‘I had now the honour of being admitted every day to the company of Daae and his friends, and it was clearly explained to me that they formed a compact and still influential body of resistance to the subversive policy of Björnson, Sverdrup and the terrible peasant Jaabsek, whom they regarded with peculiar apprehension.
Hans Christian Andersen had given me a note of introduction to Björnson, and in spite of the objections of my new friends, I found that I could not resist the temptation to use it. Accordingly I went to the house in Munkedamsveien which Bjornson shared with the philosopher G. V. Lyng (1827-1884) whom I had met in Denmark. They occupied a small house in a long suburban lane on the edge of the city.
I had been told that the poet was very formidable, and as I waited in the hall, I heard him growling “Saa! saa! saa!” over the card and note I had sent in. I quaked, but I plunged ; I was ushered into a pretty room with trellised windows, where a large and even burly man (Bjornson was then under forty), who was sitting astride the end of a narrow sofa, rose vehemently to receive me.
His long limbs, his athletic frame, and especially his remarkably forcible face, surrounded by a mane of wavy brown hair, and illuminated by full blue eyes behind flashing spectacles, gave an instant impression of physical vigour. He was truculently cordial, and lifted his ringing tones in civil conversation.
Resuming his singular attitude astride the sofa, he entered affably into a loud torrent of talk, foiling back, shaking his great head, suddenly bringing himself up into a sitting posture to shout out, with a palm pressed upon either knee, some question or statement. His full and finely modulated voice, with his clear enunciation, greatly aided his not a little terrified visitor in appreciating his remarks, but he spoke at great speed, and it strained the attention of a foreigner to follow his somewhat florid volubility.
He expressed himself highly pleased with the reception his romances had received in England, but seemed surprised that his dramas were not known. He recommended to me a new viking-play, called Sigurd Jorsalfar, which he had just sent to press, and which had been refused “though with the loveliest music by Grieg ever heard out of a dream” by the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, a repulse which Bjbrnson flatly attributed to the malignity of the manager, Molbech.
He promised to send me to London a copy of Sigurd Jorsalfar as soon as it was published, and he was so amiable as to keep his word.’
Edmund Gosse, ‘A Visit to the Friends of Ibsen’, The Modern Language Review, London: 1918
