0:00:18 > 0:00:21Scandinavia. The Nordic lands.
0:00:21 > 0:00:25So far north, they've often been simply left off
0:00:25 > 0:00:28the map of world civilisations.
0:00:28 > 0:00:30Art, literature, philosophy -
0:00:30 > 0:00:33these belonged to the lands of the south.
0:00:33 > 0:00:36Of sunshine, warmth, the light of reason.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39To the north lay the shadow lands,
0:00:39 > 0:00:43the lands of perpetual midnight and darkness.
0:00:43 > 0:00:45But that's not the whole story.
0:00:48 > 0:00:51Scandinavia is not a single country,
0:00:51 > 0:00:54but three neighbouring nations.
0:00:54 > 0:00:58Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
0:00:58 > 0:01:01Linked by language and a shared Viking past.
0:01:03 > 0:01:07The art of Scandinavia reflects their stormy history,
0:01:07 > 0:01:10played out in landscapes of forbidding beauty.
0:01:12 > 0:01:13Nature's been the great enemy,
0:01:13 > 0:01:16but it's also been the great inspiration.
0:01:16 > 0:01:18Not just for painting and poetry,
0:01:18 > 0:01:21but for architecture and design.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24Inspired by the frozen forms of ice,
0:01:24 > 0:01:27or dark forests of pine.
0:01:27 > 0:01:31You could say the Scandinavian mind itself
0:01:31 > 0:01:33has been shaped by nature,
0:01:33 > 0:01:36like a landscape formed by a glacier.
0:01:39 > 0:01:41Despite their remoteness,
0:01:41 > 0:01:44the Nordic peoples have managed to fashion
0:01:44 > 0:01:47one of the most remarkable civilisations.
0:01:47 > 0:01:50And the art of Scandinavia shares many of the characteristics
0:01:50 > 0:01:53of the Scandinavian landscape -
0:01:53 > 0:01:56hardness, sharpness, clarity.
0:01:56 > 0:01:59I think the north has also given it
0:01:59 > 0:02:01some of its most distinctive moral
0:02:01 > 0:02:04and psychological characteristics.
0:02:04 > 0:02:08Pride, tempered by a sense of living at the margins -
0:02:08 > 0:02:11anxiety, loneliness, melancholy.
0:02:11 > 0:02:16And blowing through it all, like a cold, piercing wind,
0:02:16 > 0:02:20an absolute determination to endure, come what may.
0:02:34 > 0:02:36BIRDSONG
0:02:52 > 0:02:54'There aren't many images that are better known
0:02:54 > 0:02:58'than a certain painting created in Fin-de-siecle Norway.'
0:03:01 > 0:03:06The Scream scandalised the public when first exhibited in 1895.
0:03:07 > 0:03:11Since then, it's been copied and parodied so often,
0:03:11 > 0:03:14even Homer Simpson had his moment of Nordic angst,
0:03:14 > 0:03:18that it's become almost a ghost of its former self.
0:03:20 > 0:03:25The man who painted it in the first place was certainly a troubled soul.
0:03:25 > 0:03:27The Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch.
0:03:29 > 0:03:31Munch once morosely declared,
0:03:31 > 0:03:33"The angels of fear, sorrow and death
0:03:33 > 0:03:36"have stood by my side since the day I was born".
0:03:38 > 0:03:40'It's an intriguing paradox,
0:03:40 > 0:03:43'that an image expressing such personal melancholy
0:03:43 > 0:03:48'should have become such a universal symbol of horror.'
0:03:53 > 0:03:55It's one of the world's most famous paintings,
0:03:55 > 0:03:58but it was created from not very much -
0:03:58 > 0:04:02just the experience of a walk in Oslo one evening.
0:04:02 > 0:04:04Munch described it in his diary.
0:04:04 > 0:04:08He said he was walking along with a couple of friends
0:04:08 > 0:04:13when a red sunset began to fall over the blue-black fjord.
0:04:13 > 0:04:17He felt a melancholy run across his soul
0:04:17 > 0:04:21and then he felt a piercing, unending scream
0:04:21 > 0:04:23going through all of nature itself.
0:04:23 > 0:04:26He stopped, his friends carried on.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29And that's the moment perpetuated here.
0:04:29 > 0:04:31What's the picture really about?
0:04:31 > 0:04:36I think it's about the sense of becoming unmoored, untethered,
0:04:36 > 0:04:40of feeling all alone in a hostile universe.
0:04:40 > 0:04:42The left-hand side of the painting
0:04:42 > 0:04:48almost makes sense, in perspective terms.
0:04:48 > 0:04:50And that's the straight and narrow side,
0:04:50 > 0:04:53along which his two friends continue to walk.
0:04:53 > 0:04:55They are still at home in their world,
0:04:55 > 0:04:57but he, wheeling to face us,
0:04:57 > 0:05:01has become completely uprooted
0:05:01 > 0:05:03from any sense of belonging.
0:05:03 > 0:05:09He has been whirled around into this confusing mixture of sky and sea.
0:05:09 > 0:05:14It's as if the cosmos is sucking him into its great void.
0:05:17 > 0:05:18It's a terrifying painting.
0:05:21 > 0:05:25It's been universally embraced as one of the great,
0:05:25 > 0:05:29defining images of the modern, anxious sense of self.
0:05:29 > 0:05:32So much so that it's become almost a cliche.
0:05:32 > 0:05:37But how did it come to be created in, of all places, Norway?
0:05:47 > 0:05:50'Munch created his famously alienating image
0:05:50 > 0:05:53'in a place that is itself on the edge.
0:05:53 > 0:05:57'Norway is a land of frozen hostility.
0:05:57 > 0:06:00'It's Continental Europe's remotest,
0:06:00 > 0:06:02'most sparsely-populated country.'
0:06:04 > 0:06:08Almost a third of it lies north of the Arctic Circle.
0:06:09 > 0:06:11It's a unique landscape
0:06:11 > 0:06:14that has forged a people with their own unique story.
0:06:17 > 0:06:21According to the French Enlightenment writer, Montesquieu,
0:06:21 > 0:06:26the character and history of every great nation
0:06:26 > 0:06:30can be explained by its climate.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34Now, it's not the most fashionable of theories these days,
0:06:34 > 0:06:36but in the case of Norway,
0:06:36 > 0:06:39I really do think he had a point.
0:06:44 > 0:06:47It's not hard to imagine how this climate produced
0:06:47 > 0:06:51some of the blood-thirstiest warriors in history,
0:06:51 > 0:06:53toughened by the bitter winters.
0:06:53 > 0:06:57For three centuries, waves of Vikings set forth
0:06:57 > 0:07:00to invade Christian lands.
0:07:00 > 0:07:02Theirs was a brutal kind of honour,
0:07:02 > 0:07:05borne of a place where only the ruthless survive.
0:07:10 > 0:07:13It would be wrong to think of them as unsophisticated.
0:07:14 > 0:07:19They fashioned exquisite objects from bronze, iron and gold.
0:07:23 > 0:07:28They also worked one of nature's more perishable materials, wood,
0:07:28 > 0:07:30to create enigmatic images,
0:07:30 > 0:07:33thought to be scenes from Norse mythology.
0:07:41 > 0:07:44Yet of their way of life, we know very little.
0:07:48 > 0:07:52The ancient Scandinavians remain a people shrouded in mystery.
0:07:52 > 0:07:54But what we do know of them,
0:07:54 > 0:07:58above all, from their great literature, the Norse sagas,
0:07:58 > 0:08:02suggests that they took a darkly apocalyptic view of the world
0:08:02 > 0:08:04and their place in it.
0:08:04 > 0:08:08Haunted, perhaps, by the sense that nothing would last.
0:08:08 > 0:08:13Theirs seems a society poised between settlement and nomadism.
0:08:13 > 0:08:16And I think it's deeply appropriate
0:08:16 > 0:08:18that while we associate the civilisations
0:08:18 > 0:08:21of ancient Rome or ancient Greece
0:08:21 > 0:08:25with structures like the Coliseum or the Parthenon,
0:08:25 > 0:08:29we associate ancient Scandinavia, above all,
0:08:29 > 0:08:32with a vessel of travel - the Viking ship.
0:08:39 > 0:08:44The ship was the Vikings' greatest technological achievement,
0:08:44 > 0:08:46able both to cross oceans
0:08:46 > 0:08:48and navigate shallow waters.
0:08:50 > 0:08:54It was a symbol of Viking strength that struck awe and terror
0:08:54 > 0:08:56into the hearts of all who saw it.
0:08:58 > 0:09:00Sometimes it was embellished
0:09:00 > 0:09:03with strange, snake-like, gripping beasts,
0:09:03 > 0:09:06that suggest a Nordic view of the natural world
0:09:06 > 0:09:10as a rather dark, hostile place.
0:09:10 > 0:09:13But the intricate details are just part of a structure
0:09:13 > 0:09:16that has its own elemental beauty.
0:09:19 > 0:09:21This is the Gokstad ship.
0:09:21 > 0:09:25It's my favourite of all Viking seagoing vessels,
0:09:25 > 0:09:28and it's pure, naked engineering.
0:09:28 > 0:09:30It's a fantastic thing.
0:09:30 > 0:09:32It's got the abstract beauty
0:09:32 > 0:09:35of a perfect piece of modern sculpture.
0:09:35 > 0:09:37Its making is itself a kind of miracle.
0:09:37 > 0:09:42The Vikings didn't have saws, they only had axes and hammers.
0:09:42 > 0:09:47So the ship is made simply by warping the wood,
0:09:47 > 0:09:50holding it into place and creating this structure.
0:09:50 > 0:09:52It's extraordinary.
0:09:52 > 0:09:55It's made by a people who only know two things -
0:09:55 > 0:09:58they know wood and they know the sea.
0:09:58 > 0:10:00And they've created from wood
0:10:00 > 0:10:04a kind of upside-down version of the waves.
0:10:04 > 0:10:07So that these ribs,
0:10:07 > 0:10:10you can feel how they would cut through the sea,
0:10:10 > 0:10:12acting almost as a series of shock absorbers
0:10:12 > 0:10:15to each succeeding wave.
0:10:15 > 0:10:19When you see something like this, you understand how it was
0:10:19 > 0:10:22that the Vikings sailed all the way to America.
0:10:33 > 0:10:36By the end of the 11th century, the invaders had become the invaded.
0:10:36 > 0:10:40Christianity had finally taken root in the north.
0:10:42 > 0:10:45Churches were springing up across the landscape.
0:10:47 > 0:10:52Norsemen turned their woodworking skills to a new Christian purpose.
0:10:53 > 0:10:56But this was a Christianity far from Rome
0:10:56 > 0:11:00and still very close to the ancient Norse gods.
0:11:05 > 0:11:07SQUAWKING
0:11:08 > 0:11:13I think this brilliantly higgledy-piggledy construction
0:11:13 > 0:11:17is one of the most magical buildings perhaps in the whole world.
0:11:17 > 0:11:21Coming across it here, in the Norwegian wilderness,
0:11:21 > 0:11:26it's almost as if you've stumbled across a building from a fairytale.
0:11:26 > 0:11:28Hansel and Gretel's gingerbread house.
0:11:28 > 0:11:30But, no, it's a church!
0:11:30 > 0:11:35It's more than 800 years old.
0:11:35 > 0:11:37Now, it's covered with crosses,
0:11:37 > 0:11:40it's a building that brandishes crosses
0:11:40 > 0:11:43to every corner of this remote valley.
0:11:43 > 0:11:48But it's also still very much a Viking building.
0:11:48 > 0:11:50Certainly a Norse building.
0:11:50 > 0:11:53Even the very structure of its roof
0:11:53 > 0:11:57suggests a kind of Norse closeness to nature.
0:11:57 > 0:12:00It's the roof equivalent of a fir cone.
0:12:00 > 0:12:03And look at the Viking symbols up there.
0:12:04 > 0:12:06Dragons.
0:12:06 > 0:12:09An old Norse symbol, the dragon,
0:12:09 > 0:12:13which here has been cast in the role
0:12:13 > 0:12:16of the medieval gargoyle, or grotesque.
0:12:16 > 0:12:19Its function is to ward off evil,
0:12:19 > 0:12:22to roar away evil spirits,
0:12:22 > 0:12:25keeping the house of God safe.
0:12:25 > 0:12:27So this is a building very much in which,
0:12:27 > 0:12:29yes, they've converted to Christianity,
0:12:29 > 0:12:33but they still hold to their own symbols.
0:12:33 > 0:12:38And if you come inside, you can see that mixture even more vividly.
0:12:52 > 0:12:57It's just so...romantic.
0:12:57 > 0:12:59Almost eerie!
0:13:03 > 0:13:06Very, very little is known about
0:13:06 > 0:13:09the architectural history of these buildings.
0:13:09 > 0:13:11There are so few of them,
0:13:11 > 0:13:13and what preceded them has vanished completely.
0:13:13 > 0:13:18But it's generally believed that a space like this
0:13:18 > 0:13:21would have seemed, to its first community,
0:13:21 > 0:13:25very similar to the old, wooden-built, pagan temples
0:13:25 > 0:13:29for the worship of the old gods.
0:13:29 > 0:13:30I imagine, or I like to think
0:13:30 > 0:13:35that the type of mead hall that we find described in Beowulf,
0:13:35 > 0:13:38that might also have looked rather like this.
0:13:38 > 0:13:40Longer, but with these same arches,
0:13:40 > 0:13:45this sense of...oh, just solidity.
0:13:46 > 0:13:48It's fantastic!
0:13:48 > 0:13:52I think that sense of the building
0:13:52 > 0:13:55having roots in the old Norse past
0:13:55 > 0:13:59must have perhaps been quite important to the early communities.
0:13:59 > 0:14:02That they weren't just being asked completely to embrace
0:14:02 > 0:14:05something totally unfamiliar to them.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08And almost as a symbol of that, I think, we've got these...
0:14:09 > 0:14:13..enigmatic little figures. On that side, you've got what seems to be
0:14:13 > 0:14:15some kind of snow cat
0:14:15 > 0:14:18and here, very intriguingly,
0:14:18 > 0:14:21we've got the impassive face of a man,
0:14:21 > 0:14:23or perhaps it's a god.
0:14:23 > 0:14:26He has one eye open, one eye shut.
0:14:26 > 0:14:29Odin was blind in one eye.
0:14:38 > 0:14:40With the coming of Christianity,
0:14:40 > 0:14:43Viking raids on the rest of Europe ceased.
0:14:43 > 0:14:47In fact, most Norwegians had never gone a-Viking.
0:14:47 > 0:14:52Not the name of a people, but a term that meant raiding by sea.
0:14:54 > 0:14:56The majority were farmers or fishermen.
0:14:56 > 0:15:00'And, given that you could fit Norway's entire medieval population
0:15:00 > 0:15:02'into Wembley Stadium,
0:15:02 > 0:15:05'it's hardly surprising that for centuries,
0:15:05 > 0:15:08'they lived harsh, simple lives,
0:15:08 > 0:15:10'barely touched by the outside world.'
0:15:11 > 0:15:14Beyond their carved doorframes and window lintels,
0:15:14 > 0:15:17they had little time for art.
0:15:17 > 0:15:19Their priority was survival.
0:15:23 > 0:15:25Then, in the mid 1500s,
0:15:25 > 0:15:29a religious reformation swept through the country,
0:15:29 > 0:15:31reaching even the remotest places.
0:15:33 > 0:15:36Norway was, by then, a colony of its brother nation,
0:15:36 > 0:15:38the powerful Danish Empire.
0:15:40 > 0:15:43'Denmark imposed the new Protestant faith on its subjects.
0:15:45 > 0:15:47'But it was a faith that seemed tailor-made
0:15:47 > 0:15:50'for the austere Norwegian way of life.'
0:15:52 > 0:15:57The people at large here did not cleave to the old Catholic past.
0:15:57 > 0:15:59They were Lutherans.
0:15:59 > 0:16:01And that meant that theirs was a faith
0:16:01 > 0:16:04which offered them very little in the way of imagery.
0:16:04 > 0:16:07Few paintings, few sculptures,
0:16:07 > 0:16:09no stained glass.
0:16:09 > 0:16:14Just simple church buildings with clear windows,
0:16:14 > 0:16:19through which they might gaze at the beauties of their natural landscape.
0:16:19 > 0:16:23Which, their preachers taught them to understand,
0:16:23 > 0:16:26symbolised the book of God himself.
0:16:34 > 0:16:36It was another kind of book, not a Bible,
0:16:36 > 0:16:40which would bring news of these remote Protestant societies
0:16:40 > 0:16:42to the outside world.
0:16:43 > 0:16:46To the church in Rome, heretical Scandinavia
0:16:46 > 0:16:49was a place more on the margins than ever.
0:16:49 > 0:16:51Dismissed as a land of pagans.
0:16:51 > 0:16:54'But one man in the Vatican,
0:16:54 > 0:16:58'a Scandinavian priest named Olaus Magnus, made it his mission
0:16:58 > 0:17:01'to bring knowledge of the semi-mythical Nordic lands
0:17:01 > 0:17:04'to the heart of European civilisation.'
0:17:06 > 0:17:09The National Library in Oslo holds a first-edition copy
0:17:09 > 0:17:11of his truly extraordinary book.
0:17:13 > 0:17:15So here we have it, 1555,
0:17:15 > 0:17:19Olaus Magnus' Description of the Northern Peoples.
0:17:19 > 0:17:23It's a book in which it's always winter.
0:17:23 > 0:17:26It's fantastic for its descriptions
0:17:26 > 0:17:29of a territory which, to most Europeans,
0:17:29 > 0:17:34seemed forbiddingly remote and unbelievably cold.
0:17:34 > 0:17:38Right at the beginning, we find this wonderful illustration
0:17:38 > 0:17:44in which we see these diminutive Scandinavians, heavily bearded.
0:17:44 > 0:17:48They're wearing heavy caps, furs, boots.
0:17:48 > 0:17:51And they seem to be gesticulating towards a sun
0:17:51 > 0:17:54that barely struggles above the horizon.
0:17:54 > 0:17:59It's followed by a whole chapter on the effects of cold.
0:17:59 > 0:18:02A kind of hymn to cold.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06"Cold burns the eyes of animals and stiffens their hairs.
0:18:06 > 0:18:11"Cold allows fish to be fresh for five or six months without salt.
0:18:11 > 0:18:14"Cold allows games and delightful shows to be held on the ice.
0:18:14 > 0:18:19"Cold makes the skin peel off one's lips, fingers and nostrils
0:18:19 > 0:18:21"if they touch iron."
0:18:23 > 0:18:27He's the first writer to talk about the snowflake.
0:18:27 > 0:18:28And he says what a wonder it is
0:18:28 > 0:18:31that God should have engineered things in such a way
0:18:31 > 0:18:34that this tiny thing should always be designed
0:18:34 > 0:18:36to have a different pattern.
0:18:36 > 0:18:39The wood block print that illustrates the thought...
0:18:39 > 0:18:42They're not the most convincing snowflakes in the world,
0:18:42 > 0:18:44but they do carry the idea.
0:18:44 > 0:18:47You've got these amazing sections
0:18:47 > 0:18:51on the wildlife of the Norwegian Sea.
0:18:53 > 0:18:55Look at this! HE CHUCKLES
0:18:55 > 0:18:59He says traders who come into Norwegian waters
0:18:59 > 0:19:04are often inconvenienced by, um...Serpentum.
0:19:04 > 0:19:09A huge snake rearing out of frozen waters
0:19:09 > 0:19:14to grab a hapless mariner and drag him into the frozen surf.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19But why did he write his book,
0:19:19 > 0:19:23with its wonderful blend of factual description
0:19:23 > 0:19:25and mythological elaboration?
0:19:25 > 0:19:28Well, the date is important - 1555.
0:19:28 > 0:19:31This is after the Reformation.
0:19:31 > 0:19:36So Scandinavia has been converted to the new Protestant faith
0:19:36 > 0:19:39and during the height of the counter Reformation.
0:19:39 > 0:19:42And Olaus Magnus is part of that.
0:19:42 > 0:19:44He is a Swedish Catholic.
0:19:44 > 0:19:46And he writes this book
0:19:46 > 0:19:51in order to try to persuade the Pope and the cardinals
0:19:51 > 0:19:54of all of the splendours, the miracles, the marvels
0:19:54 > 0:19:56and the wonders of Scandinavia.
0:19:56 > 0:20:01He's saying, retake Scandinavia, make it Catholic once again!
0:20:01 > 0:20:03Of course, it never happened.
0:20:10 > 0:20:12If the Pope shivered reading the book,
0:20:12 > 0:20:17he'd have shuddered to see Olaus Magnus' great map of Scandinavia,
0:20:17 > 0:20:18the Carta marina.
0:20:20 > 0:20:23It was unprecedented in its accuracy,
0:20:23 > 0:20:27yet graphically illustrated with ferocious beasts.
0:20:29 > 0:20:32Magnus' work clearly did little for Nordic tourism
0:20:32 > 0:20:35because for the next 200 years,
0:20:35 > 0:20:38Europeans still saw the far north
0:20:38 > 0:20:41as a wild, dangerous place to be avoided.
0:20:45 > 0:20:48It wasn't until the late 18th century
0:20:48 > 0:20:52that curious travellers from England, France and Germany
0:20:52 > 0:20:55began to venture into the more remote parts of Norway.
0:20:59 > 0:21:03'Their diaries and letters fuelled a growing romantic fascination
0:21:03 > 0:21:05'with sublime landscapes.
0:21:09 > 0:21:13'Dramatic, wild places were seen not simply as forbidding,
0:21:13 > 0:21:16'but as having an awe-inspiring beauty of their own.'
0:21:27 > 0:21:29Artists who had never been beyond the Arctic Circle
0:21:29 > 0:21:33were inspired to paint scenes of frigid desolation.
0:21:36 > 0:21:41They imagined extreme encounters with nature at her most terrifying.
0:21:43 > 0:21:45And writers, too, gripped the public
0:21:45 > 0:21:48with their visions of a fictionalised north.
0:21:49 > 0:21:52Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein,
0:21:52 > 0:21:55climaxes on frozen Arctic wastes.
0:21:55 > 0:21:59Edgar Allan Poe's tale, The Maelstrom,
0:21:59 > 0:22:01chronicles a hideous encounter
0:22:01 > 0:22:05with one of Norway's infamous whirlpools.
0:22:09 > 0:22:11In Scandinavia, it seemed,
0:22:11 > 0:22:14there were so many ways to die.
0:22:21 > 0:22:25'But while foreigners fantasised about the wild north,
0:22:25 > 0:22:28'Norwegians themselves struggled with the realities
0:22:28 > 0:22:31'of isolation and poverty.
0:22:31 > 0:22:34'In this backwards nation of farmers and fishermen,
0:22:34 > 0:22:37'cobblers and carpenters, there were no universities,
0:22:37 > 0:22:41'let alone art schools or art galleries.
0:22:41 > 0:22:46'Becoming an artist must have seemed the remotest of dreams.'
0:22:48 > 0:22:52But none of that deterred Johan Christian Dahl.
0:22:52 > 0:22:56Son of a poor west coast fisherman, he was destined to become
0:22:56 > 0:22:59one of the greatest painters of the Romantic age.
0:23:01 > 0:23:02Dahl's early landscapes
0:23:02 > 0:23:04convinced a group of well-to-do local merchants
0:23:04 > 0:23:08to sponsor his studies in Denmark and Germany.
0:23:08 > 0:23:11Though he spent most of his life abroad,
0:23:11 > 0:23:15again and again, he would paint the remembered contours of his homeland.
0:23:17 > 0:23:20Sometimes, he depicted Norway in the grip of winter,
0:23:20 > 0:23:25its ancient monuments standing like proud symbols of endurance.
0:23:25 > 0:23:30At other times, he portrayed a green, sunlit land.
0:23:30 > 0:23:34Though his is always a pale, watery sun
0:23:34 > 0:23:37breaking through clouds of gloom.
0:23:39 > 0:23:43He chose to celebrate Norway's rustic simplicity,
0:23:43 > 0:23:46as though enshrining the Enlightenment idea of the noble savage.
0:23:47 > 0:23:52He saw the nation's undeveloped state as a virtue,
0:23:52 > 0:23:53a symbol of its innocence.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59This is Johan Christian Dahl's View from Stalheim,
0:23:59 > 0:24:01painted in 1842,
0:24:01 > 0:24:03towards the end of his life.
0:24:03 > 0:24:05A monumental canvas.
0:24:05 > 0:24:09I think he intended it as a grand, patriotic statement.
0:24:09 > 0:24:15This, to him, represents the essence of what it means to be Norwegian.
0:24:15 > 0:24:18But just think for a moment what a huge contrast there is
0:24:18 > 0:24:24between this proud, patriotic, Enlightenment Norwegian
0:24:24 > 0:24:28and his counterparts, say, in Paris or London.
0:24:28 > 0:24:32For an Englishmen at this time, London represents civilisation.
0:24:32 > 0:24:33Think of Samuel Johnson.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36"A man who's bored of London is bored of life."
0:24:36 > 0:24:39To a Frenchman, Paris would be the great symbol of civilisation,
0:24:39 > 0:24:42but to a Norwegian, no, it's this!
0:24:44 > 0:24:47A fragment of beautiful wilderness,
0:24:47 > 0:24:50in which a few huts are huddled.
0:24:52 > 0:24:54Animals are being tended,
0:24:54 > 0:24:58a river winds its way through these chasms of rocks.
0:25:00 > 0:25:05A double rainbow placed at the apex of the wilderness.
0:25:05 > 0:25:08I think that's Dahl's symbol of the fact that God,
0:25:08 > 0:25:11Protestant God, blesses this land.
0:25:13 > 0:25:18But to be Norwegian, essentially, is to be at home in nature.
0:25:23 > 0:25:26Dahl's painting might suggest that 19th century Norway
0:25:26 > 0:25:29was a kind of untouched, primitive paradise.
0:25:30 > 0:25:35In reality, the country was entering a period of profound change.
0:25:35 > 0:25:39By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Norway was liberated
0:25:39 > 0:25:43from centuries of rule by its big brother Denmark.
0:25:43 > 0:25:46A bold democratic constitution
0:25:46 > 0:25:49pointed the way to a brave new future.
0:25:49 > 0:25:52But to the frustration of many citizens,
0:25:52 > 0:25:56Norway quickly found itself under the control of another master -
0:25:56 > 0:25:59this time, its other big brother - Sweden.
0:26:01 > 0:26:04But the tide of Norwegian nationalism couldn't be stemmed.
0:26:07 > 0:26:11A wave of patriotic feeling surged across Norway,
0:26:11 > 0:26:14but how to forge a sense of national identity?
0:26:14 > 0:26:18How to create symbols around which a people might rally?
0:26:18 > 0:26:20Well, that's where art came in.
0:26:20 > 0:26:24A group of painters set out to record the beauties
0:26:24 > 0:26:27of Norway's most far flung landscapes
0:26:27 > 0:26:31and to depict the customs of the most remote
0:26:31 > 0:26:33of Norwegian peoples.
0:26:33 > 0:26:35To be an artist in Norway,
0:26:35 > 0:26:38you had to kit yourself out with skis and furs.
0:26:38 > 0:26:43You had to travel by land and by sea - you had to be an explorer.
0:26:51 > 0:26:54There's a collective term for the group of painters who set out
0:26:54 > 0:26:59to celebrate Norwegian nationhood during the mid-19th century -
0:26:59 > 0:27:02the Romantic Nationalists.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07Romantic, because so many of their pictures revel in the wilder
0:27:07 > 0:27:11extremes of Norwegian nature.
0:27:11 > 0:27:13Nationalist, because their work
0:27:13 > 0:27:15exudes pride in the uniqueness
0:27:15 > 0:27:19of Norway and its old folk traditions.
0:27:19 > 0:27:24A boat-borne wedding procession crosses the waters of the fjord.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28A group of loggers steer felled tree trunks
0:27:28 > 0:27:30through treacherous rapids.
0:27:32 > 0:27:36But even as they painted their bucolic, salt of the earth peasants,
0:27:36 > 0:27:39bearers of a proud and ancient culture,
0:27:39 > 0:27:42that culture was beginning to disappear.
0:27:45 > 0:27:47After centuries of isolation,
0:27:47 > 0:27:51Norway was suddenly being drawn into the vortex of the modern world.
0:27:54 > 0:27:59Improvements in health and hygiene fuelled a population boom.
0:27:59 > 0:28:02But the country's soil wasn't rich enough to sustain so many.
0:28:04 > 0:28:07Widespread famine forced hundreds of thousands to the cities
0:28:07 > 0:28:09in search of work.
0:28:09 > 0:28:14Hundreds of thousands more left Norway altogether.
0:28:14 > 0:28:19Most Romantic Nationalist painters refused to face up to these changes,
0:28:19 > 0:28:24but just sometimes the bitter truth did creep to the surface.
0:28:29 > 0:28:31This picture is by Adolph Tidemand
0:28:31 > 0:28:34and it's entitled The Grandfather's Blessing.
0:28:34 > 0:28:38Its subject is the great emigration -
0:28:38 > 0:28:41the leaving of so many families -
0:28:41 > 0:28:43particularly from rural areas,
0:28:43 > 0:28:48which were depopulated in some cases to the tune of 50%.
0:28:49 > 0:28:55The grandfather blesses his pale-faced grandchild,
0:28:55 > 0:28:57his daughter stares into space,
0:28:57 > 0:29:00the grandmother sheds a last tear of farewell,
0:29:00 > 0:29:06while the young husband busies himself about packing their bags.
0:29:06 > 0:29:11They've eaten their last meagre meal on Norwegian soil.
0:29:11 > 0:29:16The cauldron still simmers - the soup is still just steaming -
0:29:16 > 0:29:20it's a bleak subject, for bleak times
0:29:20 > 0:29:26and a reminder - when you are walking through Norwegian art galleries
0:29:26 > 0:29:30filled with these rousing patriotic images of nationhood -
0:29:30 > 0:29:35that while the band was playing, whilst the anthem was being
0:29:35 > 0:29:40sounded out, half the audience were in fact quietly leaving.
0:29:51 > 0:29:55Artists in search of a Norway that truly hadn't changed
0:29:55 > 0:29:57were forced to journey ever further North.
0:29:58 > 0:30:02Few outsiders had ever visited Norway's Arctic region,
0:30:02 > 0:30:05other than whalers and fur traders.
0:30:05 > 0:30:08No artists had ever ventured this far north.
0:30:08 > 0:30:10Well, why would they?
0:30:13 > 0:30:19Then, in 1832, a passionately patriotic Norwegian landscape painter
0:30:19 > 0:30:22embarked on a long journey up the country's west coast
0:30:22 > 0:30:24and into the Arctic Circle.
0:30:27 > 0:30:30Peder Balke came from a family of tithed peasants
0:30:30 > 0:30:35so poor they'd had to make bread from tree bark.
0:30:35 > 0:30:37He'd worked hard to learn his craft
0:30:37 > 0:30:38and for the next 40 years,
0:30:38 > 0:30:41well into the 1870s, he would
0:30:41 > 0:30:44chart his country's emptiest places.
0:30:44 > 0:30:48Balke's epic visions of the majestic North are some of
0:30:48 > 0:30:51the best kept secrets in all of Scandinavian art.
0:30:57 > 0:31:01Peder Balke travelled to the northernmost
0:31:01 > 0:31:04parts of Norway.
0:31:04 > 0:31:08A place where the mountainous wastes of the landscape
0:31:08 > 0:31:13meet the bleak immensities of the ocean.
0:31:13 > 0:31:19And what he found here, at the bitter end of Scandinavia itself,
0:31:19 > 0:31:24was a place that seemed so primal,
0:31:24 > 0:31:27so extreme,
0:31:27 > 0:31:31that all of the conventions of landscape that he'd been taught
0:31:31 > 0:31:34seemed virtually useless.
0:31:34 > 0:31:38So, he dropped them all and invented a completely new style,
0:31:38 > 0:31:41he even pared down his palette,
0:31:41 > 0:31:45to the ultimate simplicities of black and white.
0:31:45 > 0:31:51And he created a series of images so extreme,
0:31:51 > 0:31:57that looking at them today, it is almost as if you are confronting
0:31:57 > 0:32:00the elemental nature of the landscape itself.
0:32:07 > 0:32:11The wildness and the coarse brushstrokes of Balke's style
0:32:11 > 0:32:14proved too daring for contemporary tastes.
0:32:16 > 0:32:19His work still seems desolate, bleak.
0:32:21 > 0:32:27Storms rage and seas churn under skies without memory of morning,
0:32:27 > 0:32:29or hope of night.
0:32:30 > 0:32:35They might look raw, but they're also delicate and sophisticated,
0:32:35 > 0:32:40with their coiled waves, fluid washes of grey sky
0:32:40 > 0:32:44and wind blown birds little more than flicks of paint.
0:32:46 > 0:32:49Peder Balke's brand of Nationalism wasn't nostalgic,
0:32:49 > 0:32:52but political and radical.
0:32:52 > 0:32:56When he wasn't painting in the wilds, he was an activist in Oslo,
0:32:56 > 0:32:59a founder of the trade union movement,
0:32:59 > 0:33:02who improved the lives of the urban poor.
0:33:03 > 0:33:07And while Balke's otherworldly landscapes might seem at odds
0:33:07 > 0:33:09with his social concerns,
0:33:09 > 0:33:13perhaps they were meant as consoling visions of a purer world
0:33:13 > 0:33:15beyond the city.
0:33:15 > 0:33:17Perhaps, they were his message
0:33:17 > 0:33:19of hope to his struggling fellow Norwegians -
0:33:19 > 0:33:22we've survived the extremes of nature,
0:33:22 > 0:33:26so surely we can survive anything the modern world might throw at us.
0:33:29 > 0:33:32Some of Balke's most memorable images of all -
0:33:32 > 0:33:36images poised between darkness and light, doubt and hope -
0:33:36 > 0:33:41are depictions of that most elusive of all Arctic phenomena -
0:33:41 > 0:33:45aurora borealis - the northern lights.
0:33:46 > 0:33:50The spectacular light show is caused by solar flare
0:33:50 > 0:33:53glancing off the earth's atmosphere.
0:33:53 > 0:33:57It's most visible during the long, dark winters
0:33:57 > 0:33:59in the northernmost latitudes.
0:34:01 > 0:34:05The same effects of light and landscape that inspired Peder Balke
0:34:05 > 0:34:07still inspire Norwegians today.
0:34:10 > 0:34:13Photographer Bjorn Jorgensen - a native of northern Norway -
0:34:13 > 0:34:17is also fascinated by his country's most remote places.
0:34:21 > 0:34:24So, Bjorn, you must do quite a bit of walking?
0:34:24 > 0:34:29I do, actually. I like being in the outdoors and hiking.
0:34:29 > 0:34:33And as a nature photographer, I sort of have to be outdoors.
0:34:33 > 0:34:37And do you like going on your own, or in company?
0:34:37 > 0:34:39What do you prefer?
0:34:39 > 0:34:41One...company with one is OK,
0:34:41 > 0:34:44but I also like being out alone in the nature.
0:34:44 > 0:34:49Sort of get more overwhelming sense of nature.
0:34:51 > 0:34:56Especially when the northern lights explode in the sky and I'm alone,
0:34:56 > 0:34:59far away from some civilisation.
0:34:59 > 0:35:02I really enjoy that feeling.
0:35:06 > 0:35:09Travelling on his own in a campervan,
0:35:09 > 0:35:13Bjorn spends several nights at a time in pursuit of his subject.
0:35:13 > 0:35:18Not just the northern lights, but every aspect of his native land.
0:35:21 > 0:35:24You take a lot of photographs of the Norwegian landscape,
0:35:24 > 0:35:28but it strikes me as rather a difficult landscape to photograph,
0:35:28 > 0:35:30because so much of it is so bleak, so empty.
0:35:30 > 0:35:33It's almost as if you're taking photographs of nothingness,
0:35:33 > 0:35:36but trying somehow to capture its spirit.
0:35:36 > 0:35:39Well, yes, that's true. Especially in northern parts of Norway
0:35:39 > 0:35:41and the further north you come,
0:35:41 > 0:35:44the more harsh and barren landscape it is.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47But I think it has its own kind of beauty,
0:35:47 > 0:35:50not in the traditional thinking of beauty -
0:35:50 > 0:35:52but I like that.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55You say bleakness and the harsh landscape.
0:35:55 > 0:35:57Almost no vegetation.
0:35:57 > 0:36:01The conditions people are living under interests me
0:36:01 > 0:36:03and I think it's fascinating, yes.
0:36:03 > 0:36:07I try to see a contrast between
0:36:07 > 0:36:12the harsh landscape and human activity.
0:36:12 > 0:36:15Tracks people have placed in the landscape.
0:36:15 > 0:36:18Be it a road, be it a house underneath a cliff -
0:36:18 > 0:36:21I think that's a contrast that I really try to capture.
0:36:21 > 0:36:24You seem to be quite interested
0:36:24 > 0:36:27in the ingenuity of your fellow countrymen.
0:36:27 > 0:36:32Almost in the sense of the miracle of having made a place to live here.
0:36:32 > 0:36:36Exactly, yes. Because who could believe somebody could live
0:36:36 > 0:36:37under these conditions?
0:36:45 > 0:36:48Many Norwegians today seem to cultivate a certain remoteness -
0:36:48 > 0:36:50embrace it, even.
0:36:50 > 0:36:53It's as if they've never really recovered from the great trauma
0:36:53 > 0:36:56of modern Norwegian history.
0:36:56 > 0:36:59After centuries of isolation in the wilderness,
0:36:59 > 0:37:03the shock of 19th century industrialisation
0:37:03 > 0:37:06was all the more brutal for its suddenness.
0:37:08 > 0:37:12No artist embodied Norway's painful dislocation
0:37:12 > 0:37:14from its innocent rural past
0:37:14 > 0:37:17more than Lars Hertervig.
0:37:18 > 0:37:23A hypersensitive young man, doomed to disappointment and tragedy,
0:37:23 > 0:37:27he might be described as a Scandinavian Van Gogh -
0:37:27 > 0:37:32except that outside Norway, he still remains almost completely unknown.
0:37:34 > 0:37:36Hertervig's early career
0:37:36 > 0:37:40followed the now familiar Norwegian trajectory.
0:37:40 > 0:37:44The son of desperately poor peasant farmers from Bergen,
0:37:44 > 0:37:46he showed promise painting charming,
0:37:46 > 0:37:48if not yet remarkable landscapes.
0:37:49 > 0:37:54Art education was still inadequate in Norway, but in 1852,
0:37:54 > 0:37:57with the help of some local sponsors,
0:37:57 > 0:37:59he was able to travel abroad to study.
0:38:00 > 0:38:03Aged 23, he arrived in Dusseldorf.
0:38:07 > 0:38:10It wasn't destined to end well.
0:38:10 > 0:38:14Imagine a young, raw, awkward,
0:38:14 > 0:38:17shy Norwegian boy
0:38:17 > 0:38:20suddenly transplanted from the wilderness
0:38:20 > 0:38:24to a busy university town.
0:38:24 > 0:38:28He didn't get on very well with his fellow students
0:38:28 > 0:38:30and to make matters worse,
0:38:30 > 0:38:34he fell in love with the beautiful daughter of his landlady.
0:38:34 > 0:38:38Then, a horrible practical joke was played on him.
0:38:38 > 0:38:41He was given to understand that a meeting had been arranged
0:38:41 > 0:38:43between him and his beloved,
0:38:43 > 0:38:46but when he turned up at the appointed hour,
0:38:46 > 0:38:50there was no-one there but a group of bullying students,
0:38:50 > 0:38:52mocking and jeering at him.
0:38:52 > 0:38:55He fell in to a deep melancholy
0:38:55 > 0:38:57and then an even deeper depression.
0:38:57 > 0:39:00He had to be sent home to Norway.
0:39:00 > 0:39:03He was sent here to Gaustad
0:39:03 > 0:39:06and the country's first lunatic asylum.
0:39:17 > 0:39:20A programme of fresh air, exercise and hard work
0:39:20 > 0:39:22failed to cure Hertervig.
0:39:24 > 0:39:28After 18 months of treatment, he was labelled incurably insane
0:39:28 > 0:39:31and sent home to live with his family.
0:39:31 > 0:39:35It was only after others had written him off as a lost cause
0:39:35 > 0:39:39that he began to paint a new and unique kind of landscape.
0:39:47 > 0:39:49Hertervig's paintings are strange
0:39:49 > 0:39:53and extraordinary apparitions that take us far beyond
0:39:53 > 0:39:58the optimistic conventions of patriotic landscape painting
0:39:58 > 0:40:00in earlier 19th century Norway
0:40:00 > 0:40:05and plunge us into worlds of strangeness and mystery.
0:40:05 > 0:40:09Look at this extraordinary image of a crag
0:40:09 > 0:40:12surrounded by clouds that boil.
0:40:12 > 0:40:16Three lonely ships huddling in the shadow of the rock,
0:40:16 > 0:40:20while beneath, the stillness of the waters is so still
0:40:20 > 0:40:23it seems almost like another version of the sky.
0:40:23 > 0:40:25You don't know where up is, you don't know where down is.
0:40:25 > 0:40:28It's completely bewildering.
0:40:28 > 0:40:31The sense of mystery is enhanced even more, I think,
0:40:31 > 0:40:33in this picture of The Tarn.
0:40:34 > 0:40:36Look at these clouds.
0:40:36 > 0:40:38There is nothing else like this
0:40:38 > 0:40:40in all of 19th century landscape painting.
0:40:40 > 0:40:44It's almost as if the landscape itself has gone mad,
0:40:44 > 0:40:48been provoked into these paroxysms of movement and gesture.
0:40:48 > 0:40:52It's almost like you are looking into the mirror of a troubled mind.
0:40:54 > 0:40:58The landscape itself has a tremendously primitive,
0:40:58 > 0:40:59ancient feel about it.
0:40:59 > 0:41:04To me, it's almost as if Hertervig is attempting to summon up
0:41:04 > 0:41:08or capture that sense of the landscape that's always been there
0:41:08 > 0:41:12in the Norwegian soul - whether in the soul of the Vikings,
0:41:12 > 0:41:16or the Christians who followed - and together with that
0:41:16 > 0:41:19there is a kind of fear present in it all.
0:41:19 > 0:41:24A fear, perhaps, that just as this landscape might almost
0:41:24 > 0:41:29be on the point of reverting back to some primordial waste,
0:41:29 > 0:41:31that there is no meaning, there is no purpose,
0:41:31 > 0:41:34there is no pattern to the natural world -
0:41:34 > 0:41:37the world simply is there.
0:41:50 > 0:41:54Hertervig's paintings are a reminder that it wasn't just Norway's
0:41:54 > 0:41:58physical landscapes and cityscapes that were being transformed
0:41:58 > 0:42:00during the mid-nineteenth century.
0:42:03 > 0:42:06The landscapes of the mind were changing, too.
0:42:06 > 0:42:09The old certainties were being challenged.
0:42:11 > 0:42:15Throughout their history, Norwegians had managed in their cold climate
0:42:15 > 0:42:18because their stoicism and their faith in God
0:42:18 > 0:42:21had seen them through the bad times.
0:42:21 > 0:42:24But now even their faith was being shaken.
0:42:26 > 0:42:30Considering the bleak worldview of their Viking ancestors,
0:42:30 > 0:42:32it was appropriate that a Scandinavian -
0:42:32 > 0:42:36not a Norwegian, but a Dane - the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard -
0:42:36 > 0:42:39should present one of the greatest challenges to faith
0:42:39 > 0:42:41in all of mid-19th century Europe.
0:42:43 > 0:42:46Kierkegaard saw himself as a Christian,
0:42:46 > 0:42:50but his ruthless line of questioning would ultimately lead
0:42:50 > 0:42:53to the modern existential crisis of faith.
0:42:58 > 0:42:59For centuries here in Scandinavia,
0:42:59 > 0:43:05the experience of religion had been essentially an inner process.
0:43:05 > 0:43:09Scandinavian protestants knew their God not through the ceremonies
0:43:09 > 0:43:14and images of the Catholic church, but through inward contemplation.
0:43:14 > 0:43:19And it was Kierkegaard's achievement to take that sense of inwardness
0:43:19 > 0:43:22and give it philosophical expression.
0:43:22 > 0:43:25He placed great emphasis on the individual
0:43:25 > 0:43:29and on the drive to self-knowledge.
0:43:29 > 0:43:31"The greatest despair," he wrote,
0:43:31 > 0:43:35"is that of not knowing who you are."
0:43:35 > 0:43:40And in doing that - in laying such emphasis on the self-questioning,
0:43:40 > 0:43:45doubting individual - he created a philosophy, perhaps against
0:43:45 > 0:43:50his own intentions - utterly imbued with doubt, with anxiety.
0:43:50 > 0:43:54He was, you might say, the natural philosopher for a society
0:43:54 > 0:43:56on the edge of an abyss.
0:44:03 > 0:44:06Kierkegaard's speculative philosophy would be hardened
0:44:06 > 0:44:10into outright atheism by later nineteenth-century writers,
0:44:10 > 0:44:12such as Friedrich Nietzsche,
0:44:12 > 0:44:15who infamously declared that "God is dead".
0:44:17 > 0:44:19In Norway, the modern world was experienced
0:44:19 > 0:44:21as one shock after another
0:44:21 > 0:44:24and now, on top of it all,
0:44:24 > 0:44:27the spectre of a universe without meaning or purpose.
0:44:29 > 0:44:33Maybe that's why Norwegians today so often feel an overwhelming urge
0:44:33 > 0:44:36to get away from it all.
0:44:36 > 0:44:39In the heart of the modern city, their artists and writers
0:44:39 > 0:44:42still dream of the wilderness.
0:44:44 > 0:44:48So, where better than Oslo's glacier-like modern Opera House
0:44:48 > 0:44:52to meet novelist and social satirist Erlend Loe.
0:44:54 > 0:44:58Nature is the place where we go to escape,
0:44:58 > 0:45:01to be part of something and we can be free.
0:45:01 > 0:45:03Where I live, it's only, you know,
0:45:03 > 0:45:06ten minutes cycling down here to the centre
0:45:06 > 0:45:09and ten minutes the other way, I'm in the forest
0:45:09 > 0:45:13and I don't have to see anyone for days, if I don't want to.
0:45:13 > 0:45:17And this is very... For me, it's very important.
0:45:17 > 0:45:19I use this several times a week.
0:45:19 > 0:45:23So, there's a sort of paradox in this sense of self.
0:45:23 > 0:45:26That in order to be Norwegian, perhaps Scandinavian,
0:45:26 > 0:45:29you need to be on your own.
0:45:29 > 0:45:31And yet, if you're on your own, how can you make a society?
0:45:31 > 0:45:33Is it a society where everyone is on their own?
0:45:33 > 0:45:38It's a beautiful paradox. Well, my father still lives in the town where I come from - Trondheim.
0:45:38 > 0:45:41He comes to visit all the time
0:45:41 > 0:45:45and when I ask him, "How was your train ride?" he'll sometimes say,
0:45:45 > 0:45:48"Oh, it was wonderful. I didn't have to talk to anybody."
0:45:48 > 0:45:52"I got a compartment for myself, not a word."
0:45:52 > 0:45:54Then he's totally happy.
0:45:54 > 0:45:59I think that makes us very different from the people in southern Europe.
0:45:59 > 0:46:01You know, with grapes everywhere
0:46:01 > 0:46:04and sun and you can take a swim, et cetera
0:46:04 > 0:46:08- and that's not been the case here. - So, human habitation is very hard won,
0:46:08 > 0:46:11but it's also hard won at the cost of a certain amount of solitude?
0:46:11 > 0:46:14Yeah, I would say so. And it will create some kind of melancholy,
0:46:14 > 0:46:17in the bottom of it all.
0:46:17 > 0:46:21When I grew up, to be rich was frowned upon.
0:46:21 > 0:46:24If you had money, you wouldn't really show it.
0:46:24 > 0:46:27Now, everyone is flashing everything.
0:46:27 > 0:46:30It's money, money, money. It's endless.
0:46:30 > 0:46:35I think it's very necessary that Norwegian art, literature today,
0:46:35 > 0:46:38address these things and try to just,
0:46:38 > 0:46:42you know, destroy the surface a little bit - with a key -
0:46:42 > 0:46:46like when you pass a Mercedes with a key - and then you drag it
0:46:46 > 0:46:49all along and it makes a wonderful sound, you know.
0:46:49 > 0:46:54Next morning, the owner will see it and he will cry and break down.
0:46:54 > 0:46:57That's very naughty.
0:46:57 > 0:46:58THEY LAUGH
0:46:58 > 0:46:59Yeah.
0:47:05 > 0:47:10The impulse to scratch beneath the surface of Norwegian society
0:47:10 > 0:47:14was never more powerfully expressed than by Henrik Ibsen -
0:47:14 > 0:47:17hailed by some as the world's greatest playwright
0:47:17 > 0:47:18since Shakespeare.
0:47:20 > 0:47:23Ibsen's contemporaries were scandalised by his treatment
0:47:23 > 0:47:27of taboo themes - like rape, incest, suicide.
0:47:28 > 0:47:32But his greatest theme was the way social convention could crush
0:47:32 > 0:47:34an individual's hopes and dreams.
0:47:35 > 0:47:39The landscape of the city defeating the landscape of the mind.
0:47:39 > 0:47:44He often expressed it through the imagery of the cold Scandinavian climate.
0:47:52 > 0:47:54It's so dark here!
0:47:55 > 0:47:59The endless rain goes on week after week, for months on end,
0:47:59 > 0:48:02with never a glimpse of the sun.
0:48:02 > 0:48:05I can't remember ever having seen the sun shine
0:48:05 > 0:48:07all the times I've been here.
0:48:11 > 0:48:13It's one of the peculiarities of Ibsen's work
0:48:13 > 0:48:16that no matter how close you get to the actors,
0:48:16 > 0:48:20you never really feel as though you enter their world.
0:48:20 > 0:48:23They remain sealed off, locked away,
0:48:23 > 0:48:26frozen in their own personal world of misery.
0:48:26 > 0:48:29Perhaps it's no coincidence that so many of his characters
0:48:29 > 0:48:32end by wandering off -
0:48:32 > 0:48:37to disappear or die - in the terrible Norwegian wilderness.
0:48:40 > 0:48:44Here people are brought up to believe that life is miserable -
0:48:44 > 0:48:46the sooner it's over, the better.
0:48:46 > 0:48:51Have you noticed that all my paintings have focused on the joy of life?
0:48:51 > 0:48:54That's why I'm afraid of staying home with you.
0:48:55 > 0:48:56Afraid?
0:48:58 > 0:49:02What are you afraid of here, with me?
0:49:02 > 0:49:04I'm afraid that all my strongest feelings would be warped
0:49:04 > 0:49:06into something ugly.
0:49:15 > 0:49:20Aged 36 and disenchanted with Norway's suffocating provincialism,
0:49:20 > 0:49:22Ibsen left the country,
0:49:22 > 0:49:26living and writing abroad for the next 27 years.
0:49:28 > 0:49:31When he finally returned, towards the end of his life,
0:49:31 > 0:49:35he was the controversial grand old man of letters -
0:49:35 > 0:49:38reviled by some, admired by others.
0:49:42 > 0:49:44He was still writing plays,
0:49:44 > 0:49:49his ability to reveal society's troubled undercurrents undiminished.
0:49:49 > 0:49:53And he was about to pass the baton to the next generation.
0:49:56 > 0:49:59This cafe was Ibsen's favourite watering hole
0:49:59 > 0:50:03during his last decade back home in Norway's capital city.
0:50:03 > 0:50:07He came here every day at 12 and 5 prompt,
0:50:07 > 0:50:10for a simple dish of pickled herring and dried bread,
0:50:10 > 0:50:13washed down by a glass of absinthe.
0:50:13 > 0:50:16And it was here that the painter Edvard Munch met him
0:50:16 > 0:50:17and befriended him.
0:50:17 > 0:50:22Munch painted a hauntingly eloquent portrait of Ibsen
0:50:22 > 0:50:25sat almost in that very window seat.
0:50:25 > 0:50:30Reducing him to vast oracular sphinx-like head,
0:50:30 > 0:50:34shrouded in grey hair, venerably bearded,
0:50:34 > 0:50:38while the world passes by behind him.
0:50:38 > 0:50:42I think Munch saw Ibsen very much as his muse.
0:50:42 > 0:50:45He was the chronicler of a world
0:50:45 > 0:50:47in which it was the fate of every man and woman -
0:50:47 > 0:50:50certainly every Scandinavian man and woman -
0:50:50 > 0:50:53to bear the mark of Cain.
0:50:53 > 0:50:56To live a life haunted by loneliness,
0:50:56 > 0:50:59misery, despair, anxiety.
0:50:59 > 0:51:02What Ibsen wrote, Munch set out to paint.
0:51:10 > 0:51:13By the time he painted his celebrated portrait of Ibsen,
0:51:13 > 0:51:15Munch was a well-travelled artist.
0:51:17 > 0:51:19He knew of Impressionism
0:51:19 > 0:51:22and the other bold new art movements of Paris and Berlin.
0:51:24 > 0:51:27But Munch set out to do something different.
0:51:30 > 0:51:35Instead of trying to paint snapshot impressions of life in Norway,
0:51:35 > 0:51:39he wanted to reveal the states of mind of the modern Norwegian.
0:51:40 > 0:51:43And it has to be said, they're all fairly miserable.
0:51:49 > 0:51:53He produced a series of paintings - The Frieze of Life.
0:51:53 > 0:51:57Strange, symbolic images, like Biblical parables,
0:51:57 > 0:52:00but for a godless age.
0:52:00 > 0:52:02Desolate scenes peopled by figures
0:52:02 > 0:52:05who look almost as though sleepwalking.
0:52:08 > 0:52:13Lost souls wander alienated amidst the whirlpool of the city.
0:52:15 > 0:52:18A lone figure on an empty shore
0:52:18 > 0:52:21suffers the pain of a hopeless passion.
0:52:24 > 0:52:29Munch painted love - or at least sex - in a cold climate -
0:52:29 > 0:52:33yielding the bitter fruit of jealousy.
0:52:39 > 0:52:42Where Ibsen scratched the surface,
0:52:42 > 0:52:46Munch ripped the covers away completely, letting in the cold.
0:52:50 > 0:52:53At their most monumental, the Frieze of Life paintings
0:52:53 > 0:52:57seem almost to evoke the fresco paintings
0:52:57 > 0:52:59of the Italian Renaissance -
0:52:59 > 0:53:03dim northern echoes of the art of the Mediterranean.
0:53:03 > 0:53:09This Munch called The Three Stages of Woman.
0:53:09 > 0:53:15Here, she symbolises both bridal virginity -
0:53:15 > 0:53:19she holds her trousseau, she wears her white dress - but also longing,
0:53:19 > 0:53:22she gazes out towards the infinite.
0:53:23 > 0:53:29At the centre, she embodies zest for life, in Munch's words.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33Also perhaps sexual awakening - exuberance.
0:53:33 > 0:53:39But this moment of exuberance carries like its doppelganger
0:53:39 > 0:53:44a shade of darkness, doubt, guilt.
0:53:44 > 0:53:48Munch identified this woman with the figure of the nun,
0:53:48 > 0:53:50consumed by sorrow.
0:53:50 > 0:53:55In the shadows to one side stands man,
0:53:55 > 0:53:57uncomprehending.
0:53:59 > 0:54:05Now, it's common to see Munch as the beginning of something,
0:54:05 > 0:54:11to see in his Expressionism the first stirrings of that mood
0:54:11 > 0:54:16towards non-representational art that would result in
0:54:16 > 0:54:19the abstractions of Kandinsky.
0:54:19 > 0:54:22But what if you turn time's arrow the other way
0:54:22 > 0:54:25and see him not as the start of something,
0:54:25 > 0:54:27but as the end of something?
0:54:27 > 0:54:32What if we see him as part of a distinctly Norwegian story,
0:54:32 > 0:54:35what does his art tell us, then?
0:54:36 > 0:54:41Well, I think what he represents is something fascinating
0:54:41 > 0:54:44and uniquely paroxysmal
0:54:44 > 0:54:47in the development of 19th century European art.
0:54:47 > 0:54:51Imagine Norway, little Norway,
0:54:51 > 0:54:54a deeply provincial, quiet world,
0:54:54 > 0:54:58almost apart from the rest of mainland Europe.
0:54:58 > 0:55:01Suddenly, towards the end of the 19th century, what does it receive?
0:55:01 > 0:55:05It hasn't had the Enlightenment, it hasn't had the Renaissance,
0:55:05 > 0:55:09it's been left aside from the main currents of European civilisation
0:55:09 > 0:55:10for many, many centuries.
0:55:10 > 0:55:13Suddenly, it has urbanisation, industrialisation,
0:55:13 > 0:55:17mass emigration, alienation, revolutionary ideas,
0:55:17 > 0:55:20Nietzsche, the death of God - no wonder!
0:55:20 > 0:55:23No wonder, when a Norwegian finally wakes up to the modern,
0:55:23 > 0:55:24what does he do?!
0:55:24 > 0:55:26He screams!
0:55:34 > 0:55:37Munch wore himself out with misery.
0:55:37 > 0:55:40So much so, that he would never again reach
0:55:40 > 0:55:43the same screaming pitch of intensity,
0:55:43 > 0:55:46or plumb the same depths of expression,
0:55:46 > 0:55:48as he had in his early years.
0:55:49 > 0:55:52And it's as if Norway, too, spent the twentieth century
0:55:52 > 0:55:56recoiling from the abyss that he'd revealed.
0:55:57 > 0:56:00There'd be little place here for the troubled,
0:56:00 > 0:56:03nakedly expressive artist -
0:56:03 > 0:56:06and there's been no true successor to Munch.
0:56:08 > 0:56:11These days, the Norwegian genius is more calmly expressed
0:56:11 > 0:56:16through landscape photography, design and architecture,
0:56:16 > 0:56:21often itself inspired by the reassuringly permanent forms of nature.
0:56:21 > 0:56:24An incline of white granite,
0:56:24 > 0:56:28like a broken iceberg that's drifted to shore.
0:56:28 > 0:56:33Walls of glass, like the waters of a fjord that mirror the passing world.
0:56:34 > 0:56:37Comforting reminders to any Norwegian -
0:56:37 > 0:56:41that even here, you're never that far from the wilderness.
0:56:49 > 0:56:53What does the history of Norwegian art and the story that it tells
0:56:53 > 0:56:57reveal about the contours of modern Norway?
0:56:57 > 0:57:02Well, think back to the age of trauma, of emigration and angst
0:57:02 > 0:57:06and the centuries of hardship that preceded it.
0:57:06 > 0:57:09Might not all that help to explain
0:57:09 > 0:57:14the famously generous modern Norwegian welfare state?
0:57:14 > 0:57:18After all, hardship breeds a sense of collective responsibility
0:57:18 > 0:57:20for the less well off.
0:57:20 > 0:57:25Might it not also explain Norway's attitude to its oil reserves,
0:57:25 > 0:57:31which here, uniquely, have been used as reserves - for the common good.
0:57:31 > 0:57:35These days, Norway strikes me as quite a conservative culture
0:57:35 > 0:57:39and I don't think many Norwegians are too bothered that their nation
0:57:39 > 0:57:45isn't producing the most avant garde, cutting edge, radical art.
0:57:45 > 0:57:50I think they're happy with things as they are and perhaps the most potent
0:57:50 > 0:57:54symbolic expression of Norwegian nationhood
0:57:54 > 0:57:58was the law they passed here, just half a century ago,
0:57:58 > 0:58:02designating all of this landscape
0:58:02 > 0:58:05as free for roaming for Norwegian citizens.
0:58:05 > 0:58:09It's as if the landscape itself is their greatest museum,
0:58:09 > 0:58:11a vast open air art gallery,
0:58:11 > 0:58:15where anyone of whatever religious persuasion
0:58:15 > 0:58:20can come to commune with the mysteries of nature.