/lit/ - Literature

Johan Sebastian Welhaven is pretty damn kawaii.

Johan Sebastian Welhaven.

He's the antagonist in Norwegian literary history. He wanted to keep the Danish language and was Henrik Wergeland's arch enemy. We also have Ivar Aasen who wanted to make up any entirely new language, while Wergeland, who won and is now *the* big Norwegian Romantic poet, wanted to norwegify Danish. Welhaven also wanted strict rules as to what was literature and what wasn't, and meant Wergeland's free form poems where garbage. Wergeland, on the other hand, used to recommend Welhaven's poems to people who wanted to get into Norwegian literature. Welhaven also had an affair with Wergeland's sister, and they were greatly in love, but as he was her brother's arch enemy, they didn't get to marry.

He's also really fucking hot. Look at the confidence oozing off of him. You can just imaigne him scribbling his nazi, form wisely, poems.

Let me tell you a story. Hans Christian Andersen used to visit Norway quite often until he met the big bad guy of Norwegian literary history. Johan Sebastian Welhaven. It's the motherfucker on the left. No one knows quite what he told Andersen but Andersen apparently got so frightened that he never ever visited Norway again.

Other than that Andersen seemed to be quite the clumsy aspie. He met Dickens at a party or something and asked if he could live at his place for a couple of weeks, moved over there, and bothered him for months. Apparently this irritating character in one of his novels is based on Andersen.