Among the literatures of modern Europe, Norwegian literature is remarkable for being so late-flowering and yet so impressively deep-rooted. Only after the separation of Norway from Denmark in 1814 is it possible to point to a literature that is unambiguously Norwegian; its roots, of course, reach back more than 1,000 years into the pagan Norse past.

In its evolution Norwegian literature became intertwined with Icelandic and then with Danish literatures. A distinctively Norwegian literature had its origins in the work of the dramatist Henrik Wergeland (1808–45), who in his passionate, revolutionary poetry and oratory engendered the age of “national Romanticism” in Norway. By the end of the 19th century, however, Norwegian literature—particularly by virtue of the achievements of Henrik Ibsen—occupied an influential position in Western literature. Twentieth-century Norwegian writers of note include Knut Hamsun and Sigrid Undset, both winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.