Jan Kjaerstad - The Discoverer

The sea grew rougher and rougher the farther east they sailed. Then, dead abeam, Jonas spotted a ship. A massive vessel strung with tiny lights. A starship in space. It looked as though Julie, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, meant to cut straight across its bow. They were done for, he was sure of it. ‘Ease up!’ he screamed. ‘For God’s sake, can’t you see we’re going to ram right into it!’

Up in the organ gallery, surveying the church below, Jonas Wergeland thought to himself that this too was a sea voyage of sorts — or a cruise, perhaps, what with everyone being so primped and perfumed. Against his will his eyes lingered again on the nape of Margrete’s neck — that enigmatic vulnerability — until he managed to pull them away and ran them over the rows of pews. He recognised more and more faces and once again it struck him what a springboard for memories this was. Although many years were to pass before Jonas realised that it was during this funeral service that the seeds had been sown of what was possibly his most famous programme, the one on Henrik Ibsen. It had something to do with the sight of a church wherein everything was condensed, to form a mesh, a net, in which the whole of one’s life had been caught. If, that is, it had not been inspired by hearing the powerful words from the Bible, by being confronted with the deepest solemnity. For what was the biggest challenge where Henrik Ibsen was concerned? It was to discover what actually occurred at the greatest moment in Norwegian literature. And this too involved a church.

In the spring of 1864, at the age of thirty-six, Henrik Ibsen began his twenty-seven years in exile by travelling to Italy. It was a far from successful writer who left his native land, left Norway — in political terms a Swedish province, in cultural terms a Danish one. He was plagued by money troubles and had not yet written any work of real consequence, or at least not anything that could be described as world-class. It is not much of an overstatement to say that his life was — figuratively speaking — on the rocks.

For a long time Jonas considered centring the programme around Ibsen’s arrival in ‘the Beautiful South’, Ibsen himself having so often described what a revelation it had been to come down from the Alps: ‘from the mists, through a tunnel and out into the sunlight’; a dark curtain had been pulled back and suddenly he found himself bathed in the most wonderful bright light. In his mind Jonas saw images of the countryside, an evocative montage of contrasting scenes; was tempted, but eventually dropped the idea.

Because the moment of truth does not occur until the following year, on a summer’s day in 1865. The Ibsens are staying in the Alban Hills, at Ariccia, twenty kilometres from the Italian capital. Ibsen is working on Brand, but getting nowhere with it. But then, on a brief visit to Rome, things fall into place for him. The incident is described in a letter to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: ‘Then one day I visited St Peter’s Basilica […] and all at once I found a strong and clear Form for what I had to say.’ What can we take from this vague statement? What was it that Henrik Ibsen discovered in St Peter’s. Whatever it was, back at Ariccia he completely rewrote Brand , working as if in a trance. What had been a monologue became a dialogue. He turned an epic poem into a drama — and reaped the plaudits at home in Scandinavia. This was followed by his masterpiece Peer Gynt , and thereafter, almost singlehandedly, Henrik Ibsen created modern drama. Not only that: he also did much to influence, possibly even change, the whole tenor of contemporary thought. On that day in St Peter’s, something happened which was to put Norwegian literature on the map.

Jonas Wergeland’s theory concerning Ibsen’s experience in the Basilica bore little resemblance to anyone else’s. Because the way he saw it, and presented it in pictures and sound, not until he stepped into the gloom of St Peter’s was the outer light which Ibsen had encountered in Italy transformed into an inner light. And even though this provocative assertion found form in a key scene which was strongly criticised for its audacity and its speculative cast, many people regarded this programme on Ibsen as the lynchpin in a series which did for Norwegian television what Ibsen had done for the country’s literature. Thanks to Jonas Wergeland, NRK’s reputation not only reached formidable heights outside of Norway; his work led also — and far more importantly — to a renewed interest in Norwegian culture in general.

Wergeland did not, therefore, succumb to the temptation to start the programme with a train rushing out of a black tunnel, out into the light of the Mediterranean countryside; instead it opened with an allegorical scene prompting associations with life-saving. You had the impression of rising, along with the camera, after a long dive into the deep; ascending from the darkness towards a bright, shimmering surface, and as you broke through you heard the sound of heavy breathing and saw a bewildered Henrik Ibsen stumbling, wading almost, from the recesses of St Peter’s into the sunlit summer’s day. It was, in short, a programme about a man who not only came close to foundering, but who was actually drowning, until — quite unexpectedly, perhaps even undeservedly — he saved himself.

Another event which might have sparked the idea for the Ibsen programme, was the mysterious, as yet unexplained, incident which took place towards the close of Haakon Hansen’s funeral service, after the congregation had mumbled their way through The Lord’s Prayer, after Daniel had sprinkled the symbolic handful of soil on the coffin and given the blessing and everyone had sat down again; just as Jonas struck up the choral prelude to the final hymn, ‘Love divine all love excelling’. Jonas did not see the whole thing himself, but he heard about it later, in a wide variety of conflicting versions. Suddenly a woman had come walking up the centre aisle, a woman clad in a bright orange coat, like a flame, a foretaste of the cremation to come. Some people got quite a fright, the singing petered out. She had an intent look on her face, this woman. She looked dangerous, some said. She strode slowly up to the coffin as the singing swelled again, as if with ‘Love divine all love excelling’ the congregation meant to shield Haakon Hansen from the figure now making her way towards him; a note of discord in this harmonious ceremony. A disgrace, some whispered afterwards. Interesting, said others. Who was she, everyone asked.

No one needed to tell Jonas Wergeland that women were unpredictable, dangerous. Because once, late one night, he had been out in a sail boat in the middle of Oslo fjord, in a storm, along with a girl who seemed ready to risk being sunk rather than give way to a huge passenger ferry. But he need not have worried, they passed astern of it, with plenty of room to spare. She shot him a glance, smiled — or no, she didn’t smile: she smirked. He felt such an idiot. He was on the point of collapse. She, on the other hand, still had her captain’s cap firmly on her head and was in complete command of the situation; she loved this, Jonas could tell, enjoyed having control over tremendous forces, exploiting tremendous forces, the air, the water, because she was not sailing the boat, she was sailing the wind and the waves. Just as she was sailing his thoughts.

If, that was, she wasn’t stark, raving mad. Because things were moving far too fast; he was scared, truly terrified. She was the sort of woman who was quite liable to live her life according to that old chestnut from Ibsen: ‘And what if I did run my ship aground; oh, still it was splendid to sail it!’ The sea was black, dark edged in white. It had been a big mistake coming out with her. She looked as if she was quite capable of hoisting the spinnaker. And more: Jonas had the impression that she was planning to make love to him as resolutely and passionately as she sailed her boat through the storm. The water seethed, the storm thundered all around him. From time to time he heard a crack from the sail, it made him jump, he thought disaster had struck. He was sure his heart leapt into his mouth each time the boat slammed down into the trough of a wave, its joints creaking and rigging groaning; he had never been quite so literally caught between wind and water.