ABSTRACT
A traditional biography of the life and letters of the Danish-Norwegian playwright, moralist and historian Ludvig Holberg would begin with his birth on 3 December 1684 in Bergen, a thrifty city of merchants and fishermen well sheltered in the deep fjords on the west coast of Norway. Turning to Holberg's personal life, his early biography would look rather gloomy: His father died before Holberg was two years old; later the same year a fire destroyed the family's home in the better part of the city; and when Holberg was 10 his mother died. One of the constant features of Holberg's writings is his ridicule of pedantry. Another deliberate absolutist policy had been centralization of all political and economic power and the concomitant career opportunities in the royal residence of Copenhagen. Holberg received a salaried position at the University as professor of metaphysics and logic. As a professor of metaphysics and logic he neglected his lectures as much as possible.
