Antiquity, and the translator of many of the sagas. Martin Frederik Arendt (1773–1823), the botanist and archaeologist, did much for the study of old Scandinavian records. Christian Molbech (1783–1857) was a laborious lexicographer, author of the first good Danish dictionary, published in 1833. In Joachim Frederik Schouw (1789–1852), Denmark produced a very eminent botanist, author of an exhaustive Geography of Plants. In later years he threw himself with zeal into politics. His botanical researches were carried on by Frederik Liebmann (1813–1856). The most famous zoologist contemporary with these men was Salomon Dreier (1813–1842).
The romanticists found their philosopher in a most remarkable man, Sören Aaby Kierkegaard (1813–1855), one of the most subtle thinkers of Scandinavia, and the author of some brilliant philosophical and polemical works. A learned philosophical writer, not to be compared, however, for genius or originality to Kierkegaard, was Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785–1872). He wrote a dissertation On Poetry and Art (3 vols., 1853–1869) and The Contents of a MS. from the Year 2135 (3 vols., 1858–1872).
Among novelists who were not also poets was Andreas Nikolai de Saint-Aubain (1798–1865), who, under the pseudonym of Carl Bernhard, wrote a series of charming romances. Mention must also be made of two dramatists, Peter Thun Feorsom (1777–1817), who produced an excellent translation of Shakespeare (1807–1816), and Thomas Overskou (1798–1873), author of a long series of successful comedies, and of a history of the Danish theatre (5 vols., Copenhagen, 1854–1864).
Other writers whose names connect the age of romanticism with a later period were Meyer Aron Goldschmidt (1819–1887), author of novels and tales; Herman Frederik Ewald (1821–1908), who wrote a long series of historical novels; Jens Christian Hostrup (1818–1892), a writer of exquisite comedies; and the miscellaneous writer Erik Bögh (1822–1899). In zoology, J. J. S. Steenstrup (1813–1898); in philology, J. N. Madvig (1804–1886) and his disciple V. Thomsen (b. 1842); in antiquarianism, C. J. Thomsen (1788–1865) and J. J. Asmussen Worsaae (1821–1885); and in philosophy, Rasmus Nielsen (1809–1884) and Hans Bröchner (1820–1875), deserve mention.
The development of imaginative literature in Denmark became very closely defined during the latter half of the 19th century. The romantic movement culminated in several poets of great eminence, whose deaths prepared the way for a new school. In 1874 Bödtcher passed away, in 1875 Hans Christian Andersen, in the last week of 1876 Winther, and the greatest of all, Frederik Paludan-Müller. The field was therefore left open to the successors of those idealists, and in 1877 the reaction began to be felt. The eminent critic, Dr Georg Brandes (q.v.), had long foreseen the decline of pure romanticism, and had advocated a more objective and more exact treatment of literary phenomena. Accordingly, as soon as all the great planets had disappeared, a new constellation was perceived to have risen, and all the stars in it had been lighted by the enthusiasm of Brandes. The new writers were what he called Naturalists, and their sympathies were with the latest forms of exotic, but particularly of French literature. Among these fresh forces three immediately took place as leaders—Jacobsen, Drachmann and Schandorph. In J. P. Jacobsen (q.v.; 1847–1885) Denmark was now taught to welcome the greatest artist in prose which she has ever possessed; his romance of Marie Grubbe led off the new school with a production of unexampled beauty. But Jacobsen died young, and the work was really carried out by his two companions. Holger Drachmann (q.v.; 1846–1908) began life as a marine painter; and a first little volume of poems, which he published in 1872, attracted slight attention. In 1877 he came forward again with one volume of verse, another of fiction, a third of travel; in each he displayed great vigour and freshness of touch, and he rose at one leap to the highest position among men of promise. Drachmann retained his place, without rival, as the leading imaginative writer in Denmark. For many years he made the aspects of life at sea his particular theme, and he contrived to rouse the patriotic enthusiasm of the Danish public as it had never been roused before. His various and unceasing productiveness, his freshness and vigour, and the inexhaustible richness of his lyric versatility, early brought Drachmann to the front and kept him there. Meanwhile prose imaginative literature was ably supported by Sophus Schandorph (1836–1901), who had been entirely out of sympathy with the idealists, and had taken no step while that school was in the ascendant. In 1876, in his fortieth year, he was encouraged by the change in taste to publish a volume of realistic stories, Country Life, and in 1878 a novel, Without a Centre. He has some relation with Guy de Maupassant as a close analyst of modern types of character, but he has more humour. He has been compared with such Dutch painters of low life as Teniers. His talent reached its height in the novel called Little Folk (1880), a most admirable study of lower middle-class life in Copenhagen. He was for a while, without doubt, the leading living novelist, and he went on producing works of great force, in which, however, a certain monotony is apparent. The three leaders had meanwhile been joined by certain younger men who took a prominent position. Among these Karl Gjellerup and Erik Skram were the earliest. Gjellerup (b. 1857), whose first works of importance date from 1878, was long uncertain as to the direction of his powers; he was poet, novelist, moralist and biologist in one; at length he settled down into line with the new realistic school, and produced in 1882 a satirical novel of manners which had a great success, The Disciple of the Teutons. Erik Skram (b. 1847) had in 1879 written a solitary novel, Gertrude Coldbjörnsen, which created a sensation, and was hailed by Brandes as exactly representing the “naturalism” which he desired to see encouraged; but Skram has written little else of importance. Other writers of reputation in the naturalistic school were Edvard Brandes (b. 1847), and Herman Bang (b. 1858). Peter Nansen (b. 1861) has come into wide notoriety as the author, in particularly beautiful Danish, of a series of stories of a pronouncedly sexual type, among which Maria (1894) has been the most successful. Meanwhile, several of the elder generation, unaffected by the movement of realism, continued to please the public. Three lyrical poets, H. V. Kaalund (1818–1885), Carl Ploug (1813–1894) and Christian Richardt (1831–1892), of very great talent, were not yet silent, and among the veteran novelists were still active H. F. Ewald and Thomas Lange (1829–1887). Ewald’s son Carl (1856–1908) achieved a great name as a novelist, but did his most characteristic work in a series of books for children, in which he used the fairy tale, in the manner of Hans Andersen, as a vehicle for satire and a theory of morals. During the whole of this period the most popular writer of Denmark was J. C. C. Brosböll (1816–1900), who wrote, under the pseudonym Carit Etlar, a vast number of tales. Another popular novelist was Vilhelm Bergsöe (b. 1835), author of In the Sabine Mountains (1871), and other romances. Sophus Bauditz (b. 1850) persevered in composing novels which attain a wide general popularity. Mention must be made also of the dramatist Christian Molbech (1821–1888).
Between 1885 and 1892 there was a transitional period in Danish literature. Up to that time all the leaders had been united in accepting the naturalistic formula, which was combined with an individualist and a radical tendency. In 1885, however, Drachmann, already the recognized first poet of the country, threw off his allegiance to Brandes, denounced the exotic tradition, declared himself a Conservative, and took up a national and patriotic attitude. He was joined a little later by Gjellerup, while Schandorph remained stanchly by the side of Brandes. The camp was thus divided. New writers began to make their appearance, and, while some of these were stanch to Brandes, others were inclined to hold rather with Drachmann. Of the authors who came forward during this period of transition, the strongest novelist proved to be Hendrik Pontoppidan (b. 1857). In some of his books he reminds the reader of Turgeniev. Pontoppidan published in 1898 the first volume of a great novel entitled Lykke-Per, the biography of a typical Jutlander named Per Sidenius, a work to be completed in eight volumes. From 1893 to 1909 no great features of a fresh kind revealed themselves. The Danish public, grown tired of realism, and satiated with pathological phenomena, returned to a fresh study of their own national
