Henrik Arnold Thaulow Wergeland (17 June 1808 – 12 July 1845) was a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist.

[1] Though Wergeland only lived to be 37, his range of pursuits covered literature, theology, history, contemporary politics, social issues, and science.

He became a public hero after the infamous "battle of the Square" in Christiania, which came to pass because any celebration of the national day was forbidden by royal decree.

Notably, the Jewish community of Oslo pays their respects at his grave on 17 May, in appreciation of his successful efforts to allow Jews into Norway.

In this book we find his ideal love, the heavenly Stella, which can be described as a Wergeland equivalent to Beatrice in Dante's poem Divina Commedia.

The character of Stella also inspired him to endeavour on the great epic Skabelsen, Mennesket og Messias (Creation, Man and the Messiah).

In the end, his credo goes like this: At the age of twenty-one he became a power in literature, and his enthusiastic preaching of the doctrines of the French July Revolution of 1830 made him a force[clarification needed] in politics also.

What had started as a mock-quarrel in the Norwegian Students' Community soon blew out of proportion and became a long lasting newspaper dispute for nearly two years.

Welhaven's criticism, and the slander produced by his friends, created a lasting prejudice against Wergeland and his early productions.

Wergeland's poetry can in fact be regarded as strangely modernistic yet containing elements of traditional Norwegian Eddic verse.

In the pattern of the classical 6-11th century Norse poets, his intellectual forefathers, his writing is evocative and intentionally veiled - featuring elaborate kennings that require extensive context to be deciphered.

The free form and multiple interpretations especially offended Welhaven, who held an aesthetical view of poetry as appropriately concentrated on one topic at a time.

This play was based on tunes and poems by Robert Burns, and the plot commented on both Company rule in India and serfdom in Scotland.

At the same time, he expressed several critical sentiments towards prevailing social conditions in Norway, including poverty and avaricious lawyers.

They bought themselves the best seats in the audience, and armed with small toy-trumpets and pipes, they began to interrupt the performance from the very beginning.

Later, it has been said that the high-ranking gentlemen acted like schoolboys, and one of them, an attorney in the high court, broke into the lounge of Nicolai Wergeland, bellowing straight in his ear.

Later, after the play, the ladies in the first and second row acted on behalf of Wergeland, throwing rotten tomatoes at the offenders, and then fights erupted, inside and outside the theater building, and in the streets nearby.

In February, a performance was held "for the benefit of Mr Wergeland", and this gave him enough money to purchase a small abode outside town, in Grønlia under the hill of Ekeberg.

But at her death many years later, her eulogy was as follows: The widow of Wergeland has died at last, and she has inspired poems like no-one else in Norwegian literature.

His last attempt vanished "on a rose-red cloud" during the winter of 1839, due to an incident in a tavern when he drew blood by striking his head with a pewter plate after his advances on a nearby patron were rejected.

While recovering, he insisted on taking part in the national celebrations that year, and his sister Camilla met him, "pale as death, but in the spirit of 17 May" on his way to the revels.

Wergeland's grave was left open during the afternoon, and all day, people revered him by spreading flowers on his coffin, until evening came.

His father wrote his thanks for this in Morgenbladet three days later (20 July), stating that his son had gotten his honour at last: Now I see how you all loved him, how you revered him... God reward and bless you all!

Wergeland was in fact laid in a humble section of the churchyard, and soon his friends began to write in the newspapers, claiming a better site for him.

The collected writings of Henrik Wergeland (Samlede Skrifter : trykt og utrykt) were published in 23 volumes in 1918–1940, edited by Herman Jæger and Didrik Arup Seip.

An earlier compilation also titled Samlede Skrifter ("Collected Works", 9 vols., Christiania, 1852–1857) was edited by H. Lassen, the author of Henrik Wergeland og hans Samtid (1866), and the editor of his Breve ("Letters", 1867).

[3] Wergeland's Jan van Huysums Blomsterstykke (Flower-piece by Jan van Huysum, 1840), Svalen (The Swallow, also translated to English, 1841), Jøden (The Jew 1842), Jødinden (The Jewess 1844) and Den Engelske Lods (The English Pilot 1844), form a series of narrative poems in short lyrical metres which remain the most interesting and important of their kind in Norwegian literature.

His lyrics have been translated into English by Illit Gröndal,[8] G. M. Gathorne-Hardy, Jethro Bithell,[9] Axel Gerhard Dehly[10] and Anne Born.

This Andrew migrated in 1717 to Brevik in Norway, moved on to Moss and was married a second time to a Scottish woman, Marjorie Lawrie (1712–1784).

[12] His ancestors with the name Wergeland lived at Verkland, a farm in Ytre Sogn[13] "at the top of the valley leading from Yndesdalvatnet, North of the county line towards Hordaland".