The Norwegian Language Movement and the Two High Cultures

The year 1849 was the breakthrough year for the National Romantic movement in Norway. It was in that year that Ole Bull, the renowned fiddler brought the Millerboy  from Telemark to the concert hall in the capital. A large audience was, for the first time, presented with the Hardanger fiddle music, one of the authentic Norwegian popular cultural traditions. In the years after 1850 the Norwegian language movement took off. It was then that rural Norway experienced an awakening cultural independence, founded on inherited traditions.  In the relations between Ole Bull and the Millerboy there were two cultures meeting. But a generation previously in the beginning of the 19th century, it was the rural culture which was brought out into the limelight, through the rector of Ullensvang. Nils Herzberg in his series of articles in the “Budstikken” (Message Stick) broadsheet on rural life and customs. In the watercolour “A Wedding in the Kingservigs Rectory”, we come into the historical stage where folk music and popular cultural traditions have played their part.