The foundation for what has been referred to as the great "change of pace" in Norwegian history, that is, the modernization of society in the 19th century, with new ways of thinking and a new awareness of Norwegian identity and history, was largely laid by three people who graduated from the Latin School at Handelstorget in Skien in 1828, the year Henrik Ibsen was born, and in 1834, the year before the Ibsen family moved from the city of Skien to Venstøp.
Anton Martin Schweigaard became the founder of social science research in Norway, which was the prerequisite for the establishment of the new civil service state and the modernization of Norwegian society through strong state governance. This had dramatic consequences for Skien. New steam sawmills outcompeted waterfall power and what had been Skien's natural advantage with waterfall power in the middle of the city since the 16th century, lost importance. The construction of railways outcompeted rivers and water as Norway's, and not least Skien and Telemark's, most important transport arteries. The transition from charcoal to hard coal in the ironworks made the forests less valuable.
The son of the parish priest in Gjerpen, Peter Andreas Munch, became the founder of the history subject in Norway and the development of a national culture and consciousness in the new Norwegian state after 1814. His main work The History of the Norwegian People had great significance for Norwegian national sentiment. He belonged to the so-called Norwegian historical school that became known for the “immigration theory” – a theory that Norway was first populated from the north and not from the south like Sweden and Denmark. This theory was important for nation-building by emphasizing that Norwegians and the Norwegian language differed from the people and language of Sweden and Denmark. In Bergen in 1857, Ibsen gave a lecture on “On the Epic of the Great Song and its Significance for Art Poetry” in which he built on PA Munch’s theories.
PA Munch was an older brother of Christian Munch who became the father of Edvard Munch. This means that Norway's two world-famous artists, Edvard Munch and Henrik Ibsen, both had fathers who had grown up on two neighboring farms in Gjerpen, Gjerpen vicarage and Søndre Rising. This underlines how completely new opportunities now opened up for sons to become something completely different from their fathers – as professional artists.
Intuition, direct and immediate recognition, had been the fundamental thing in the patrician class's way of acting. It had been their flair, their ability to feel and sense what was the right choice, that had been crucial to their success and position in society.
The opposing philosophical and ideological demand to make sensible choices based on facts and calculation, which became the basis of the central ideology of the new bureaucratic state and the basis for the new "bureaucratic" governance, was given by philosophy professor Marcus Jacob Monrad (1816-1897). He argued that all attempts to reach reality directly and immediately, that is, independently of reason and perception, were bound to fail.
Monrad, like PA Munch, was the son of a parish priest and graduated from the Latin School in Skien in 1834.
In Peer Gynt, Ibsen has given an indirect comment on Monrad's view:
PEER GYNT
But he, who now never found out,
What did Master mean by him?
THE BUTTON MOLDER
He should know that.
PEER GYNT
But how often does Clues not hit Click, -
and then you run away in the middle of your path.
THE BUTTON MOLDER
Certainly, Peer Gynt; in The Lack of Intuition
The Guy with the Hoof has his best Angel.
But even though they had different views on the role of art, Monrad became an important support for Ibsen from the moment he published his first play, Catilina , in 1850. Ibsen then hid behind the pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarme. It was reviewed in the Norwegian Journal of Science and Literature . Monrad, who was the new editor of the journal, did the unusual thing of writing an addendum to the anonymous reviewer "Tø." in which he emphasized that he did not agree with the reviewer. Monrad claimed that "The main idea of the poem was both clear and beautiful" even though there might be some shortcomings in the execution. And he takes a hard line:
Brynjolf Bjarme promises something in contrast to the poetic crowd, especially those who start writing for the Theatre, who generally possess a certain lightness and sloppiness in expression and have rather good impulses but are not able to grasp a single whole or grand thought. It is better that Development begins from within, from the Idea; where this strongly moves, it probably eventually finds its form.
Although Monrad was critical of the theatre as an art form, in the 1860s he also supported Ibsen in the conflict with the "Danish" Christiania Theater and he was a driving force in Ibsen's being granted a poet's salary. Without the support he received in his early years from an authority like Monrad, it is not certain that Ibsen would have continued his attempts as a theatre director and playwright.