Historical lecture by Jon Nygaard We look forward to taking you on a historical journey in our beloved city, Skien in Telemark. Preferably occasionally together with Ibsen and his family. We have had someone who has spent much of his academic life to lecture on this. Jon Nygaard takes the trip from Røros to Skien to put Skien orntli' on the historical map.
Former Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo Jon Nygaard published the book "Af stort est du kommen", Henrik Ibsen and Skien, in 2013. It is highly recommended.
Here Nygaard maps out Ibsen's unique social and cultural background, precisely through the fact of growing up in Skien, Telemark. A city that for several hundred years before Ibsen had been part of a Northern European common culture or common market.
The power and wealth that was early associated with agriculture was eventually converted into an industrial "revolution"; the ironworks, sawmills and shipping, which provided the basis for an enlightened and international patrician class in Skien. A class Nygaard's story addresses and thereby explains Ibsen's success story based on the success story of Skien and the areas around the city during the three hundred years Skien was one of Norway's richest cities.
He hits hard on the myth of Skien's insignificance and Ibsen's sad background, which has been so tenacious and allowed to remain unchallenged for so long; Ibsen was not at all born into small and poor circumstances in a small Norwegian town. He takes issue with the compact description of Skien's misery and the downgrading of Ibsen's local context, which was intended to confirm the romantic myth of the artist; the worse the starting point, the greater the genius.
Ibsen's talent is played out in the multicultural universe of experience that already existed in Skien and not least the upper class into which he was born, and which for generations had developed close relations to Europe and European culture. Nygaard uses Skien as a framework or context for understanding Ibsen.
The patrician town of Skien burned down in 1886. The physical town Ibsen was born into no longer exists. It is therefore easy from our present perspective to overlook or underestimate what the town of Skien was. Then we quickly forget the physical, natural resources around our town and how these resources have been exploited and developed throughout history, thereby making our town of Skien unique.
Welcome to Århus Gård on Thursday, March 6th at 6:00 PM. Coffee and cakes will be served.
When
March 6, 2025
