James W. Bowers
Fifty years ago I began my graduate studies in order to become a professor of English. Among the requirements for the master's degree was the necessity of writing a thesis. I chose as a topic "Henrik Ibsen and Nordic Myth." There were several reasons for choosing that topic. As an undergraduate I had taken a course with Philip Wheelwright based upon his manuscript of "The Burning Fountain" and became interested in mythology. I subsequently spent a year at a Danish folk college, whose headmaster gave daily lectures on the pagan mythology of the Nordic folk. Until the 1950s not much had been done on the relationship between Ibsen and Nordic myth. In the words of Pavel Frænkl: From the myth and legend [of his early works] to the "domestic" subjects [of his later dramas] Ibsen's death imagery is consistently determined by Nordic mythology and rite. Even where the material is "contemporary" and the theme "modern," Ibsen's dramatic thought functions myth logically and myth creatively. I cannot see in the great body of literature on Ibsen, either in Norway or abroad, that there has ever been pointed out before the deep and radical tension between the theme of the drama and the dramatist's pattern of thought, between a veiled "social motif" and a mythological image fantasy (Frænkl 1955, 78). Ibsen's early works, in which he specifically referred to Nordic myth, were not readily available in English, but I had become fluent in Dano-Norwegian and could translate the texts. Finally, there was Ibsen's own statement that his later plays could be understood completely only in the light of his earlier work. In the foreword to his collected works written in 1889 he stated: Only by understanding and appropriating my entire production as a coherent and consecutive whole will you receive the intended and pertinent impression of the single parts. My friendly suggestion to the reader is therefore, short and sweet, that he not temporarily pass over anything, but that he appropriate the w
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