... They rested
on their laurels and fell into a doze. And while they dozed they had
dreams. The cultivated, and especially the half-cultivated, public in
Denmark and Norway dreamed that they were the salt of Europe. They
dreamed that by their idealism--the ideals of Grundtvig and
Kierkegaard--and their strong vigilance, they regenerated the foreign
nations. They dreamed that they were the power which could rule the
world, but which, for mysterious and incomprehensible reasons, had for a
long series of years preferred to eat crumbs from the foreigners' table.
They dreamed that they were the free, mighty North, which led the cause
of the peoples to victory--and they woke up unfree, impotent,
ignorant."[5]
[5] Brandes: Det Moderne Gjennembrud's Maend, pp. 44, 45.
Though there is a good deal of malice, there is no exaggeration in this
unflattering statement. Scandinavia had by its own choice cut itself off
from the cosmopolitan world life; and the great ideas which agitated
Europe found scarcely an echo in the three kingdoms.
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