Before literary prizes: Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, and the question of literary recognition in a “democratic” society

Abstract From the 1860s to the turn of the century, Norwegian literature experienced an extraordinary rise, from international obscurity to “world literature.” The expansion was spearheaded by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Henrik Ibsen. Bjørnson and Ibsen contributed to introduce a new form of state support and public recognition of literature in the 1860s: “writers' salaries,” awarded by the parliament to authors of proven literary merit. In 1867, a rift emerged between them on another matter of recognition: royal orders. The republican Bjørnson wanted a boycott, Ibsen not at all. He claimed that they would be invaluable in promoting his position in Norway, a “democratic” society devoid of aristocratic signs of honor, but they also contributed to identify him with the conservatives. Ibsen's quest for orders petered out by the 1880s, when a literary field emerged in Scandinavia. Ibsen reinvented himself as the master of bourgeois drama and was among the most celebrated European writers by the turn of the century. When the Nobel Prize was introduced, however, Bjørnson was the first Norwegian to receive it. Choosing Bjørnson and avoiding Ibsen contributed to the sidelining of the Nobel from the most important contributions to literary renewal in the early twentieth century.