ABSTRACT
In an account of student life in Kristiania in the 1860s, a high-spirited pastiche went “Read Kierkegaard, and you’ll regret it; don’t read him, and you’ll also regret it.”2 The quotation reflects a duality experienced in the encounter with Kierkegaard’s authorship. One could easily elevate this ambivalence to a general level, letting it stand for Kierkegaard’s effect on Norway. On the one hand, he was celebrated and feted in mimetic passages like the one above; drinking bouts were arranged with toasting and speeches in woman’s honor, following the pattern of the “Symposium” in Stages on Life’s Way-altogether, there was pure joy at the universal spiritual power that had manifested itself in the Nordic countries. But in Norway, Kierkegaard also had a religious fate, primarily as a consequence of The Moment and the Church controversy of 1854-55, a battle that branded many of the young generation for the rest of their lives and that directly affected the social and cultural debate, partly with (soul-shaking) consequences. If there is any central focus in this article, it will precisely be the unpredictable and deeply disturbing figure Kierkegaard represents for Norway.
