Eilert Sundt

This provided his initial exposure to the ideas which he came to examine extensively later in his life: poverty, overpopulation and the work issues associated with the transition from an older farm culture to 19th century business and industry.

When Henrik Wergeland was buried in 1845, Eilert Sundt led the student contingent and spoke at the funeral on their behalf.

A man of his times, he also was interested in ethnography, ethnology, vernacular architecture, demography, and linguistics (with special emphasis on the dialects of Norwegian).

From 1857 to 1866 Eilert Sundt was editor for Folkevennen ("Friend of the People"), for which he wrote a number of the more important articles.

His work served to inform many of the authors of Norwegian literature in their transition to a socially aware realism at the close of the 19th century.