Note 78. MAY SEVENTEENTH. In memory of the unveiling of Henrik Wergeland's statue in Christiania on the 17th of May, 1881, when Björnson also delivered a great oration. Henrik Arnold Wergeland was born June 17, 1808, in Christiansand, and died August 12, 1845, in Christiania. Though he studied theology, he devoted his life to poetry and politics. His earliest writings, farces and poems, showed powerful, but uncontrolled, genius. His great popularity began in 1829 with his active entrance into public life. He labored for the enlightemnent of his people through his writings and his personal influence in journeyings all over the land, and especially through speeches at political meetings. His chief poetic work, the rationalistic-republican didactic poem, Creation, Man, and Messiah, appeared in 1830. It was severely criticised in a special, polemical writing by Welhaven (see Note 36), who continued his attack on all Wergeland's views and teachings in his Norway's Dawn. Thus arose the Wergeland-Welhaven conflict, which was carried on hotly for many years by their adherents, and contributed much to the intellectual development of the nation. Wergeland was very productive as editor, publicist, and poet. In 1840 he was appointed Keeper of the Archives, and held this government office until his death. In his own time Wergeland was in spirit the head of the radical- national "Peasant party," which was indeed patriotic and democratic, but too narrowly Norwegian, in opposition to all that was Danish, European, foreign. During the years preceding 1881 he had come to be in the constitutional conflict a national hero, the idol of the peasants, as their political power increased. Come now the peasants. In this volume of translations "peasant" is the rendering of the Norwegian word "bonde." The meaning is "farmer," i.e., in general the independrnt owner of land, which he cultivates and on which he lives. In Norway the conditions have for many centuries been more favorable for the "peasant" than in any other European country; this is due to the topography and to the absence of a powerful nobility. At the present time scarcely one- twentieth of the tilled area in Norway is cultivated by tenants. The Norwegian "peasants" have always had great self-consciousness in the best sense, and importance in the political, economic, and social life of the country, especially since the adoption of the democratic Constitution of 1814. Very often the "peasants" have an aristocratic pride in a lineage traced back to ancient "kings," and in their own distinctively "Norse" culture. Österdal's ... chieftain, a peasant of large stature, named Hjelmstad, a radical member of the Storting. The old banner. A flag much used in earlier times as specifically Norwegian, dating back to King Erik (1280-1299), before the union with Demnark, showed on a red ground a lion wearing a golden crown and bearing an axe. As late as 1698 it flew over the fortress Akershus in Christiania.