Bjrnstjerne Bjrnson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1903. Beyond his fatherland Bjrnstjerne Bjrnson is known as a great poet. To Norway he is more than a poet. Not only has he written beautiful stories, songs, and dramas for his people; he lives the daily life of this people, and holds unbroken intercourse with them. He who has it in his power to create the most refined, the most delicate poetry, does not esteem himself above the rudest tasks, those of the journalist and the popular orator, where there is a question of furthering the moral and political education of the Norwegian people, by combating an error or a lie, or by ensuring the propagation of some simple, but as yet unrecognized truth. There emanates from him a breath of life. Where his spirit now penetrates there follows a development of self-knowledge and love of truth, national faults are shaken off, a growing interest is manifested in all intellectual topics, all public affairs, and a wholesome self-confidence appears side by side with this interest. He has grasped the significance of the poet's mission in its broadest sense.

Sur les rives des baies, que les harengs ont choisies depuis longtemps pour leurs refuges habituels, s'élèvent, d'ordinaire, quand les circonstances le permettent, des petites villes.Non seulement on peut dire de ces villes qu'elles sont sorties de la mer, mais même que, de loin, elles ressemblent à des débris de navires naufragés jétés à la côte par les vagues ou à un groupe de barques que les pêcheurs ont halées sur la grêve pour les mettre à l'abri des tempêtes.Fruit d'une sélection réalisée au sein des fonds de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection XIX a pour ambition de faire découvrir des textes classiques et moins classiques dans les meilleures éditions du XIXe siècle.

A Happy Boy was written in 1859 and 1860. It is, in my estimation, Bjørnson's best story of peasant life. In it the author has succeeded in drawing the characters with remarkable distinctness, while his profound psychological insight, his perfectly artless simplicity of style, and his thorough sympathy with the hero and his surroundings are nowhere more apparent. This view is sustained by the great popularity of "A Happy Boy" throughout Scandinavia. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1903.