It is not surprising that in German translations of Norwegian writings—for which Nordau blames Ibsen’s degeneracy—adjectives should have taken a new meaning; for in Norway they have been influenced by nature’s grandeur. When Norwegians say “great,” they mean great as the fjeld, great as the boundless ocean; when they say “silent,” they mean silent as the wood in the short summer night. Consequently, when a man, an action, a thing, is described to them, they are apt to measure it by the standard of nature’s extremes around them. They are always disappointed when they behold the wonders of civilization described to them as great and wonderful. They would call the ruins of the Coliseum mean, and think no more of the pyramids than of ant-hills. Their ideas of a great man could probably never be realized, and their wonder is considerable at finding the mighty lords of England so unlike demi-gods. It was the Hanseatic League that brought this stern and haughty people into contact with German culture. This remarkable federation of enterprising German merchants discovered that profits could be made out of the rough products of Norway, and they founded a German colony in Bergen, which rose to considerable importance. German traders gradually settled in all the other important Norwegian centres, and the whole commercial life of Norway became more or less Germanized. At the time Germany was far ahead of Norway in everything appertaining to industry, and was already then bent on doing business with foreign countries by offering them a mass of German manufactured goods of attractive appearance, but of little value, and not indispensable to a people like the Norwegians. Competition was already severe in Germany, money had acquired an immense importance, success in life was most easily attained by intense application to business, saving, and grinding. The German traders stood in the same relation to the Norwegians as that in which English traders stand to the native races whom they first approach for business purposes. The traders and agents who went as far as Norway—a long distance before the days of steamers and railways—were daring and reckless men, bent upon making money, just as the pioneers of British commerce were and are in Africa. What interested them was not the great and noble aspect of the Norwegian character, but the desire on the part of these people to buy gewgaws, and the facility with which they parted with their money and their goods. Though Norway is a poor country, it yielded to the not over-ambitious Germans a satisfactory harvest, and a great number of them settled permanently in the Norwegian towns. They became sufficiently numerous and influential to impress a German stamp on Norwegian urban life, on the people who worked and lived with them; and these became Germanized to no small extent.