Bergen, which sits like a Norwegian Rome on seven hills looking out to the gray North Sea, has given the world famous artists, but none more colorful than the lad who dedicated his life to bringing to the people of Europe and America an appreciation of Norse folk music. This is the story of that boy and how from bitter struggle he emerged a great man as well as a great composer.

The world knows how well Edvard Grieg, musical genius of the 19th century, succeeded in his life's purpose. The growing popularity of his strange and haunting music, so admired by the American composer Edward MacDowell that he dedicated two of his greatest works, the Norse and the Keltic sonatas, to the Norwegian impressionist, is proof of that success. Who in America does not know Anitra's Dance and In the Hall of the Mountain King from the Peer Gynt suites? Who has not thrilled to the robust rhythms of the March of the Dwarfs and the Bridal Procession Passes, to the poignant phrases of To Spring and the wistful beauty of Solvejg's Song? Here, in this biography of Edvard Grieg for young people, is contained the story of great and beautiful music and how it came to be written.

Here, too, is the story of a magnificent land and a people of genius. Grieg's country is the land of the Vikings, fierce warriors, fearless explorers, passionate lovers of poetry and music. It is the land of Leif Ericsson, who (as Eric the Red's Saga tells us) was swept out of his course on his way to Greenland to lands "of which he previously had no knowledge" to discover Vinland in America four centuries before the coming of Columbus to the New World.

We get to know the sights and sounds, yes, and the smells, of Grieg's homeland. We meet the persons Grieg knew and loved. We walk with the boy Edvard and his grandfather along the Old German Wharf of Bergen, where the harbor is always crowded with barges, fishing smacks, and little coastwise steamers. We wander into the clamor and stench of the Fishmarket. With the rest of the family — father, mother, brother, and sister — we row out to watch the St. John's bonfires on Midsummer's Eve from an island village off the coast of Bergen. We listen to Nurse's tales of elves and giants, dwarfs and trolls, homespun tales of peasant life and far-fetched fancies of lands "east o' the sun and west o' the moon."

We eat rodgrot with the kindly fisherfolk of Rissen, visit the Haunted Mountains and the fair at Iskoe. We meet the great violinist Ole Bull, recently returned from America, and listen, almost as bewitched as Edvard himself, to the hair-raising tales of "Norse Ole's" adventures in the wild Mississippi country of that day. We meet Frants Beyer, Grieg's faithful and understanding friend. We grow very fond of Nina, the composer's wife, who walks with quiet dignity and sweetness through this story.

We visit Paris, Berlin, London, Rome, Copenhagen, Leipzig, The Hague, Amsterdam, Christiana (modern Oslo) — all the art centers of Europe, in fact. We watch a nervous, excited man, as short and stocky as a Norwegian brownie, conducting the great orchestras of Europe. We listen as he plays his own compositions with inimitable composer's touch. We thrill to Nina's lovely voice for which every one of Grieg's 150 songs was written.

We meet the people who were Edvard's and Nina's friends: the Norwegian artists Nordraak, Svendsen, Ibsen, Bjornson; the great Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky; Franz Liszt, the great Hungarian; Hans Christian Andersen, genial Danish poet and writer of fairy tales; Percy Grainger from Australia.

It is crammed full of high adventure and gay living, this story of Edvard Grieg. It is a colorful cavalcade of important and exciting people moving sedately or prankishly according to their natures before a magnificent backdrop where figures of the illustrious dead and scenes of fjeld and fjord are woven into the tapestry.

From the dust jacket