If we look over the field of Norwegian translation of Shakespeare, the impression we get is not one to inspire awe. The translations are neither numerous nor important. There is nothing to be compared with the German of Tieck and Schlegel the Danish of Foersom, or the Swedish of Hagberg.
But the reason is obvious. Down to 1814 Norway was politically and culturally a dependency of Denmark. Copenhagen was the seat of government, of literature, and of polite life. To Copenhagen cultivated Norwegians looked for their models and their ideals. When Shakespeare made his first appearance in the Danish literary world--Denmark and Norway--it was, of course, in pure Danish garb. Boye, Rosenfeldt, and Foersom gave to their contemporaries more or less satisfactory translations of Shakespeare, and Norwegians were content to accept the Danish versions. In one or two instances they made experiments of their own. An unknown man of letters translated a scene from _Julius Caesar_ in 1782, and in 1818 appeared a translation of _Coriolanus_. But there is little that is typically Norwegian about either of these--a word or a phrase here and there. For the rest, they are written in pure Danish, and but for the title-page, no one could tell whether they were published in Copenhagen or Christiania and Trondhjem.
In the meantime Foersom had begun his admirable Danish translations, and the work stopped in Norway. The building of a nation and literary interests of another character absorbed the attention of the cultivated world. Hauge's translation of _Macbeth_ is not significant, nor are those of Lassen thirty years later. A scholar could, of course, easily show that they are Norwegian, but that is all. They never succeeded in displacing Foersom-Lembcke.
More important are the Landsmaal translations beginning with Ivar Aasen's in 1853. They are interesting because they mark one of the most important events in modern Norwegian culture--the language struggle. Ivar Aasen set out to demonstrate that "maalet" could be used in literature of every sort, and the same purpose, though in greatly tempered form, is to be detected in every Landsmaal translation since. Certainly in their outward aim they have succeeded. And, despite the handicap of working in a language new, rough, and untried, they have given to their countrymen translations of parts of Shakespeare which are, at least, as good as those in "Riksmaal."