LUDVIG HOLBERG
The Founder of Norwegian Literature
and an Oxford Student
BY
S. C. HAMMER, M.A.
OXFORD
B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET
MCMXX
Price Two Shillings net
LUDVIG HOLBERG
The Founder of Norwegian Literature
and an Oxford Student
BY
S. C. HAMMER, M.A.
OXFORD
B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET
MCMXX
LUDVIG HOLBERG
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The following lecture was delivered on May 23rd, 1919, at MagdalenCollege, Oxford, by invitation of the President, Sir Herbert Warren, andin the presence, among others, of the Norwegian Minister in London, Mr.Benjamin Vogt.
In revising the manuscript I have thought it necessary to enlarge it ona few points where I had to condense the lecture in order to keep itwithin the confines of an hour. I have also added a few supplementaryfootnotes and a brief reference to the bulky Holberg literature whichmay perhaps prove of interest to Holberg students in England.
In paying my respectful thanks to the President of Magdalen College andthe distinguished audience for their kind reception I beg to sum up myfeelings in the words of Holberg himself: Multis sane nominibusdevinctum Oxoniensibus me fateor teneri.
S. C. H.
Christiania, Norway.
December, 1919.
LUDVIG HOLBERG
Mr. President,
Your Excellency,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I.
I propose to speak to you about my countryman, Ludvig Holberg, the mostfamous Norwegian student whose name was ever entered on the records ofthis University. If this had not been the case, I should hardly haveventured to ascend this platform, for I feel that here, if anywhere, itmust be an indispensable condition that the subject should match theplace. For just as Oxford is not primarily an institution of education,but through its traditions, its companionships, its achievements, thevery embodiment of British genius, British chivalry and Britishaspirations, so Ludvig Holberg is, indeed, no author in the ordinarysense of the word. He is the founder of modern Norwegian and Danishliterature, the greatest playwright, the first critical historian, themost human and most broad-minded moralist and philosopher of twonations; a man whose constant work was one of educating; whorevolutionised the conception of life in two kingdoms and paved the wayfor the intellectual and political liberty of the futur