The farm
Solbakken (Sunny Hill) lies on a high elevation, where the sun shines
from its rise to its setting, and both Synnoeve and her parents walk
about in this still and warm illumination. They are all good, estimable
people, and their gentle piety, without any tinge of fanaticism, invests
them with a quiet dignity. The sterner and hardier folk at Granliden
(Pine Glen) have a rugged honesty and straightforwardness which, in
connection with their pithy and laconic speech, makes them less genial,
but no less typically Norse. They have a distinct atmosphere and spinal
columns that keep them erect, organic, and significant. Even
reprehensible characters like Aslak and Nils Tailor (in "Arne") have a
certain claim upon our sympathy, the former as a helpless victim of
circumstance, the latter as a suppressed and perverted genius.
In the spring of 1860 Bjoernson went abroad and devoted three years to
foreign travel, spending the greater part of his time in Italy. From
Rome he sent home the historical drama "King Sverre" (1861), which is
one of his weakest productions.
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