The short play which had won royal favour is the first work in which Strindberg's mastery over his dramatic art was foreshadowed. The terse phrasing fitly embodies the spirit of Norseman valour. It grips the reader with the force of a _drapa_, sung in faithful celebration of life's attempts and hard-won victories. Gunlöd, the daughter of Thorfinn, the old heathen Viking, has been secretly baptised and loves the Christian Viking, Gunnar. The human conflict between sorrow and resignation, faith and doubt, is drawn with a passionate wish to do justice to everyone. Strindberg possessed that power of visualising and speaking through the characters of a play with equally apportioned interest, which is essential to the true dramatist. His own words on his relationship to the Viking play, show that he was fully aware of this faculty of artistic self-multiplication and of its penalties: "Johan[1] had incarnated himself in five persons in the play. In the earl, who fights against time; in the bard, who surveys and penetrates; in the mother, who rebels and takes revenge, but who is deprived of her avenging power through her sympathy; in the girl, who breaks with her father because of her faith; in the lover, who is burdened with an unhappy love. He understood the motives of all the characters and pleaded every-one's cause. But a play which is written for the mediocre, who have ready-made opinions about everything, must at least be partial to a couple of its characters in order to win the ordinary audience which is always passionate and partial. Johan could not do this, for he did not believe in absolute right or wrong, for the simple reason that all these conceptions are relative. One can be right in regard to the future and wrong in respect to the present; one is wrong this year, but considered right next year; the father may think that the son is right, whilst the mother thinks him wrong; the daughter has the right to love whomsoever she loves, but the father thinks her wrong in loving a heathen. This was doubt. Why do men hate and despise the doubter? Because doubt is evolution, and Society hates evolution because it disturbs the peace, but doubt is true humanity and will end in equity of judgment. The stupid only are certain, the ignorant only believe that they have found truth. But peace is happiness, and pietists therefore seek it in the peace of stupidity. It is said that doubt consumes the power of action, but is it then better to act without considering and weighing the consequences of the act? The animal and the savage act blindly, obeying lusts and impulses, thereby being like men of action." * * * * *