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??rnson, Bj??rnstjerne, 1832-1910

"Poems and Songs"

The
famous flag-meeting in Christiania on March 13, 1879, and Bj?rnson's
speech there were the first decisive blow. Essentially the law of
1821 was passed by three Stortings, in 1893, 1896, and 1898, and
proclaimed as law without the King's sanction.
Thor's hammer-mark. Thor's weapon was a hammer=the blue lightning.
The symbol of this was the T-mark, to which shape the name cross has
also been given; this mark was much used in the viking period as a
sign of Thor's protection. In the flag the blue cross is within a
white cross on a red ground. Colors of freedom. On the institution
of the flag of 1821, its red, white, and blue were especially
acceptable in Norway, as being the colors characteristic of free
states, typified by the French tricolor.
Torgny, see Note 6.
Ridderstad. The author and journalist, Karl Fredrik Ridderstad
(1807-1886), who had published in his newspaper a conciliatory poem
in defense of the Swedish view, to which Bj?rnson here makes answer.
Note 67.
TO MISSIONARY SKREFSRUD IN SANTALISTAN. Written in 1879. Lars
Olsen Skrefsrud, born in Gudbrandstal in 1840, at first a metal
worker, led for a time a wild life, and was committed under a
sentence of four years to a penitentiary, where he remained from
February, 1859, to October, 1861. Here he underwent a complete inner
transformation and resolved to become a Christian missionary.


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