5 June 2015 - Personal Anniversaries

Halfdan Kjerulf (1815-1868)
Kjerulf laid the groundwork for Norwegian men’s choirs and Norwegian romanticism.
Wherever Kjerulf went during the first half of the 19th century, Rikard Nordraak and Edvard Grieg followed.

Kjerulf had to leave law school due to tuberculosis and a lot of illness and deaths in his family. In addition to his work as a journalist, Halfdan Kjerulf also started in 1841 to compose music. Much of what he wrote was songs for the newly founded Norwegian Student Choir Association, of which Kjerulf was the director. One of these works, «Brudeferden i Hardanger» (The Bridal Procession in Hardanger), was completed in 1848. Today it is the work that is considered to be the breakthrough of national romanticism in Norway. Kjerulf also wrote melodies for texts by Victor Hugo, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and J. S. Welhaven.

Despite suffering health issues during the last years of his life, Kjerulf composed melodies for texts. Some of the best are found in a collection of 42 folk songs that was published in 1866. He called the collection «Norske Folkeviser» (Norwegian Folk Songs). On 11 August 1868 Halfdan Kjerulf passed away at only 52 years of age.

Agnar Mykle (1915-1994)
Agnar Mykle created controversy with his books, «Lasso Round the Moon» (1954) and «The Song of the Red Ruby» (1956). These realistic, erotic depictions were too stark for Norway in the 1950s.

Both Agnar Mykle and his publisher Harald Grieg at Gyldendal were charged with a crime, namely having violated the criminal code’s pornography law, but both were finally acquitted in October 1957.

Agnar Mykle took the tremendous media coverage very hard, and from 1967 until his death in 1994 he shunned the public eye in Norway. Literary historian Øystein Rotten has this to say about Mykle’s writing: «Passion, the joy of beauty and intense longing are conveyed in a verbose and embellished language, which alternates between naturalistic reporting, humour and poetry.»

Facts

NK 1914-1915
Date of issue: 5 June 2015
Values and subjects:
A Domestic: Halfdan Kjerulf, painting by Knud Bergslien
A Domestic: Agnar Mykle
Photo: © Fred Monclair / Nasjonalbiblioteket (NK 1915)
Design: Enzo Finger
Method of printing: Offset
Printing house: Joh. Enschedé Security Print