BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON—poet, dramatist, novelist, and politician, and the most notable figure in contemporary Norwegian history—was born, in December 1832, at Kvikne in the north of Norway. His father was pastor at Kvikne, a remote village in the Österdal district, some sixty miles south of Trondhiem; a lonely spot, whose atmosphere and surroundings Björnson afterwards described in one of his short sketches (“Blakken”). The pastor’s house lay so high up on the “fjeld” that corn would not grow on its meadows, where the relentless northern winter seemed to begin so early and end so late. The Österdal folk were a wild, turbulent lot in those days—so much so, that his predecessor (who had never ventured into the church without his pistol in his pocket) had eventually run away and flatly refused to return, with the result that the district was pastorless for some years until the elder Björnson came to it.