Peer Gynt Gynt" was written in Danish, the common written language of Denmark and Norway since the Dano-Norwegian union and throughout Ibsen's lifetime. The language was usually referred to as Danish in Denmark and as Norwegian in Norway, although it was essentially the same written language, and is therefore often called Dano-Norwegian. Due to its basis in Norwegian folktales, the play uses a few Norwegianisms in its vocabulary and idiom, but is otherwise written in a language identical to standard Danish. "Peer Gynt" was originally published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal in Copenhagen and targeted at both the Danish and the Norwegian
Peer Gynt (Grieg) ""Peer Gynt" progresses slowly," he wrote to a friend in August 1874, “and there is no possibility of having it finished by autumn. It is a terribly unmanageable subject.” "The more he saturated his mind with the powerful poem, the more clearly he saw that he was the right man for a work of such witchery and so permeated with the Norwegian spirit," his wife wrote of him and his music. Even though the première was a "triumphant success", it prompted Grieg to complain bitterly that the Swedish management of the theatre had given him specifications as to the duration