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 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