Striden om Wergelands «Til en Gran». Idealisme, modernisme, realisme

In this article, I discuss different readings of Henrik Wergeland’s well-known poem “Til en Gran” (1833) as they fall into line with the three main currents that have dominated Norwegian literary scholarship generally and the recep-tion of Norwegian Romanticism specifically: idealism, realism, and modernism. Idealistic interpretations from Fredrik Paasche to Per Thomas Andersen, as well as a modernist reading found in Jørgen Sejersted’s and Eirik Vas-senden’s Lyrikkhåndboken , are discarded as being too dependent on the theoretical premises constituting idealism and modernism respectively. A realistic interpretation is suggested as an alternative, in dialogue with a somewhat neglected study by Leif Johan Larsen (2002). In a final section, I discuss the theoretical problems that may befall even a realistic reading.