible solution of which interested him more than that of any other
living problem. It was more than the conversation of a versifying lover