Note 48. TO AASMUND OLAFSEN VINJE. Vinje, the son of a poor cottager, was born on a farm in Telemarken, April 6, 1818, and died July 30, 1870. Poverty and his peculiar personality made life hard for him from first to last. Bent on testing all things for himself, he came into conflict with the authorities. He was discharged from a school in Mandal in 1848 because of his scoffing criticism of a religious schoolbook. He went then to Heltberg's School (see Note 50) in Christiania, soon after became a student in the University, and passed the state examination in law in 1856. But his life was devoted to literary pursuits, and he was most gifted as a lyric poet. In 1858 Vinje went over completely to the Landsmaal (see Note 80), and in this form of dialect found his natural medium of expression. In October of the same year he began his weekly paper, Dölen, in which he treated all the current interests. Although one of the most advanced thinkers and keenest combatants in his country's spiritual conflicts, he stood very much alone, a great skeptic and satirist, who practiced irony with the highest art. Vinje had no home of his own until after his marriage on June 20, 1869. His wife died immediately after the birth of a son, on April 12, 1870. At her burial on April 16 Björnson was present, and taking Vinje's hand ended an estrangement which had existed for some years because of Vinje's unjustly harsh criticism of Björnson's early peasant tales, and other rather personal attacks. Guests, the angel of life and the angel of death. You stand sick, with the incurable disease which caused his death a few months later. Great and wondrous visions, probably (cf. also the following stanza) of the truth of the orthodox faith, which Björnson at the time still firmly held. Note 49. GOOD CHEER. This poem stood last in the first edition, with the title "Last Song." It is a vigorous, partly humorous, beautiful, true self-characterization of Björnson's position in the life of Christiania and Norway just prior to 1870, and a statement of his ideals and models in the three Scandinavian countries, Grundtvig, Runeberg, and Wergeland. From the beginning of 1865 to the middle of 1867 he had been director of the Theater, and since March, 1866, as editor no less than as author, active in polemics, political and literary. His election early in December, 1869, as president of the Students' Union, was a demonstration in his favor, shortly after which this poem was written. Compare also the poem, Oh, When Will You Stand Forth?, and note thereto. The twelfth and thirteenth stanzas refer to Grundtvig, for whom see Note 57. The fourteenth stanza refers to the Finnish Swedish poet, Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-1877), whose lyric, ballad, and epic genius was of national importance for Sweden. He was a champion of true freedom and naturalness in literature and life. Wergeland, see Note 78.