Transcriber's Notes:
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THE NOVELS OF

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

Edited by EDMUND GOSSE

VOLUME XI

<<h4>THE NOVELS OF

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

Edited by EDMUND GOSSE

Fcap. 8vo, cloth

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

THE HERITAGE OF
THE KURTS

BY

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

Translated from the Norwegian by

Cecil Fairfax

VOLUME I

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1908

Printed in England

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Upon his taking up his residence in Paris, in 1882, Björnson resumed an interest in prose fiction, which he had for so many years abandoned in favour of the drama. There can be no question that he was influenced in this by the successes of Alexander Kielland and Kristian Elster, who had begun to deal with the problems of Norwegian life in the form of short novels, which attracted immense public curiosity. After writing Dust (1882), a very brief episode, Björnson started the composition of his earliest long novel, which he finished and published in 1884, as Det flager i Byen og paa Havnen ("Flags are Flying in Town and Harbour"), a title for which we have ventured to substitute, as more directly descriptive, The Heritage of the Kurts. It is to be observed that, with the exception of Jonas Lie's Livsslaven (which was not yet published when Björnson's book was begun), The Heritage of the Kurts was the earliest novel, treating Scandinavian society on a large scale, which any Norwegian writer had essayed to produce. This may explain a certain cumbrousness in the unwinding of the plot, which has been noted as a fault in this very fine and elaborate romance.

The didactic character of much of the novel, especially of the later parts, was a surprise to contemporary readers, who were accustomed to much lighter fare from the novelists of the day. No less a personage than the great Danish writer, J. P. Jacobsen, joined in the outcry against "all this pedagogy and all these problems." Physiological instruction in girls' schools,--this seemed a strange and almost unseemly subject for a romance addressed to idle readers in Copenhagen and Christiania. But Björnson's serious purpose was soon perceived and justified, and the popularity of The Heritage of the Kurts was assured among the best appreciators of his genius. It will always, however, possess the disadvantages inherent on a tentative effort in a class of literature as yet unfamiliar to the veteran artist.

Translator, editor, and publisher of the English version alike desire to express their debt to Mr. C. F. Keary, whose knowledge of Norwegian matters is so widely recognised, for the help he has given in revising the translation throughout, and in particular for his advice in regard to the diction of the first section of the novel, which, in the original, is an extremely clever pastiche of early eighteenth-century Danish.

E. G.

CONTENTS