Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre

Ibsen’s calling is to ask questions, not to give answers

Ibsen Year 2006. Article in Dagbladet (Oslo, Norway) 28 January 2006

If we are to use the Ibsen Year effectively in our efforts abroad, we must renew our contact with both the writer and his works. We should remember that Henrik Ibsen was at times brutal in his criticism of Norway and Norwegians.

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Hot on the heels of the commemoration of one hundred years of independence, which was celebrated extensively all over the world, Norway has embarked on another major commemoration: one hundred years since Ibsen laid down his pen.

The Ibsen Year is now under way. Our intention is to celebrate Ibsen’s works and direct attention to the achievements of a man who is perhaps the most famous Norwegian of all time. The great playwright wrote in a letter to King Carl XV that he wanted to “arouse his countrymen out of their lethargy and direct their attention to the great questions of life”, adding that his most important task was to “awaken the people and inspire them to think about the bigger issues.”

Ibsen has a central place in the Foreign Ministry’s cultural programme for 2006. We are not trying to “use” Ibsen to “sell” Norwegian goods and services. Our objective is to help Ibsen audiences and readers to trace the links between the content of his plays and their Norwegian backdrop. People all over the world are moved by Ibsen’s writings. He was a Norwegian citizen, but he was a universal writer. Second only to Shakespeare, his plays are the most frequently performed on the world stage. We want to encourage the large number of people who are fascinated by Ibsen to learn more about Norway and all things Norwegian.

This requires a long-term effort. Ibsen has had a central place in our cultural activities for many years, and now we are concentrating our efforts. We will support traditional and innovative Ibsen events in a large number of countries. We will highlight the relevance of Ibsen’s writings to our own time, in all continents and in different cultural settings. Ibsen’s plays will be performed on more than 100 different stages every week all over the world, from Beijing to Bergen, from Buenos Aires to Berlin. We hope people will be enthralled and inspired.

Altogether, these efforts will promote Norway as a modern nation and highlight and revitalise an important part of our cultural heritage. Our main task is not to correct wrong impressions that other countries have of Norway, but to address the fact that more people than we would like to admit have no impression of Norway at all, or, at the best, a very unclear one. Ibsen puts Norway on the map. He is clear and he is bold. He puts important issues on the agenda. He evokes associations with Norway and Norwegian art. All this is giving Norway a more distinct image.

If we are to use the Ibsen Year effectively in our efforts abroad, we must renew our contact with both the writer and his works. We must remember that Henrik Ibsen could be sharply critical of Norway and Norwegians. When he returned to Norway after 27 years abroad, he was met by a delegation that wanted to thank him on behalf of the Norwegian people. “The Norwegian people?” exclaimed Ibsen. “They are not a people, they are a population.”

He left Norway in 1864 in deep despair over the weakness of the Swedish-Norwegian response to Germany’s aggression towards Denmark. Ibsen writes to Bjørnson from Rome about the political climate at home that “saddened” him. He writes of “dreams and lies”; he describes his contemporary Norwegians as having “no closer ties to their heritage than the Greek pirates have to their ancestors who sailed to Troy assisted by the gods.” He urged Norwegians to think about the bigger issues.

This challenge can still rouse us in 2006. It is relevant to the various ways we delude ourselves. It is relevant to our debate on the future of Norwegian society and to our discussions of international challenges such as climate change, health threats, the fight against poverty and efforts to promote human rights. Ibsen has meaningful things to say about all these topics. The scenes he creates are set in Norway and are typical of their time. But he put freedom of expression, environmental protection, gender equality, human dignity, corruption and use of power on the agenda in such a way that his plays have continued to be relevant.

A vital task this year is to bring a new freshness to Ibsen’s works. Doing so abroad will be relatively easy. The performances that are being arranged will enable Ibsen to reach out to more people, and we are also supporting projects involving Norwegian artists. The possibility of starting new translations of his works has been raised, and this will be considered. However the task on the home front is more challenging. Our promotion of Ibsen abroad will not be meaningful unless the issues raised in his plays are given a more central place in cultural activities in Norway. We want to make his works more accessible, particularly for young audiences and readers.

This is a challenge. In Shyness and Dignity, the Norwegian novelist Dag Solstad describes the transition from despair to desperation in a Norwegian school teacher and Ibsen enthusiast who is struggling to reach his pupils with his interpretation of The Wild Duck. Not only must we give Ibsen a fresh voice, we must give him a place on the curriculum. I have not checked whether this is true or not, but I have heard more than once that pupils in Chinese schools read more Ibsen than pupils in Norwegian schools. Is this something we can accept?

Our promotion of Ibsen abroad will bolster our long-term cultural cooperation. The previous Government proposed cutting the budget for cultural activities abroad by 40 per cent. The present Government has instead slightly increased the allocation. We want cultural cooperation to play a key role in promoting Norway. Cooperating in top quality and innovative cultural activities will open doors to networks and milieus in other countries that are of interest to us, and that are interested in what we have to offer.

Our cultural activities are carried out in close cooperation with and between the members of the cultural community themselves, and with support from the Norwegian business sector. The international programme for the Ibsen Year has been developed in close cooperation with the Ibsen Year 2006 organisation. When we launched the Ibsen Year earlier this month, we emphasised the importance of bringing the international Ibsen back home. The grand finale will take place in Egypt, a country and culture that intrigued Ibsen. The story of a citizen of the world that unfolds in Peer Gynt, accompanied by Grieg’s music and performed in the sand by the pyramids at Giza, will highlight the place Ibsen has in the international arena. The exhibition “Ibsen’s women meet Ibsen’s manuscripts” will also travel to Egypt via Germany and Italy. Ibsen Year 2006 will create opportunities for cooperation that are of great interest abroad, and these are being followed up by our embassies.

Both at home and abroad, we have developed networks and projects involving theatres, museums, universities and libraries from Canada to China, from Malawi to Russia. The Ibsen Festival at the National Theatre in Oslo and the Centre for Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo have networks that encompass research and theatre communities at the global level. The Norwegian Museum of Cultural History and the Ibsen Museum have produced the exhibition “To be a poet is to see – Ibsen in our time” in nine language versions for the Foreign Ministry. It will tour the world throughout the Ibsen Year and will provide a backdrop and supplement to a wide range of events. Each theme of the exhibition is illustrated with quotations from Ibsen’s plays and comments by well-known figures in the contemporary Norwegian social debate. We hope this exhibition will inspire people to discuss and become engaged in the issues raised: political power, idealism, globalisation, gender equality, the freedom of the individual, neglected children, freedom of speech and environmental protection. These are issues that belong at the top of our agenda today. But Ibsen does not resolve them for us. As he said himself, his calling is to ask questions, not to give answers.

(Translation from Norwegian)