Culture of Norway for his plays, as the first of these were awarded after he published his last play in 1899, playwright Henrik Ibsen is probably the most famous figure in Norwegian literature. Ibsen wrote plays such as "Peer Gynt", "A Doll's House", "Hedda Gabler", and "The Lady from the Sea". Other famous Norwegian writers from the realistic era include Jonas Lie and Alexander Kielland, who are along with Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Henrik Ibsen regarded as the "four greats" of Norwegian literature. Also of importance to the Norwegian literary culture is the Norse literature, and in particular the works of Snorri Sturluson, as
Peer Gynt Hegel, his publisher, with his plan for the play: it would be "a long dramatic poem, having as its principal a part-legendary, part-fictional character from Norwegian folklore during "recent" times. It will bear no resemblance to "Brand", and will contain no direct polemics or anything of that kind." He began to write "Peer Gynt" on 14 January, employing a far greater variety of metres in its rhymed verse than he had used in his previous verse plays "Brand" (written 1865) or "Love's Comedy" (written 1862). The first two acts were completed in Rome and the third in Casamicciola on the