Review

Abstract

This book is a polemic response to what the author considers to be a misleading tradition among literary historians regarding the family background of Henrik Ibsen. Jørgen Haave is himself a literary scholar, who has previously published articles about biographical aspects regarding Henrik Ibsen and his works, but this is his first historical rather than literary work on this theme. In the introductory chapter, Haave gives a short evaluation of the previous biographical works about Ibsen, and he criticizes his predecessors for an almost mythological approach in exaggerating how miserable his father, Knud Ibsen’s career was, from being an upstart merchant to ending up as a bankrupted alcoholic. He finds one methodological approach in previous research especially problematic: that most of his predecessors have used Henrik Ibsen’s works as sources for information about his childhood. Haave acknowledges that in the last 15 years, some authors have given a far less negative evaluation of Ibsen’s background, namely Ivo de Figueiredo and Jon Nygaard, noting that Figueiredo attempts to rehabilitate Knud Ibsen, and Nygaard stresses the prominence of Ibsen’s ancestry. Haave does not however think Figueiredo has gone far enough in his rehabilitation. Nygaard has not written about Henrik Ibsen himself, but about his ancestors. This subject is important for Haave, but his review of Nygaard’s family history oddly enough is just a quote from the blurb on the book cover. Haave recognizes his debt to local historians and genealogists, but seems to be almost unaware of the significance of contributions from mainstream historians. This lack of respect for a field in which he is a newcomer has resulted in a systematic tendency to replace the traditional overly