“When BjØrnson’s name is uttered, you get a feeling of the flag of Norway being hoisted. Because in his weaknesses and in his genius he is as distinctly Norwegian, as thoroughly national as few men are... A people’s tribune and a preacher are combined in his person.” These words were written by a Danish literary critic, Georg Brandes.
BjØrnson combined in himself a poet, a playwright, a prosaist, a political essayist, and a public and political figure. We can get an understanding of who he was for his nation if we compare him to the greatest men of the Ukrainian culture. As a political figure, a man of encyclopedic knowledge, and a versatile literary talent, he was for Norway what Ivan Franko was for Ukraine.
The Norwegian people considered BjØrnson to be their spiritual leader, the singer of the deprived, and glorified him like Ukraine glorifies Taras Shevchenko. However, there is something else besides this that relates BjØrnson to Ukraine.
The fates of the two nations, Ukrainian and Norwegian, also had something in common. For more than 400 years, Norway had been under the Danish power. It eventually gained independence in 1814, but failed to avoid a union with Sweden. BjØrnson took an active part in the struggle for the nation’s sovereignty, which was crowned with success in August 1905.
BjØrnson felt for the other enslaved nations. He readily raised his voice to defend those who fought for the independence of their fatherland, using the pages of the Parisian periodical Le Courrier Europeen, which he co-published.
BjØrnson’s first acquaintance with Ukraine was due to Roman Sembratovych, editor of the Ukrainian German-speaking magazine Ruthenische Revue published in Vienna in 1903-05. Sembratovych was working hard to popularize Ukraine and Ukrainian national-liberation struggle abroad by mailing his periodical free not only to the offices of the leading European newspapers and magazines, but also personally to the renowned cultural, political, and public figures.
This is how Ruthenische Revue first fell in the hands of the Norwegian writer. BjØrnson and Sembratovych started a correspondence. Before that, BjØrnson hadn’t even suspected of the existence of Ukraine with its original culture, its own language, and a multi-million population.
In one of his letters he wrote that he was just shocked at such unbelievable injustice inflicted upon the Ukrainian nation, and that he admired its courage: “Your struggle fills me with joy and amazement. Of all the feats of the present-day world, your struggle seems to me the greatest!
“Raising 30 million Ukrainians to the level of a conscious, enlightened nation and shaking down the ages of oppression takes incredible efforts... Since I learned about it – and before the arrival of Ruthenische Revue I hadn’t even heard of Ukrainians – my life has become fuller, and my faith in the humanity, stronger.”
Such words pronounced by this outstanding European about the Ukrainians, who had not been spoilt by excessive attention on the part of the Western world, could not but evoke warm feelings towards this person. BjØrnson was astonished at his failure to find out about Ukraine from encyclopedias and reference books, so he did not hesitate to use his authority in the Western cultural world in order to fill this information gap.
While Ukrainian public figures had difficulties getting access to the contemporary European periodicals, and the speeches made by the Galician politicians, members of the Austrian parliament, were at the most part ignored, such a problem did not exist for the Norwegian writer and public figure with European-wide renown.
Despising any diplomatic shows of reverence, BjØrnson openly expressed his opinion of the Russian political oppression in Eastern Ukraine, sending an angry letter to the Russian government as represented by the Minister of the Interior, Pleve. He also challenged Poland, condemning its chauvinistic policies in Galician lands.
Keeping a lively correspondence with Sembratovych, BjØrnson displayed interest not only in the contemporary situation of Ukraine and its relationship with the dominating powers such as Poland and Russia, but also in Ukrainian history. Sembratovych provided relevant information in his letters.
In 1904, Sembratovych initiated a questionnaire entitled “The Ban on Ukrainian in Russia” on the pages of his edition. He invited well-known European scholars, writers, and political figures, including BjØrnson, to fill it out. The latter’s radical opinions concerning the ban on the Ukrainian language and the persecutions of Ukrainians caused numerous responses in the Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish press.
In 1906, Sembratovych died, but BjØrnson’s ties with Ukraine were not severed. The magazine, which was renamed Ukrainische Rundschau, was now led by a journalist and public figure Volodymyr Kushnir. The new editor strove to preserve the contacts with Ukraine’s Norwegian friend.
In the same year, Le Courrier Europeen carried BjØrnson’s article “The Ruthenians” dedicated to the persecutions against the Ukrainians in Russia. This gave Kushnir a pretext to write a letter to the author of the article in order to attract his attention to the position of the Ukrainians under the Polish yoke in Galicia.
On Kushnir’s request, BjØrnson undertook the writing of an article on Poland–Ukraine relationships in Western Ukraine. Hardly had the article come off the press when the writer heard about arrests of the Ukrainian students at the Lviv University en masse in January 1907, as well as of the students’ hunger strike.
BjØrnson immediately raised his voice in the press to the defense of the Ukrainians who demanded that their native tongue be used at the university. The striker students sent him a postcard from prison with the expression of gratitude for the attention to their struggle. The intercession of the famous Norwegian facilitated the release of the imprisoned students.
In March 1907, BjØrnson sent Kushnir the manuscript of his article “The Poles as Oppressors.” He suggested sending copies to German and Austrian periodicals. The article was almost simultaneously published in the Ukrainische Rundschau, the Vienna daily Die Zeit, and the Parisian periodical Le Courrier Europeen, and the Lviv newspaper Dilo printed the gist of the article with detailed quotations.
The Polish press responded to the article very sharply. The leading figures of the Polish culture, the writer Henryk Sienkiewicz and the composer Ignacy Paderewski, opposed its author in Die Zeit daily. The angry discussion was finalized in the same Vienna periodical by Ivan Franko’s article “Three Giants Fighting for a Dwarf”, in which he called BjØrnson, Sienkiewicz, and Paderewsky “giants,” while Galicia was nicknamed “the dwarf.”
Unfortunately, BjØrnson’s ties with Ukraine did not last long. Kushnir got his last letter on Oct. 13, 1907. BjØrnson’s health deteriorated, and his public activity decreased.
“Everything that can be used as an accusation against the government, everything about national and political persecutions should be sent to me. If you can give me a piece of advice, do not hesitate to do so. I am ready to serve and do whatever I can.” These are the words from BjØrnson’s last letter to Kushnir, editor of Ukrainische Rundschau.
On Apr. 26, 1910, the news of BjØrnson’s death arrived from Paris, where he had been undergoing treatment. All principal Ukrainian periodicals (Dilo, Bukovyna, and others) printed obituaries, the streets of Lviv were one display of posters with the text of the obituary and BjØrnson’s portrait.
Ukrainische Rundschau mourned together with the rest of the cultured European community: “Dead is Ukraine’s greatest friend... ‘The Heart of Norway,’ so sympathetic with all the deprived, stopped beating for the Ukrainian nation, too, whose fate he had taken to heart so much.
“Ukraine has every reason to mourn BjØrnstjerne BjØrnson. It is as if it had lost one of its greatest sons.”
