Abstract
The article discusses the uproar which resulted from the decision to translate Henrik Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt (1867) from one official written Norwegian language (riksmål/bokmål) to the other (landsmål/nynorsk) in 1947/48 in connection with a theatre production which had its premiere in March 1948. Many Norwegians regard Peer Gynt as the greatest work of their national literature, and therefore many of them considered it close to sacrilegious to stage it in nynorsk, the language which Ibsen did not use and, in fact, strongly disliked.
Some Norwegians protested vehemently against translating the drama to nynorsk, while others found the idea perfectly acceptable. The article thus offers an interesting example of a split between two language cultures within one nation.