Brand (play)

Brand is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is a verse tragedy, written in 1865 and first performed in Stockholm, Sweden on 24 March 1867.

Brand is a priest who accepts the consequence of his choices, and is deeply bound to doing the "right thing". He believes primarily in the will of man, and lives by the belief "all or nothing". To make compromises is therefore difficult, or questionable. Brand's beliefs render him lonely, because those around him, when put to the test, generally cannot or will not follow his example. He is a young idealist whose main purpose is to save the world, or at least people's souls, but his judgment of others is harsh and unfair.

The word brand means "fire" in Norwegian (in the spelling of Ibsen's lifetime, spelled "brann" today), Danish, Swedish, German and Dutch. However Brand, Brandt, Brant and similar names are also known as surnames in Scandinavia, Germany and other countries, derived from the Germanic personal name Brando ("sword").

Brand in the mountains confronts different kinds of people: a farmer traveling with his son, who does not dare to brave a glacier on behalf of his dying daughter; Einar, a young painter with an easy-going attitude, and his fiancée, Agnes; and finally, a fifteen-year-old girl, Gerd, who claims to know of a bigger church in the mountains and hunts for a great hawk.

Einar and Brand were in school together. Brand taunts Einar for portraying God as an old man, who "sees through his fingers"; Brand wants to envision God as a young, heroic saviour. He believes that people have become too sloppy about their sins and shortcomings, because of the dogma that Christ, through his sacrifice, cleansed humanity once and for all.

Brand vows to confront the mindsets he has just met: the lazy mind, the undisciplined mind, and the wild mind. He ponders humanity's purpose and what should be.

In the valley where he was born, Brand finds great famine and need. The bailiff distributes bread for the hungry, and Brand questions the need for it. Meanwhile, a mother tells of her husband who needs absolution because he killed one of his children rather than seeing him starve. Then he harmed himself. Nobody dares to venture the rough fjord, but Brand goes in a boat and, to his surprise, Agnes follows him. Together, Brand and Agnes sail across the fjord, and the man receives absolution. A couple of farmers demand that he stay with them as their priest. Brand is reluctant to do this, but they use his own words against him, and he gives in.

Agnes tells of an "inner world being born" in one of Ibsen's best known soliloquies. She renounces Einar and chooses Brand. In the end of the second act, we meet Brand's mother, and learn that he grew up under the glacier, in a dreary place with no sun.