Lie was not content, however, to be "the poet of Nordland," as he at once had been named. His ambition was to be more national. In the broader realms of literary activity the giant figures of Ibsen and Björnson towered. They were deep in the problems of the day. How could he become national and modern? Instinct led him on in paths that unconsciously he had already trodden. In this nation of seafarers he was the first in modern literature to discover the coast-dwellers and to portray their struggles on the sea. His first book contained a description of a storm in northern waters that makes the reader hold his breath. In the volume of short stories, which in their scenes sweep along the western coast, and in _The Good Ship Future_ as well, there was a distinct odor of the sea. This was natural enough: he had spent his early years in Nordland and in Bergen, the centre of Norwegian shipping, and he loved the sea passionately. In his next novel, _The Pilot and his Wife_, he put to sea with sails hoisted to the top.
The critics apparently had not felt the sea-breezes in his first books; but in the last there blew such a lusty gale that all, both critics and public, sniffed its fresh and salty breath with keenest relish. The book was a success, which his previous novel had not quite been, and it marks the beginning of Lie's sane and natural realism as consciously applied, in its main problem, to a modern social question, making the story, in its essence, a novel of character, a psychological study of the relation of man and wife, and not primarily a novel of adventure, which assumption gave Lie the designation "novelist of the sea." The success of the book brought the author, in 1874, by vote of the Storting, a life stipend known as a "poet's salary," which recognition put him in a class with Ibsen and Björnson. The great honor seems to have had a depressing effect, for Lie now scored four failures in succession. He was back in Norway, trying to portray social phenomena of the capital city. The reviewers were most irritating and offensive, and he felt obliged temporarily to desert the field. With the novel _Rutland_ (1881), he returned to the sea. This story surpasses _The Pilot_ in every respect. The sea is described with the fondness of a lover. Like _The Pilot_, it also deals with a problem of the home, but what chiefly impressed the public in reading the book was that the seamen, that important element of the Norwegian people, had found an adequate interpreter.