1. Silent Ibsen: Introduction
Eirik Frisvold Hanssen
In 1918, a short newsreel was produced in Norway, titled Henrik Ibsenminder, “Memories of Henrik Ibsen”. Made twelve years after the death of the famous Norwegian author (1828–1906), the film serves as a memorialisation of Ibsen through a wide range of material and conceptual registers. The newsreel features exteriors and interiors of buildings and apartments where he once lived and worked, places in Kristiania (now Oslo) which he used to pass during his daily walks, and numerous plaques and monuments, as well as direct quotes from his works – one in the form of an intertitle, another inscribed in stone. We also see photographic portraits of the iconic authorial figure at different ages, and the statue of Ibsen in front of the National Theatre in Kristiania. Ibsen is presented not only as an author but also as a celebrity. Landscapes and places carry with them both biographical and literary associations, and the film presents a touristic gaze directed towards places and material traces that represent memories of Ibsen. Henrik Ibsen-minder was a regional production, and the print held in the film archive of the National Library of Norway originates from the municipal cinema of Grimstad, the small coastal town in the southernmost part of Norway where Ibsen spent his youth (1843–1850) as a pharmaceutical apprentice and assistant and where he also wrote his first play, Catilina (1850). While the film follows Ibsen’s life chronologically, beginning with the house where he was born and ending at 10
