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  LUDVIG HOLBERG

  THE FOUNDER OF NORWEGIAN LITERATURE
  AND AN OXFORD STUDENT

  BY

  S. C. HAMMER, M.A.


  OXFORD
  B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET
  MCMXX

  _Price Two Shillings net_




  LUDVIG HOLBERG

  THE FOUNDER OF NORWEGIAN LITERATURE
  AND AN OXFORD STUDENT

  BY

  S. C. HAMMER, M.A.


  OXFORD
  B.H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET
  MCMXX




  [Illustration: LUDVIG HOLBERG]




INTRODUCTORY NOTE


The following lecture was delivered on May 23rd, 1919, at Magdalen
College, Oxford, by invitation of the President, Sir Herbert Warren, and
in the presence, among others, of the Norwegian Minister in London, Mr.
Benjamin Vogt.

In revising the manuscript I have thought it necessary to enlarge it on
a few points where I had to condense the lecture in order to keep it
within the confines of an hour. I have also added a few supplementary
footnotes and a brief reference to the bulky Holberg literature which
may perhaps prove of interest to Holberg students in England.

In paying my respectful thanks to the President of Magdalen College and
the distinguished audience for their kind reception I beg to sum up my
feelings in the words of Holberg himself: _Multis sane nominibus
devinctum Oxoniensibus me fateor teneri_.

                                                             S. C. H.

CHRISTIANIA, NORWAY.

_December, 1919._




LUDVIG HOLBERG


MR. PRESIDENT,

  YOUR EXCELLENCY,

    LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,


I.

I propose to speak to you about my countryman, Ludvig Holberg, the most
famous Norwegian student whose name was ever entered on the records of
this University. If this had not been the case, I should hardly have
ventured to ascend this platform, for I feel that here, if anywhere, it
must be an indispensable condition that the subject should match the
place. For just as Oxford is not primarily an institution of education,
but through its traditions, its companionships, its achievements, the
very embodiment of British genius, British chivalry and British
aspirations, so Ludvig Holberg is, indeed, no author in the ordinary
sense of the word. He is the founder of modern Norwegian and Danish
literature, the greatest playwright, the first critical historian, the
most human and most broad-minded moralist and philosopher of two
nations; a man whose constant work was one of educating; who
revolutionised the conception of life in two kingdoms and paved the way
for the intellectual and political liberty of the future. For all this,
as I am going to show you, he is, next to his genius, highly indebted to
England and, above all, to Oxford. To this place he made his way when he
quitted Norway 213 years ago, imbued with a deep and early sympathy for
England; from this place he went to Copenhagen, the joint capital at
that time of Denmark and Norway, enriched by assets of the highest
importance to his life-work. I, therefore, want to thank you for the
opportunity you have given me to pay a joint tribute to Oxford and
Holberg.

Ludvig Holberg--_Ludovicus Holbergius_, _Norvegus_, as he signed his
name in the Admission Index of the _Bodleian Library_--was born at
Bergen, the present capital of Western Norway, on December 3rd, 1684.
His father, who was a well-known officer in the Norwegian army, died
when Lewis was an infant; his mother, when he was 10 years old. Lewis
who was the youngest of twelve brothers and sisters, six of whom
attained their majority, therefore very early became acquainted with the
sterner aspects of life and grew up a lonely boy, deprived of the tender
care of a parental home. It was at that time the custom in Norway to
give pay to sons of officers and to initiate them at an early age in
military tactics, the salaries they got being used to defray the
expenses of their education. These petty officers were called corporals,
and Lewis was now promptly appointed corporal in the "Upland Regiment,"
far away from his native town, in one of the midland districts.

This was a rather curious beginning for a man so decidedly
anti-militarist as Holberg was throughout his life. In his
autobiography, published in Latin in 1727,[1] he makes fun of the
episode, describing his transformation from a petty officer into a
professor of philosophy as "a sort of Ovidian metamorphosis which might
expose me to the risk of being sent back from my professorial chair to
the camp, if the authorities were disposed to question my
qualifications."

Notwithstanding this, his appointment as petty officer was to become of
importance to him. As soon as he got his commission he left Bergen for
the midland counties--a remarkable journey at that time, by sea and
land, through a great part of West and Mid Norway--until he finally
arrived at the Fron Vicarage, one of the finest places in the valley of
Gudbrandsdalen and at present one of our most popular tourist districts.
The vicar of Fron, who was his relation on his mother's side, soon
discovered his remarkable abilities, his passion for literature, in
which he had already made some trifling attempts, and last but not
least, his gift for languages.

The two years which Holberg subsequently spent at Fron have, until a
quite recent date, been practically unnoticed by Holberg students, but
it is easy to see that they form an interesting link in the chain of
events connected with his life. His schooldays at Fron were not pleasant
to him, for the assistant master, who had to take care of the boys, was
rather inferior as a teacher. His Latin was bad, his views narrow and
pedantic, his chief instrument of instruction the birch, of which he
made assiduous application. Holberg, who rather early reacted
instinctively and strongly to all strokes of spontaneousness, very soon
conceived a deep dislike and contempt for these pedagogic methods, and
his power of reflection made its combinations and conclusions. Latin and
pedantry became to a certain extent synonymous notions to him, and it
was to be one of his pleasures as a writer to record and hand over to
derision the whole system of travestied learning which was one of the
characteristic features of his age.

This was the negative aspect of his sojourn at the Fron Vicarage. Its
positive aspect was the time he spent in the library of the vicarage,
where, among a number of Greek and Latin classics, he also found several
modern foreign books, including some Bibles in English and French, an
English and a French dictionary, a French grammar, and an English
reader, with colloquial sentences--rather a curious collection of books
for a Norwegian inland county towards the end of the seventeenth
century. These books, as far as we know, were the first specimens of
English and French literature which he ever saw, but he was fascinated
by them. They were to him messages from the great marvellous world
hundreds of miles beyond the mountains by which he was surrounded. Do
you wonder that he was longing and dreaming, silent and solitary as he
was by disposition?

But he was not dreaming only. Being a quick observer of things
surrounding him, we may infer that he was deeply impressed by the
customs and manners of the peasants among whom he lived, their cool,
unobtrusive way of behaving themselves, their sound