The peasants view with distrust and suspicion whatever
comes to them from their social superiors, and the so-called "useful
books," which were scattered broadcast over the land, were of a
tediously didactic character, and, moreover, hardly adapted to the
comprehension of those to whom they were ostensibly addressed. Wergeland
himself, with all his self-sacrificing ardor, had but a vague conception
of the real needs of the people, and, as far as results were concerned,
wasted much of his valuable life in his efforts to improve, edify and
instruct them. It hardly occurred to him that the culture of which he
and his colleagues were the representatives was itself a foreign
importation, and could not by any violent process be ingrafted upon the
national trunk, which drew its strength from centuries of national life,
history, and tradition. That this peasantry, whom the _bourgeoisie_ and
the aristocracy of culture had been wont to regard with half-pitying
condescension, were the real representatives of the Norse nation; that
they had preserved through long years of tyranny and foreign oppression
the historic characteristics of their Norse forefathers, while the upper
classes had gone in search of strange gods, and bowed their necks to the
foreign yoke; that in their veins the old strong saga-life was still
throbbing with vigorous pulse-beats--this was the lesson which Bjoernson
undertook to teach his countrymen, and a very fruitful lesson it has
proved to be.
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