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One more saga drama was to be written by Bjoernson, but "Sigurd Slembe" remains his greatest achievement in this field of activity. Its single successor, "Sigurd Jorsalfar," was not published until ten years later, and may not be compared with it for either strength or poetic inspiration.
The story is concerned with the efforts of Sigurd, nicknamed "Slembe," to obtain the succession to the throne of Norway during the first half of the twelfth century. He was a son of King Magnus Barfod, and, although of illegitimate birth, might legally make this claim.
His King Sverre of 1861 had been a disappointment, but Sigurd Slembe of the following year was new and great poetry, and fascinated young people's minds. Bjoernson, socially, as in literature, was a strong figure, self- confident, loud-voiced, outspoken, unique in all that he said, and in the weight which he knew how to impart to all his utterances.
He has returned to his native land, and will claim his own. The land is now ruled by Harald Gille, who is, like Sigurd Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and who, during the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won the recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed the chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother.
The action of "Sigurd Slembe," is interspersed with several lyrics, the most striking of which is herd translated in exact reproduction of the original form: "Sin and Death, at break of day, Day, day, Spoke together with bated breath; 'Marry thee, sister, that I may stay, Stay, stay, In thy house, quoth Death.
We have not men to place separately in the various frames. III. Realistic Art. There is so far only an attempt at a realistic art. Thus, in Bjoernson's Arne and Sigurd Slembe. Richardt corresponds in our lyric art as an artist in language to the poets of the Parnasse, while Heiberg's philosophy and most of his poetry may be included in the School of Common Sense.
Björnson had seemed to slip ahead of Ibsen; his Sigurd Slembe was a riper work than the elder friend had produced; but Mary Stuart in Scotland had marked a step backward, and now Ibsen had once more shot far ahead of his rival.
The grimness of the Viking life is softened by romantic coloring, and the poet has not freed himself from the influence of Oehlenschlaeger. But in "Sigurd Slembe" he found a subject entirely worthy of his genius, and produced one of the noblest masterpieces of all modern literature. This largely planned and magnificently executed dramatic trilogy was written in Munich, and published in 1862.
In the clean-cut phrases and moral earnestness of this apologia pro vita sua, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, we have the modern Bjoernson, no longer poet alone, but poet and prophet at once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy living, the Sigurd Slembe of our own day, happier than his prototype in the consciousness that the ambition to serve his people has not been; altogether thwarted, and that his beneficent activity is not made sterile even by the bitterest opposition.
The greatness of a Napoléon or an Alexander is the greatness of gluttony. It is slavery on a grand scale. What men have done for their own glory or aggrandizement has left no permanent impress. "I have carried out nothing," says the warrior, Sigurd Slembe. "I have not sown the least grain nor laid one stone upon another to witness that I have lived."
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