Note 20. P. A. MUNCH. Peter Andreas Munch (born in Christiania, December 15, 1810; died in Rome, May 25, 1863) became professor of history in 1841 and Keeper of the Archives in 1861. He was not only one of the greatest historians of Norway, but also a philologist, an ethnographer, an archaeologist, a geographer, and a publicist. His chief field was the prehistoric age and the medieval period. He traveled much in the Scandinavian lands and elsewhere in Europe, made several long stays in Rome, and was buried there. His main and best known work is the History of the Norwegian People, in eight large volumes, published from 1851 to 1863. This and his other writings greatly strengthened the national self-consciousness and sense of independence. Munch had a phenomenal memory, marked talent for music and drawing, playful humor, incredible capacity for work, rare intuition for epoch-making discoveries. In a speech in 1892 Björnson placed Munch by the side of Wergeland (see Note 78) as a fosterer of national self-consciousness and faith in the future: "We can remember when we were young, how P. A. Munch's History came out in parts, and how he fought with the Danish professors, to get Norway brought home again from Danish captivity in history also, --we can remember how eventful it was for us, and how it had its share in molding us. ... He had his large share in what our generation has done. I put his work in this way by the side of Wergeland's." Through provincial Asian forests, etc. These lines refer to the so-called "immigration-theory" advanced by Rudolf Keyser and elaborated by Munch, which maintained that the remote ancestors of the Swedes and the Norwegians migrated from the northeast into the Scandinavian peninsula about 300 B.C.: the Swedes from Finland and the Northmen through Lapland. These scholars also held that Old Norse literature, as being the product of Norway and Iceland, was distinctly Norse, and not "Northern" or joint-Scandinavian. When I call, paraphrase of Isaiah xlviii, 13 Who again shall reunite fit? Munch left no peer in international reputation. Coursed the sea-ways toward his standard. Not only was Munch honored throughout Europe, but he was the first to secure for Norwegian history its rightful place in European history.