Wergeland, Henrik Arnold

Born June 17, 1808, in Kristiansand; died July 12, 1845, in Christiania (Oslo). Norwegian poet, Journalist, and public figure. Born into the family of a pastor.

Wergeland was an ideologist of peasant democracy. His lyrical-epic poem Creation, Humanity, and Messiah (1830), filled with antityranny motifs and Utopian socialist ideas, reflected dreams of a democratic republic. In the collections Poems, First Cycle (1829) and Poems, Second Cycle (1833), he attacked European reaction and defended Polish revolutionaries, Negroes in the USA, and Norwegian workers. In the farces Oh !(1827), Parrot (1835), and The Last Clever Man (1835), published under the pseudonym of Siful Sifadda, Wergeland criticized the conservative press and reactionary romantics. He influenced H. Ibsen, B. Bjørn-son, N. Grieg, and other writers.