cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

Wer hat das schone Liedel erdacht?
Es habens drei Gans ubers Wasser gebracht,
Zwei graue und eine weife,
(Who has made this beautiful song?"
Three geese have brought it over the water,
Two gray and one white,)
is said in Norwegian about these folk-poems:
Aa denna Visa har gjort sei sjøl:
Hu kom naa flytanes paa et Fjøl.
(This ballad has been made by the soul itself:
She comes now floating over a mountain.)
But precisely because it is inclination and not conscious purpose to which these
poems owe their existence, they have accordingly something to give, and they give it
with truth. As improvisations they must necessarily be understood in connection with
their melodies, and as such they have an often miraculous power. As an example I
will mention the deep, intimately lamenting: "Ifjør jet e Jeiten." In contrast to this the
baroque-comic "Han Mas aa'n Lasse" constitutes an example. In the background of
this baroque-comic mood, where everything romps joyfully together, there remains in
addition, often in the text, but almost always in the melody, a painful, subdued tone,
which I do not know how to compare with anything better than with the miraculously
vibrating and trembling lower string on the bottom of the Hardanger fiddle, when it is
scraped in a charming Halling-dance, with short bold strokes. This painful trembling,
this hidden zithering restlessness in the midst of the noisy, joyful, enthusiastic
happiness I believe is distinctively Norwegian, a sound from our mountain scenery
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