But both these poets,
though their patriotism was strong, were intellectually Europeans,
rather than Norwegians. The roots of their culture were in the general
soil of the century, whose ideas they had absorbed. Their personalities
were not sufficiently tinged with the color of nationality to give a
distinctly Norse cadence to their voices. Wergeland seems to me like a
man who was desperately anxious to acquire a national accent; but
somehow never could catch the trick of it. As regards Welhaven, he was
less aware of his deficiency (if deficiency it was); but was content to
sing of Norse themes in a key of grave, universal beauty. Of the new
note that came into the Norwegian lyric with Bjoernson, I can discover no
hint in his predecessors. Such a poem as, for instance, "Nils Finn,"
with its inimitably droll refrain--how utterly inconceivable it would be
in the mouth of Wergeland or Welhaven! The new quality in it is as
unexplainable as the poem itself is untranslatable. It has that
inexpressible cadence and inflection of the Norse dialect which you feel
(if you have the conditions for recognizing it) in the first word a
Norseman addresses to you.
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