Light, Love, Hope. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s Representation of Nature as a ›Sacred Secular Space‹
Résumé
Examining the work of the influential Norwegian writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson as a case study, this article explores how the conceptualization of Nature as Sacred Secular Space can be understood as part of a transfer process in which ideas and aesthetic practices from specific variants of Christianity, i.e., especially Pietism, are transferred into a national religion. This thesis is discussed in light of three works from three periods of his career: Synnøve Solbakken (1857), På Guds veje (1889), and Lyset (1895). At the beginning, Bjørnson connected the Christian message with nature, but by the end of his career, this connection became only optional, if not abolished. Nature was thus invested with symbolic meaning as the nation's sacred space in the course of the 19th century; it increasingly detached itself from the Christian frame of reference and eventually replaced it.