Three years later, he attracted the notice of the poet Edvard Storm (1749–1794) and as a result Öhlenschläger received an introduction into Scandinavian mythology.

Jurist Anders Sandøe Ørsted (1778–1860) who would later marry his sister Sophie, persuaded him to quit the theatre, and in 1800 he entered the University of Copenhagen.

[note 1] [6] In the summer of 1802, when Oehlenschläger had an old Scandinavian romance, as well as a volume of lyrics in the press, the young Norse philosopher, Henrik Steffens (1773–1845), returned to Copenhagen after a long visit to Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) in Germany.

His lectures at the university, in which Goethe and Schiller were revealed to the Danish public for the first time, created a great sensation.

The result of his new enthusiasm speedily showed itself in a somewhat hasty volume of poems, published in 1803, now chiefly remembered as containing the piece called Sanct Hansaften-Spil.

[note 1] [7][8] The next two years saw the production of several exquisite works, in particular the epic of Thors Reise til Jotunheim, the poem in hexameters called Langelandsreisen, and the bewitching fantasy Aladdin (1805).

He found no difficulty in obtaining a grant for foreign travel from the government, and he left Denmark for the first time, joining Steffens at the University of Halle in August 1805.

Here he wrote the first of his great historical tragedies, Hakon Jarl, which he sent off to Copenhagen, and then proceeded for the winter months to Berlin, where he associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and met Goethe for the first time.

Here he resided eighteen months and wrote his three famous masterpieces, Baldur hin Gode (1808), Palnatoke (1809), and Axel og Valborg (1810).

[note 1] Oehlenschläger had also made his own translation of Aladdin into German, adding some new material which does not appear in the 1805 edition; this revised version was published in Amsterdam in 1808.

[10] In July 1808 he left Paris and spent the autumn and winter in Switzerland as the guest of Madame de Staël at Coppet, in the midst of her salon.