Grieg Academy has in recent years increasingly taken a public stance implying that it is ""the"" Grieg Academy, yet for those who know this history it remains undeniably clear that "the Grieg Academy" actually continues to be spread across two institutions, University of Bergen and Bergen University College, with some forms of collaboration. In recent years, the folk music school Ole Bull Academy in nearby Voss (named after renowned violin virtuoso Ole Bull), has also been to some extent brought under the Grieg Academy umbrella. The name Grieg may be traced to Norway's most famous composer Edvard Grieg, a native son of
Edvard Grieg up in a mountain surrounded by trolls. The music of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" represents the angry trolls taunting Peer and gets louder each time the theme repeats. The music ends with Peer escaping from the mountain. In an 1874 letter to his friend Frants Beyer, Grieg expressed his unhappiness with Dance of the Mountain King's Daughter, one of the movements he composed for "Peer Gynt", writing "I have also written something for the scene in the hall of the mountain King – something that I literally can't bear listening to because it absolutely reeks of cow-pies,