Terje Vigen

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Terje Vigen is a poem written by Henrik Ibsen, published in 1862. Much of the story and setting is from the area around the town of Grimstad in southern Norway where Ibsen lived for a few years in his youth. It describes the dramatic saga of Terje who, in 1809, tried to run the English blockade of Norway's southern coast in a small rowboat in a desperate attempt to smuggle food from Denmark back to his starving wife and daughter. He was captured and imprisoned on an English prison hulk at Fjære and released in 1814 after the Napoleonic Wars were over, only to find that his family had died. He became a pilot, and years later rescued an English Lord who turned out to be the commander of the ship that had captured him. The denouement, as in most Ibsen works, should be understood by reading the original (links provided below).

In his biography of Ibsen, Edmund Gosse indicates:

"He was perhaps momentarily saved by the publication of Terje Vigen, which enjoyed a solid popularity. This is the principal and, indeed, almost the only instance in Ibsen's works of what the Northern critics call "epic," but what we less ambitiously know as the tale in verse. Terje Vigen will never be translated successfully into English, for it is written, with brilliant lightness and skill, in an adaptation of the Norwegian ballad-measure which it is impossible to reproduce with felicity in our language."

"Among Ibsen's writings Terje Vigen is unique as a piece of pure sentimentality carried right rough without one divagation into irony or pungency. It is the story of a much-injured and revengeful Norse pilot, who, having the chance to drown his old enemies, Milord and Milady, saves them at the mute appeal of their blue-eyed English baby. Terje Vigen is a masterpiece of what we may define as the "dash-away-a-manly- tear" class of narrative. It is extremely well written and picturesque, but the wonder is that, of all people in the world, Ibsen should have written it."^[1]

The poem and the character of Terje Vigen has become a core icon of Norwegian coastal culture and a sense of a national identity. Every year the poem is read at festivals and included in dance and music performances. Best known are the wood boat festival at Risør and the Ibsen festival in Grimstad. A major production was mounted in Yokohama, Japan in November 2006. See http://www.terjevigen.jp