Analysis of Olaf trygvason

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson 1832 (Kvikne) – 1910 (Paris)



Broad the sails o'er the North Sea go;
High on deck in the morning glow
Erling Skjalgsson from Sole
Scans all the sea toward Denmark:
'Cometh never Olaf Trygvason?'

Six and fifty the ships are there,
Sails are let down, toward Denmark stare
Sun-reddened men;-then murmur:
'Where is the great Long Serpent?
Cometh never Olaf Trygvason?'

When the sun in the second dawn
Cloudward rising no mast had drawn,
Grew to a storm their clamor:
'Where is the great Long Serpent?
Cometh never Olaf Trygvason?'

Silent, silent that moment bound,
Stood they all; for from ocean's ground
Sighed round the fleet a muffled:
'Taken the great Long Serpent,
Fallen is Olaf Trygvason.'

Ever since, through so many a year,
Norway's ships must beside them hear,
Clearest in nights of moonshine:
'Taken the great Long Serpent,
Fallen is Olaf Trygvason.'


Scheme aaxxB ccdEB bbdEB ffxEB xxbEB
Poetic Form
Metre 101100111 11100101 10111 1101011 1010101 10100111 11110111 111110 1101110 1010101 10100101 1101111 1101110 1101110 1010101 10101101 11111101 1101010 1001110 101101 101111001 1110111 100111 1001110 101101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 812
Words 147
Sentences 8
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 5, 5, 5, 5, 5
Lines Amount 25
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 130
Words per stanza (avg) 28
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

43 sec read
130

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit", becoming the first Norwegian Nobel laureate. Bjørnson is considered to be one of The Four Greats (De Fire Store) among Norwegian writers, the others being Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland. Bjørnson is also celebrated for his lyrics to the Norwegian National Anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet". more…

All Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson poems | Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Books

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