Background

 

The very last play written by Henrik Ibsen to receive its English-language première. Inspired by the Icelandic family sagas, The Feast at Solhaug was the first publicly successful drama by Henrik Ibsen.

 

Ibsen, himself, had a complex relationship with the play. Written in 1855, performed in his first successful production in 1856, later disowned in 1870 and reclaimed in 1883, The Feast of Solhaug is said to possess 'the charm of a northern summer night, in which the glimmer of twilight gives place only to the gleam of morning'.

 

The Feast at Solhaug was written in the summer of 1855 during Ibsen's time as a dramatist and director of productions at Det Norske Theater in Bergen. In his Preface to the second edition of the play (1883) Ibsen sketches the creative process. After making a close study of the later Middle Ages in Norway in connection with Lady Inger, he studied the Icelandic family sagas.

 

..but then a number of things came between them, mostly, I think, of a personal nature and probably the strongest and most crucial factor; but I believe it was not without some significance, the fact that just at that time I was occupied with making a thorough study of Landstad's collection of Norwegian Folk Ballads. My moods just then were more in keeping with the literary romanticism of the Middle Ages than with the facts of the sagas, more with the verse form than with prose, and more with the musical element in the language of the song of the giants than the descriptive language of the sagas... - Henrik Ibsen, 1883

Thus it came to be that the shapelessly fermenting draft of the tragedy The Vikings at Helgeland turned for the time being into the lyrical drama The Feast at Solhaug. The play was delivered to Det Norske Theater in the autumn of 1855.  The Feast at Solhaug was first performed at Det Norske Theater in Bergen on January 2nd 1856. As Ibsen had handed in the manuscript in his own name - and not anonymously as in the case of Lady Inger, he was made responsible for directing both the roles and the staging. The production was a success.

In the preface to the second edition Ibsen recalls the first night:

 

The acting was excellent, and full of atmosphere. It was done with joy and devotion, and received in the same way. (...) The author and actors were called back time after time. Later that evening the orchestra, with many members of the audience, serenaded me outside my windows. I think I was so carried away that a made a sort of speech; at least I know I felt exceedingly happy.

 

Jens-Morten Hanssen, 2005 (http://ibsen.nb.no/id/483.0)