“There he lay, the greatest the North has ever known, the King of Life on the journey of death, resting on the improvised couch as if on a bed of state. We were grouped around him – only a few intimate Danish friends, together with Norway’s Ambassador, who had come to wait on him in order to pay his country’s respects. The Ambassador, a highly gifted and distinguished lawyer, bent respectfully down over the invalid and kissed him on the forehead.
It was so entirely spontaneous that it impressed ur all by its solemnity, with the religious reverence of public worship. The old poet’s eyes were dim with tears. He grasped both the Ambassador’s hands – grasped them both – and drew them to his lips and kissed them over and over again, whilst with breaking voice he whispered: ‘Thank you! thank you!’
I thought, and involuntarily formed the words in my mind,
‘Now Björnson and Norway bid farewell to each other.’”
Peter Nansen, ‘The last meeting with Björnson’, The Fortnightly Review, London: 1910
