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

To fasten your mouth together!)
The one who takes up the challenge, answers for example:
Aa e ska ta dine Or paatværke,
Saa dine Kjakabein, dei ska værke,
Aa e ska ta dine Or paa Sne,
Saa Nasetippen ska hænge ne!
(Oh I shall twist your ear crosswise,
So your jawbone, will pain you,
Oh I shall twist your ear askew,
So the tip of your nose will hang down!)
I have taken pains to choose a pair of the most grandiose-arrogant suggestive
verses (Intimationsvers), in order to show that in this piece our folk-singers in their
controversies are not inferior to our educated poets; but should someone believe all the
same that they must yield, I do not know how to rescue them in any other way than by
calling attention to the lively mood in their boasting; that will most likely restore the
balance again.
Accordingly, when the battle is opened, they attack each other with stev of
varied contents, until one is silenced and thereby conquered. However, one must not
imagine the whole as improvisation; the true Steverne are armed for battle with a
whole pile of memorized stev, among which, during the struggle, they have only to
choose, or from which they choose and later accommodate what is chosen in its
details; since the one's stev always constitutes a supplementing or responding link to
the other's preceding. Only when the combatants flare right up in anger, is everything
improvised between them, and these momentary inspirations (Tankefugle, i.e.,
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