Denmark’s victorious naval battle against the English fleet off Copenhagen in 1801 produced a wave of national self-confidence. However, that self-confidence was soon shaken by defeats in the same war, which forced Denmark into an alliance with Napoleon. With the French collapse in 1814, Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden. The war had so exhausted the country economically that it declared itself bankrupt. Despite the difficult economic situation, the country experienced a cultural “Golden Age.” The feeling of defeat gave way to an enthusiastic Scandinavianism, its zenith coming in 1829 when the great romantic Adam Oehlenschlager was crowned...

Until the mid-nineteenth century, Norwegian intellectual life was predominantly politically oriented and was determined by the decisive national events of 1814 as well as by contemporary social problems. In literature, the short stories of Mauritz Hansen and the plays of H. A. Bjerregaard from the 1820s and 1830s, characterized by imitation of the romantics, were widely popular in their time. Not until the work of Henrik Wergeland (1808-45) did the newer Norwegian literature become original. In his major work, the dramatic poemSkabelsen, Mennesket og Messias(Creation, Man, and Messiah, 1830), he combined eighteenth-century rationalism and romantic philosophy with modern...

The decade of the 1880s in Norway and Denmark was quite different from the previous one. The fighting spirit of the years of the “modern breakthrough” was gone; pessimism and skepticism became increasingly widespread. Problem literature was no longer as dominant as before, and the evangelistic mission to instill new ideals was succeeded by a more aesthetic approach to literary creativity. Instead of attempting to alter opinions and arouse debates, many of the younger writers were satisfied simply to shock the bourgeoisie. In Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, the modern breakthrough did not take place until the 1880s, in Sweden partly...

Symptomatic of a new intellectual epoch in the Nordic countries was the great interest that George Brandes had awakened in Nietzsche (see p. 7). Not only Nietzsche the philosopher but also Nietzsche the cultural critic and master of style influenced Nordic writers greatly. In Sweden Rydberg had fought Nietzsche’s anti-humanistic teachings; but Strindberg, Ola Hansson, and later Heidenstam, Fröding, and Vilhelm Ekelund were influenced for a time by Nietzsche’s superman theory. The Norwegians Kielland, Garborg, Heiberg, and later Hamsun, as well as writers of Finnish literature in the 1890s, were also influenced by Nietzsche’s theories and ecstatic lust for life....

It would be incorrect to consider the year 1900 as a sharp demarcation in the literary history of Scandinavia. To speak of a single dominant artistic direction is also impossible, for movements and tendencies that earlier had succeeded one another were now running parallel or were inextricably interwoven. The period from 1900 to the beginning of World War I leaves a much more confused impression than did the 1890s. Still, one can speak of a general reaction in European literature by young poets against the predominance of the symbolism and neoromanticism of the preceding decade. However, the symbolist aesthetic did...

Even though great numbers of Swedish workers were in a revolutionary mood in 1917–18, there was no significant unrest. Rather, constitutional reform enacted universal suffrage and laid the foundation for the political influence of the Social-Democratic Party, an influence which steadily increased during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1919–20 Sweden experienced a general economic boom, after which a recession began. The country was plunged into an economic and social crisis, the general condition then improved again, until a new international economic crisis occurred late in the 1920s.

The democratization of Swedish society is clearly reflected in the literature....

Although Norway was able to maintain its external neutrality during World War I, many of the younger authors who appeared around 1920 were strongly influenced by the unsettling events of the period. They felt the ground shake beneath them, and they looked for a new stability. Since it was impossible to return to the time before 1914, they focused their hopes on the Communist Revolution of 1917.

Even before the war, the Norwegian labor movement had been revolutionary. Waste and excess, and inflation and lack of goods during the war years, were much more apparent here than in neighboring countries....

The outbreak of World War I marked a more significant turning-point in Danish literature than in the literature of the other Nordic countries. The tension in Europe was evident in press releases about increasing military budgets and nationalistic proclamations. Still the public was surprised by the outbreak of war. Denmark's neutrality became the basis of a powerful economic upswing; it was a time of stock-market speculation and new wealth, but also a time of inflation and bankruptcy. The threat of war intensified the appreciation of life. A new generation of lyricists emerged spontaneously, ecstatically affirming the glory of existence. The...

On the Faroese Islands, situated in the North Atlantic, Danish was the official language until 1948 when the islands became a self-governing region of Denmark. A major barrier to the development of the Faroese language was the absence of spelling rules, which were first developed in 1854 by V. U. Hammershaimb (1819–1909). Until then, literary tradition was primarily oral, consisting of riddles, tales, and ballads which were transmitted from one generation to another.

Modern Faroese literature began with patriotic and religious songs composed in the 1870s by Faroese students in Copenhagen and on the islands. The three major writers...

After World War I a modernist breakthrough occurred in Fenno-Swedish literature which turned against theflaneurmentality and the older writers’ aristocratic exclusiveness. Without forming any cohesive group, the young poets contributed to the periodicalUltra(1922), which in 1928 was succeeded byQuosego(1928–29). This modernism remained something of an underground movement during the 1920s not manifest in the other Nordic countries. One must turn to the Anglo-American poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound to find corresponding trends—The Waste Landwas published in the same year asUltra. Nevertheless, in the long run Fenno-Swedish modernism was...

Prose literature in Finland between the two world wars was dominated by a number of authors writing in Finnish, who during the troubled years of the civil war rejected all neo-romantic slogans and addressed themselves to the needs and interests of the common people—in contrast to the work of the Fenno-Swedish poets. The result was a flourishing realistic prose literature, sharply contrasting with the earlier idealized descriptions of Finnish folk life.

The writing of Kianto (1874–1970) includes poems, novels, tales, plays, memoirs, and travel books, but he achieved his greatest artistic victory with his objective depictions of his...

The economic upswing during World War I created a boom within manufacturing, trade, and the fishing industry. In Reykjavík a wealthy, conservative middle class of merchants and shipowners emerged; simultaneously the migration from countryside to city increased, resulting in a large proletariat, most of whom were employed in the fishing industry. Whereas 9,000 people lived in the cities in 1900, more than 20,000 did in 1915. As a counterbalance to the politically influential bourgeoisie, the farmers organized themselves in cooperative associations, and the workers founded their trade union in 1916, which passed its first test during the sailors’ strike of...

The turbulent years after the outbreak of World War II began with Finland’s Winter War against Russia (1939–40) and continued with German aid to Finland (1941–44), the occupation of Denmark and Norway by German troops (1940–45), of the Faroese Islands and Iceland by the British (1940–45), and Sweden's armed neutrality. These events intensified the militant stance of Nordic writers. Literature, philosophical and polemical, did not reach its zenith until after the war.

Following the brutality and destructiveness of the war, the quest for a meaningful metaphysical and existential basis of life became a driving force in...

During World War II the Swedish government adopted a neutral posture, which many regarded as opportunistic and cowardly. Although the Swedish population experienced the war at a distance, its brutality influenced an entire generation of writers and became their central problem: One could no longer rely on national, religious, or even humanistic values. Anxiety and a feeling of powerlessness became the central experience of reality. Neutrality offered no possibility for political action, but writing did: It became the arena for protesting violence.

Experiencing a chaotic existence, people turned from national and social problems to existential questions; in the process a...

World War II and the German occupation from 1940 to 1945 marked a break in Norwegian literature. There was, in addition to love and death, one theme that suddenly preoccupied everyone: Fatherland, community, even the king became realities that were on all lips. Because Norwegian authors were writing about matters that affected the public, they became critically important. By 1940 several books had appeared whose plots were set entirely or in part during the war; a novel by Nils Johan Rud (1908– ),Godt mot, menneske(Take Courage, Man), was inspired by the war, and Tarjei Vesaas’sThe Seed(see...

The outbreak of World War II did not surprise the Danish public as much as the events of 1914 had. People had expected and feared the war; writers, in particular, had expressed the general anxiety and warned of the impending danger. Most Danish writers, whether socialists, conservatives, or nihilists, were decided opponents of national socialism and banded together to defend the culture of their country.

The occupation of Denmark in 1940 marked the beginning of a critical period for literature. The last remnants of the belief in cultural progress had vanished and human ideals seemed suspect. But the war years...

The interwar depression struck Finland as hard as it did the other Nordic countries. Its effects were barely overcome when the nation was plunged into the devastations of World War II, a pawn of the superpowers. The Winter War against Russia under the command of Field Marshal Gustaf Mannerheim lasted from 1939 to 1940 and was continued from 1941 to 1944 with the support of Germany, which did not prevent Finland's defeat. This resulted in the loss of the province of Karelia, and the entire population of this province, 12% of the total population of Finland, had to relocate. Finland...

In Fenno-Swedish literature the 1930s and ’40s were a period of stagnation. The main contributions were made by the pioneers of the so-called Fenno-Swedish modernism (see p. 227), who now began to play an important role in the literary renewal of the other Nordic countries, especially Sweden. Among the few important new writers were the poet Ralf Parland and the prose writer Tito Colliander.

The first collection by Parland (1914– ),Avstånd(Distance, 1938), was clearly influenced by Björling and Diktonius. Parland shared with Diktonius an active interest in music, and the poetry of the succeeding volumes is increasingly marked...

After World War II Icelandic writers became less insular. They became acquainted with more recent world literature, and numerous translations were published, especially of British and American writers such as Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell, William Saroyan, and Sinclair Lewis. This international orientation was grounded in events during the war that, unlike World War I, had a direct effect on the country. Iceland was occupied by the British in 1940, then by the Americans in 1941. The most important political event of the decade was the proclamation of the republic on June 17, 1944...

The general trend in the literature of the 1970s is an increasing skepticism toward the value of writing fiction as well as an attempt to establish new connections with reality, to express and encourage human contact and solidarity. With a growing political and social awareness, this solidarity embraces oppressed groups in Sweden and outside it. There is little truly experimental literature, but reportorial works flourish, whose task it is to present straightforward accounts of social and political reality. Sara Lidman—and Fenno-Swedish writer Jörn Donner—were forerunners, followed by Sven Lindqvist and Jan Myrdal.

A work by Myrdal (1927– ),...