First, in its purely literary aspect, "Synnoeve Solbakken" was strikingly novel. The author did not, as his predecessors had done, view the people from the exalted pedestal of superior culture; not as a subject for benevolent preaching and charitable condescension, but as a concrete phenomenon, whose _raison d'etre_ was as absolute and indisputable as that of the _bourgeoisie_ or the bureaucracy itself. He depicted their soul-struggles and the incidents of their daily life with a loving minuteness and a vivid realism hitherto unequalled in the literature of the North. He did not, like Auerbach, construct his peasant figures through laborious reflection, nor did he attempt by anxious psychological analysis to initiate the reader into their processes of thought and emotion. He simply depicted them as he saw and knew them. Their feelings and actions have their immediate, self-evident motives in the characters themselves, and the absence of analysis on the author's part gives an increased energy and movement to the story. Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen relates, _a propos_ of the reception which was accorded Bjoernson's first book, the following amusing anecdote: "'Synnoeve Solbakken' was printed, and its author was anxious to have his friends read it. But not one of them could be prevailed upon. At last a comrade was found who was persuaded to attack it on the promise of a bottle of punch. He entered Bjoernson's den, got a long pipe which he filled with tobacco, undressed himself completely--for it was a hot day--flung himself on the bed, and began to read. Bjoernson sat in the sofa, breathless with expectation. Leaf after leaf was turned; not a smile, not a single encouraging word! The young poet had good reason to regard the battle as lost. At last the pipe, the bottle, and the book were finished. Then the merciless Stoic rose and began to dress, and the following little exclamation escaped him: 'That is, the devil take me, the best book I have read in all my life.'" Bjoernson's style was no less novel than his theme. It may or it may not have been consciously modelled after the saga style, to which, however, it bears an obvious resemblance. In his early childhood, while he lived among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his thought is obscure, but rather because energetic brevity of expression has fallen into disuse, and even a Norse public, long accustomed to the wordy diffuseness of latter-day bards, have in part lost the faculty to comprehend the genius of their own language. As a Danish critic wittily observed: "Bjoernson's language is but one step removed from pantomime."