KrISTIJONAS DONelAITIS AND PeTTer DASS – PArAllel PIONeerS IN lITHuANIAN AND NOrweGIAN POeTrY

Hedmark University College Ringgata 175 NO-2318 Hamar E-mail: vistdal@online.no Kristijono Donelaicio Metai Skandinavijoje nėra gerai žinomas literatūros kūrinys. Jis nebuvo isverstas į Skandinavijos kalbas iki 1991 metų, kai pasirodė Lennarto Kjellbergo Metų vertimas į svedų kalbą. Straipsnyje siekiama nustatyti K. Donelaicio Metų ir Skandinavijos poezijos sąsajas. Būtų sunku įrodyti rysius su lietuvių poeto amžininkais, taciau galima įžvelgti ryskių netiesioginių analogijų su tam tikrais kūriniais, ypac su XVII a. Norvegijos literatūros pavyzdžiais, tai yra iki K. Donelaicio laikmecio sukurtais kūriniais. Ryskiausias pavyzdys – Petterio Dasso epinė poema Siaurės trimitas (Nordlands Trompet) (1678–1696, isleistas po autoriaus mirties 1739 m.). Kaip ir K. Donelaitis, P. Dassas (1647–1707) buvo liuteronų pastorius, kūres ir baroko himnus, ir topografine poeziją. P. Dasso poetinė duoklė gimtajam Arktandrijos regionui – svarbiausias Norvegijos literatūros kūrinys, sukurtas iki romantizmo laikų. Daugeliu atžvilgiu sį kūrinį galima sulyginti su K. Donelaicio Metais: abi poemos žymi siuolaikinės literatūros pradžią Norvegijoje ir Lietuvoje. K. Donelaitis kūrė savo gimtąja kalba, P. Dassas – danų kalba. P. Dasso gyvenamuoju laikotarpiu Danija ir Norvegija buvo vieninga valstybė, kurioje danų kalba buvo bendra rasytinė kalba. Vis dėlto nuo XVII a. pabaigos vis daugiau autorių įtraukdavo norvegų kalbos elementus į danų kalbą. Būtent P. Dassas ir laikomas sio proceso pradininku. Sukūres epine poemą Siaurės trimitas, jis įrodė – kaip ir K. Donelaitis – literatūrinį savo gimtosios kalbos potencialą ir nutiesė kelią nacionalinei literatūrai ateities kartoms. Verta atkreipti dėmesį ir į gausias Siaurės trimito ir Metų paraleles perteikiant kūrinio nuotaiką ir issakant leitmotyvus, kurie kuriami vadovaujantis bendru estetiniu skoniu ir panasiomis literatūros priemonėmis. Siaurės trimitas yra rimuota topografinė panegirika, sueiliuota anapesto metru. Poemoje aprasomas kasdienis gyvenimas, gamtinės ir prekybinės Arktikos regionų sąlygos. Joje pateikiamas teminis vietovės, astronominių ir meteorologinių sąlygų aprasymas, fiksuojamos paukscių, žuvų ir banginių gyvenimo akimirkos, aprasomas žemės ūkis, turgavietės ir etniniai-kultūriniai ypatumai, tai yra gyvenimo tarp samių (ar lapių) būdas ir paprociai. Kaip ir K. Donelaitis, P. Dassas apraso žmones ir vietoves, įvairius kasdienius reikalus ir paprocius, derindamas pamaldumą su humoru. Si pasakojimo ypatybė būdinga abiem aptariamiems poetams. Pagrindinė tema P. Dasso poemoje – sezoninė veikla, ypac susijusi su žvejyba ir prekyba, o K. Donelaitis didžiausią dėmesį skiria žemės ūkio darbams. Kaip ir K. Donelaicio Metuose, P. Dasso Siaurės trimite vaizduojamos įdomios svencių ir iskilmių akimirkos – siuose kūriniuose esama burleskiskų vestuvių ceremonijų aprasymų. Abiejose poemose itin daug dėmesio skiriama pauksciams. Lietuvoje avasario pasiuntiniais laikomi gandrai ir lakstingalos. Siaurės Norvegijoje sie pauksciai nežinomi, todėl ir neaprasyti P. Dasso poemoje, bet cia randame Arktikos jūrų paukscius pufinus ir gagas. Pabrėžiama sių paukscių mėsos, kiausinių ir plunksnų svarba kaip istisus simtmecius gyvaves pragyvenimo saltinis. Ir Metai, ir Siaurės trimitas laikomi svariu indėliu į Europos literatūrą. Abiejose poemose galima įžvelgti panasumų aprasant gamtą, gyvenimo sąlygas ir kultūrą. Nepaisant reiksmingų gyvenimo būdo ir geografinių sąlygų skirtumų (Baltijos regione vyrauja laukai ir miskai, o Arktikos regiono pakrantes skalauja jūros), sias poemas vienija daug panasumų.

Kristijonas Donelaitis' Seasons is no well-known piece of literature in Scandinavia and only experts of Baltic culture are familiar with its author.The poem was not translated into Scandinavian language until 1991, when Lennart Kjellberg's illustrated Swedish translation was published. 1Parts of The Seasons also exist in an Icelandic translation from the 1980ies by the outstanding linguist Jörundur Hilmarsson; 2 unfortunately he was unable to finish it before his premature death and it remains unpublished.
The purpose of this paper is to identify links between The Seasons and Scandinavian poetry.As a preliminary remark it must be confessed that contemporary connections are hardly demonstrable, but there are striking older parallels, especially in Norwegian literature from the 17th century, i.e. before Donelaitis' lifetime.

COnTeMPORARY SCAndinAViAnS OF dOnelAiTiS'
The 18th century was a fertile period in Scandinavian literature, especially in Denmark, where neoclassical poetry, drama, and the essay flourished, influenced by French and English trends.The central author was the Norwegian born Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754), well known also in German states, and Donelaitis was probably acquainted with his comedies as well as with his historical and philosophical treatises.However, Holberg's literary genres have few affinities with The Seasons, although common features of universal character are easily found.
Two other prolific Norwegians on the Danish literary scene in the 18th century were Peter Christopher Stenerson (1723-1766) and Christian Braunmann Tullin (1728-1765).Stenerson was the leading ode composer of the century, decisively influenced by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock.Following him, Stenerson promoted antique metres instead of end rhyme in contemporary poetry, an idea that similarly appealed to Donelaitis in his use of hexameters in The Seasons.One of the main merits of Stenerson's was the renewal of wedding poetry, especially with his brilliant "Ode til Brudgom og Brud" (Ode to Bridegroom and Bride, composed in 1754), inspired by Klopstock's "Die Braut" (1749), and a supreme contribution to Dano-Norwegian poetry in the 18th century. 3But the fact that it was not published until 1769 makes it unlikely to consider the poem a source of inspiration of the wedding section in Donelaitis' Seasons.
On the other hand, Christian Braunmann Tullin's internationally renowned wedding poem "Majdagen" (A Day in May, 1758) -admired by many, including Gotthold Ephraim Lessing -might have reached Donelaitis' ears, as it was published in a German translation immediately after the Danish original.Its vernal mood and idyllic style can certainly be compared with the spring section in The Seasons, for example the euphoric description of the blackbird, the nightingale of the North, along with other winged messengers of light and lust.But these features are of more general than specific character, and may well be ascribed to Donelaitis', Stenerson's, and Tullin's common antique models and also their contemporaries, such as Alexander Pope, James Thomson, Albrecht Haller or Christian Gellert. 4 The best Scandinavian parallel to Donelaitis' Seasons is, however, found in Norwegian poetry from the 17th century.Scandinavian literature was presumably not much known in the Baltics then, whether in original or in translation.Nevertheless, literary activity was considerable in all Nordic countries, but the publications were predominantly time-bound and occasional; few poetic works from that era possess lasting value.In fact, only a couple are still widely read and admired as masterpieces of Baroque poetry from the second part of the century: the Dane Thomas Kingo's numerous hymns and the Norwegian Petter Dass' great epic poem Nordlands Trompet (The Trumpet of Nordland, ca 1678-1696), published posthumously in 1739.

PeTTeR dASS And tHE tRuMPEt oF noRDlAnD
Petter Dass (1647-1707) was, like Donelaitis, a Lutheran minister and the foremost Norwegian poet of his generation, writing both Baroque hymns and topographical poetry.Petter Dass' poetic tribute to his native Arctic regionalias Arctandria -is the most important pre-romantic literary work in Norway.Its position is parallel to Donelaitis' Seasons: both poems constitute the beginning of modern literature in Norway and Lithuania respectively -Donelaitis in his native language, Petter Dass in Danish.Further, the two poems are closely related in mood and choice of motifs.Finally, the poets' common explicit purpose of their works is the praising of God's creation.Accordingly, a religious conception dominates the perspective, but piety is no obstacle to worldly pleasures, such as meals, social gatherings and markets, all of which contribute to the realistic impression of the poems.
In Petter Dass' lifetime Denmark and Norway made up a union; the two countries constituted a dual monarchy for more than four centuries until 1814.
Denmark was the dominating part of the union, not at least culturally, and after the Reformation Norwegian had gone out of use as a written language.It was replaced by Danish, which actually survived the Dano-Norwegian union as the leading publishing language in Norway until the beginning of the 20ieth century.
However, there were exceptions, from the late 17th century an increasing number of authors augmented Danish with Norwegian style, vocabulary and phraseology -in fact a natural amendment considering the consanguinity of the languages, comparable to the kinship between Lithuanian and Latvian.Modern Norwegian is the result of this prolonged process of lingual contact with Danish.
The pioneer of this process was exactly Petter Dass.His Trumpet of Nordland abounds in Norwegian words, names and expressions; a whole section is written solely in his local dialect. 5In this way he demonstrated -just like Donelaitis -the literary potential of his mother tongue and paved the way for the national literature of future generations.
Conspicuous are also The Trumpet's numerous parallels with The Seasons in moods and motifs, modelled by common aesthetic taste and literary patterns.However, there was no immediate affinity between the poets; Petter Dass lived and wrote more than two generations before Donelaitis, and although Petter Dass' Trumpet was published when Donelaitis was 25 years old, it is unlikely that he got acquainted with the poem, to say nothing of being influenced by it, since it was not translated in his lifetime.
The Trumpet was translated into German by the East Prussian author Ludwig Passarge 6 in 1897 and into English by the Norwegian-American professor Theodore Jorgensen 7 in 1954, the latter's translation is quoted in the following presentation.Passarge   an instructive monograph, still worth reading. 8His impressive translation of The Trumpet, introduced with a comprehensive presentation of the poet and the poem, is of particular interest in this context, as he three years earlier had published his translation of The Seasons. 9 Passarge was the first -and so far the only one -to highlight similarities between the two poems.

PeTTeR dASS' ViTA
Petter Dass' father, Peter Dundas, was a Scottish merchant of Dundee.He emigrated from Scotland to Norway about 1630 to escape the troubles of the Presbyterian Church.Dundas settled first in Bergen, then the commercial and cultural centre of the country, but established himself later as a fishmonger in the island of Herøy, on the north coast of Norway.The name Dass is a Norwegianized abbreviation of Dundas.
Dundas married a Norwegian woman, who gave birth to Petter Dass in 1647.In 1660 the son was sent to school in Bergen, and in 1665 he went to pursue university studies in Copenhagen, the capital of the dual monarchy.Due to poverty, he was forced to break off the studies after only two years.After his return to Norway, he became a tutor and later a minister near his birthplace, and got married there in 1672.In 1689 he was appointed as parson at Alstahaug, the wealthiest parish in the north of Norway, including several neighbouring districts.He remained there for the rest of his life with something of the honours and responsibilities of a bishop, brought up his two sons, and wrote a great many reams of verse.The materials for his biography are numerous; he was regarded with universal curiosity and admiration.
Petter Dass was a highly respected and beloved prelate, admired not only for his poetry, but also for innumerable hazardous crossings of open sea and stormy fjords to serve his distant parishioners.He was deeply mourned after his death; as a sign of grief many fishing vessels kept a black cloth on their sail for decades after his death.
A portrait, painted in middle age, shows him in canonicals, with a face full of fire and vigour.The accompanying copperplate engraving is a reproduction of this portrait.Several modern-day statues and busts of Petter Dass have been erected in Norway, including a relief in the Bergen Cathedral.
Petter Dass is probably the most legendary character among non-fictional Norwegians in folk tales and traditions from the 18th and 19th centuries.Hence he was a favourite subject of folklore; there is, for instance, a legend of how he fooled the devil to carry him to Copenhagen to preach for the king.Ludwig Passarge links him to the Faustian tradition; like Dr. Faustus he possessed unlimited knowledge picked up from the Black Book, enabling him to conjure up spirits and ghosts. 10is writings passed in manuscript from hand to hand, only a few of them were printed during his lifetime.The Trumpet of Nordland, his greatest and most famous poem, was not published until 1739.Some of his hymns are still in use; the most popular is "Herre Gud dit dyre Navn og AEre" (Good Lord, Thy Precious Name and Glory).
Especially in Norway, but also in Denmark, his poetry had a broad popular appeal for centuries.In Passarge's lifetime his position and popularity in Norway was comparable with that of Sir walter Scott or Robert Burns in Scotland; Norwegian fishermen adored his songs with similar enjoyment as Venetian fishermen singing the stanzas of Tasso. 11ils Magne Knudsen argues that Dass has had a greater impact on the Norwegian people than most other poets."For three centuries he has strongly influenced our imaginative range, our humour, our religiosity, our reservoir of images and expressions." 12His rhythms echo in newer Norwegian folk poetry, whose style and fashion point to Petter Dass as an ideal and a model.He has also inspired later poets and composers, including Edvard Grieg, who set music to several of Petter Dass' poems.
A Petter Dass Museum was established at Alstahaug in 1966.A new museum building was opened there in 2007, 300 years after the poet's death; a centre for information, study, research and inspiration for artistic creative work.Since 1983, the poet has also been honoured with a biennial Petter Dass festival at Alstahaug. 13

COMPARiSOn OF tHE tRuMPEt oF noRDlAnD And tHE sEAsons
The Trumpet of Nordland is a versified topographical encomium in anapaestic meters, composed in several stages between about 1678 and 1696.It is an expressive and vivid description of Arctandria; its natural features, its trades, its advantages and its drawbacks, depicted in dancing verse of breathless kind, and full of humour, fancy, wit and quaint learning, abounding in queer turns of thought and fine homely fancies.
Passarge emphasizes the youthfulness and popular tone, pervading not only The Trumpet, but also Dass' religious poetry, including the hymns."whereas his great contemporary Thomas Kingo somehow always puts on his Sunday best when writing, Petter Dass is always wearing working clothes." 14ust like Donelaitis' Seasons, the title of Petter Dass' poem is probably not from the poet's own pen.Some middleman has more likely invented "Trumpet" for commercial purposes and it was then sanctioned by a series of subsequent editors.
Although the poem abounds with digressions, it has a clear structure, consisting of an introductory section and two main parts describing everyday life, natural and commercial conditions of the Arctic regions.It begins with a general, thematic description of location, astronomical and meteorological conditions, faunas, agriculture, market places and ethno-cultural peculiarities, i.e. manners and modes of living among the Sami or Lapp people.
In the second special part, the landscape of the North is depicted in detail during the poet's voyage from parish to parish.This gives the poem an itinerant structure and a picaresque character, resembling one of its models, the Dane Claus Lyschander's rhyme chronicle about Greenland, with which The Trumpet also shares stylistic and rhythmic characteristics, including the anapaestic metre, resembling that of Medieval Latin sequences. 15Petter Dass' chronicle is all the same easier, more independent, fluent and elaborate than Lyschander's, as is vividly demonstrated already in the famous opening allocution: i greet you, my nordland's inhabitants, friends, From host of the house to the poor hired man, be greeted my people of nordland!My greetings to you who are drying the fish And salting the cod in the barrel to ship, be greeted each man and each woman!(P.7) Just as in Donelaitis' poem, piety mingled with humour is a characteristic feature in Dass' description of people and places, matters and manners.At this point Passarge accentuates another important similarity of the two poems: a deliberate emphasis on nature and culture as integrated and not separate spheres.Passarge claims that this is most manifest in the presentation of human feelings, actions and conduct faced with nature: Mere description of nature leaves the reader unaffected, but he is engaged as soon as nature is related to man.what is not somehow imbued with, or appropriated by human spirit, is lifeless. 16Dass and Donelaitis do not just depict the nature to which they introduce the reader; instead they stage people there, let them act in ways that demonstrate what kind of impression this nature makes on them.Thus nature in both poems is enlivened by means of individualization and personification as central instruments.

SeASOnAl MOTiFS
Unlike Donelaitis' temporally structured Seasons, Petter Dass' Trumpet is chiefly thematically organised.However, one pervasive theme there is seasonal activities connected especially to fishery and trade, whereas Donelaitis' poem is primarily preoccupied with agriculture.Dass appeals first and foremost to his maritime muse -only the free ocean releases his spirit, as Passarge puts it. 17onelaitis dwells in detail on animals' and people's experience of each part of the year, in Lithuania clearly separated in four seasons, whereas in Northern Norway it is more appropriate to operate with only two seasons, expressed as follows by Petter Dass, beginning with the winter: The winter will bring a continual night; it comes as a pall on the wilderness quite; The murkiness stays unrelenting.The farmer has then no agreeable lifein darkness to bed and in darkness to rise -One night with the other conversing.(P.16) In Arctandria, fish is the very condition of life; as a consequence various kinds of fish dominate each season of the year -primarily cod, saithe, herring and halibut.
The fish in the water our livelihood is; if he stays away, then our lives are amiss; We sigh in distress and in terror.(P.33) Petter Dass elevates the cod to "King of the fish" -caught and dried on racks in late winter.It is called torsk in Scandinavian, corresponding to German Dorsch and Russian трески (treski), which means 'dried fish', i.e. stock fish, stoccafisso, bacalao etc. it hangs on the rocks, and it fills all the stores; Praise God that this fish comes each year to our shores; it feeds both the wives and the husbands.
In spring the stock fish was transported from the northern shores to Bergen, where it was sold to fishmongers in exchange for goods and groceries.
O cod, you are truly our livelihood nigh; You bring us from bergen the much needed rye And feed nordland's fishermen amply.(P.33) when the fishermen returned home from Bergen, winter's darkness had given way to uninterrupted sunshine until the end of summer: On the darkest and dimmest of midsummer days, The sun will at midnight send out its bright rays And glow on the western horizon.
O summer! delightful to young and to old, When night is replete with a glory untold, And birds praise their loving creator!(P.17) Summer is occupied with saithe fishery, saithe or pollack mostly caught for domestic consumption, less for the trade markets.
How charming your play about midsummer time, When sun shines abundantly here in our clime!it must every northlander hearten.(P.43) The autumnal fish is herring, salted in barrels and brought to the markets.
The mountaineer comes from the innermost fjord; He purchases herring for bark and for boards; He barters one kind for another.(P.40) The second most valuable fish after the cod is the big flatfish or flounder or halibut, which Petter Dass personifies as the "Queen of the sea".
You know that it makes a delicious meal, And gratefulness only a diner can feel, Whose plate God has blessed with the flounder.(P.41) You have not an equal 'mong fishes i trow; Your back is like raven, your breast is like snow; Much whiter than shells in the sunlight.(P.42) The name halibut (German Heilbutt) means 'holy fish', indicating religious or superstitious connotations, demonstrated in Norwegian fairy tales, where the halibut plays an important part as a generous helper of the poor.

eXPReSSiOnS OF ClASS diSTinCTiOn
In The Seasons, opposition between peasantry and nobility is repeatedly expressed and discussed, especially the mockery and exploitation of the farmers by the upper class.Donelaitis reports: Some plucked lordling often seems to laugh at peasants, And the fool, who smiles, despises their hard labors, As if he could keep his footing without peasants Or take pleasure in his cakes without their dung?Ah, what would lords do if they should lose their peasants, And if such poor people didn't bring their dung?Watch how easily, though, it would bend downward if like us, poor wretches, they should have to swallow Watery borscht and burnt porridge down their gizzards, Or to share with all of us the woes of serfdom.
In Norway there was practically no nobility; nonetheless class distinction existed to a considerable extent.Traders and buyers of food and fish exploited farmers and fishermen, not at least on the fish market in Bergen, dominated by mighty Hanseatic merchants -Bergen was for centuries the leading Hanseatic port in Scandinavia.Petter Dass accentuates distress and famine among indebted farmers in the wake of unsuccessful fishing combined with aggressive greed of corrupt creditors: 'Twas yeomen's old custom with neighbors to trade, but now must their trading with merchants be madein quicksand of debt stand the seller.What earnings are made in a season or two Are thrown to the merchant without much ado; The farmer is the slave of the trader.(P.82) The words serf and slave are figurative expressions in this context; since feudalism was never established in Norway, serfdom -unlike most other countries -did not exist there.
eTHniC ASPeCTS -THe lAPPS A further common feature in Donelaitis' and Petter Dass' poems is ethnic differences and opposition, in The Seasons related to German and French settlers in Lithuania.In Arctandria, however, there was no immigration in Petter Dass' time; instead he depicts in detail the indigenous inhabitants of the region, the Lapps or the nomadic Sami people, differing in decisive ways from their more sedentary fellow citizens: The lapps are a people of nature quite strange, Of body quite short, and on short legs they range, not unlike the dwarfs, i am thinking.
Of eye they are sharp, and severe is the mien; Of jaw they are long, and their features are lean; Their faces are tawny and brownish.(P.64) The livelihood of the Lapps, according to Petter Dass "the greatest of treasures", are the reindeer, driven between hibernation in the highlands and meadow pasture on the islands in summer: Their homes are set up among hillocks and rocks; They live in the mountains and keep there their flocks On paths quite unknown to all others.Yet they have a time in their calendar year When they come among us; they likely appear To trade and obtain their essentials.The day is midsummer, Saint John is the same; Then gather the lapps, with their reindeer quite tame, To be at the Midsummer market.(P.63) Dass is attentive to Sami belief and rites, such as awe for the respected bear: The lapp thinks the bear has the finest of meat; He eats it with joy but is very discreet -He leaves not a speck on the platter.The backbone and legbones he gathers with care And buries them as a religious affair -He sings, too, a song for the purpose.(P.69) As a clergyman, Petter Dass regrets Sami witchcraft, paganism and superstition, magic by means of which they control winds and waves, men and animals: it is to regret that the race of the lapps by heathenish fogs are more covered, perhaps, Than anyone else in this country.The pastors admonish in words and in threats, but one must admit, much as one it regrets, The lapps go the way of their fathers.(P.70) In practising their religion, the Lapps resort to shamanism in order to encounter and interact with the spirit world: He throws himself prostrate, the lapp, as if dead And falls in a swoon; you think life must have fled -He shows neither breathing nor motion.but when he at last does return to this life, He tells from far countries, their ways and their strife, And all he has seen in the spirit.(P.72-73)   what in Dass' poem is said about Finns, is actually meaning the Lapps.His description of the Lapps/Finns as mighty witches may have spread or even caused the belief that Finns -people of Finland -have magical powers, a theme which is known from Jack London's and Rudyard Kipling's works, and has been a belief among world's sailors. 18e WeddinG MOTiF Just like The Seasons, the greater part of The Trumpet is descriptions of necessities and concerns, toils and troubles of everyday life -on land and on sea, respectively.But in addition both poets give interesting glimpses of feasts and festivals -a burlesque and partly grotesque description of a wedding occupies one third of the chapter "Autumn" in The Seasons.
Similarly, Petter Dass describes a wedding over a couple of pages, but rather cursorily compared with Donelaitis' precious and detailed account including menus and music, dancing and dialogues.Petter Dass limits himself to a superficial summary: First drank they to God, to his honor they sang, A chorus of voices, all gathered, rang Through halls, as the custom demanded.Then drank they a toast to the king of the land, To queen and to prince by His Majesty's hand, Then bishop and gov'nor remembered.The whole wedding party was flush with the ale; They drank to the bottom and relished it well, And gaiety came with the drinking.A hum of discussion rose up from the crowd -The stories were dirty, the voices were loud; For such is the way of the country.(P.55) This is rather faded and featureless compared with Donelaitis' magnificent description, saturated with individual characteristics, whereas Petter Dass' Trumpet offers mainly a general overview focusing on just a few individual actors.
now the wedding guests, at their ease, having eaten And too generously quaffed their heavy draughts, Quite forgot to say their prayers, as Christians should, And like pigs of manor serf (a shame to tell it), Soon began to sing and squeal out swinish ditties.
Stepas told a lot of lies about fat mares, enskys sang the praises of his lordly oxen, And the rest, all playing foolish pranks, made merry.
They swapped tales, and the musicians rushed together, Playing the peasant melodies, now for the dance.Plyckius clashed the cymbals, Kubas worked the fiddle, žnairiuks, with his lips pulled sideways, trilled the fife.Soon, then, enskys, who had called the girls to join in, Urged them on to dance with the fine neighbor lads.Klisis, in his ugly boots, took hold of Tušė, And they danced and kicked about like lithuanians, Over the earthen floor … biRd MOTiFS Birds are central in both poems, endless flocks of wondrous warblers rejoicing at spring and new life -"and all of them praised God", as Donelaitis states: For now the winter's chills and frosts were at an end, And the enchanting spring wrought wonders everywhere.Ah, now in every place new life was all athrob; The air was filled with tunes of songsters on the wing.
Main messengers of spring in Lithuania are the stork and especially the nightingale, which warbles "queen-like amidst the other singing birds": All admire and all give praise to your good song, As for us all you warble miracles, nightingale!Your voice silences the organ and the cymbal.Violins and zither pause, ashamed, when you lift your sweet voice up and up, in simple song ...

Storks and nightingales are absent in
The Trumpet; they are practically unknown birds in Northern Norway.Instead, Dass presents seabirds like puffins and eider ducks, which have adjusted to the harsh Arctic climate, and through centuries, if not for millennia, have been an important part of livelihood, even commercially.Their meat and eggs were attractive food, and the down or the feathers were used in pillows and quilts or eiderdowns.
The down of the auk is the dearest in trade, Three times as expensive as others, 'tis said -All buyers will try to obtain it.(P.87) Sky-high nesting cliffs are crowded with seabirds -"as many as raindrops from sky", Dass asserts -their loud screams echo among the abrupt rocks and reach a deafening crescendo, like hundreds of symphony orchestras.The nests are accessible only by descending the cliffs with long ropes, an extremely risky undertaking: now whoso is daring -on daring is bent -On end of a rope down the mountain is sent To war with the mountain for booty.The man at the top must right trustworthy be; He lets down the other where bird's nests they see -Together they cover the mountain.The one who is lowered has difficult role; He walks to the nests, by the crag, to the hole And fills there his pockets and trousers.When all he has taken, he pulled is to top; He bulges with booty, he has quite a crop.elsewhere they continue their plunder.(P.112) Of special interest are the parrot-like puffins, nesting underground on the top of the cliffs.Their nests are unreachable for people; therefore special puffin dogs were trained to creep into the holes to catch the birds.
They fill up the mountains with circles of nests, And curious homes build the curious guests; The strangest of habits they show you.The auk-mother hatches but one single egg; She hides it in scree or in holes of the crag, So far in that man cannot reach it.but yeomen, who know what the seabirds will do, Are able to scheme what the auk-mothers rue; The men bring their dogs for the hunting.These dogs are of body both narrow and small; They into their innermost openings crawl, And pull the bird-mothers out with them.(P.85-86)

THe MOSK MAelSTROM
Petter Dass' Trumpet has given material to world literature through the description of the greatest tidal current in Europe, the mighty Mosk maelstrom or whirlpool, a tremendous stream flow comparable in power with the greatest rivers on Earth.For a long time it was believed to be the location of Homer's Charybdis in the Odyssey.Petter Dass was not the first to describe the current; he refers to one of his models, Hexaëmeron (posthumous 1661) by the Dane Anders Arrebo (1587-1637), but Dass explains about this natural phenomenon in an alternative and essentially more lively way, making it remind Passarge of Schiller's ballad "Der Taucher". 19Dass' account made the Mosk maelstrom famous and inspired imaginative tales of numerous writers, first in Denmark, whence its reputation spread to the rest of Europe and to The New world.The most renowned Non-Scandinavian contributors to the Mosk literature are Edgar Allan Poe with the short story "A Descent into the Maelstrom" (1841) and Jules Verne, in whose novel Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870) the submarine Nautilus is shipwrecked at Mosk.The impressive and dangerous current is also mentioned in Herman Melville's fateful novel Moby Dick (1851). 20Petter Dass' description of the "billowing seas" sounds as follows: They often like rapids in foam may be seen, And many onlookers amazed have been How waters could get such a fury.At full moon or, say, even when it is dark, 19 Op. cit., p. 24.20 www.folk.uio.no/thelofoten maelstrom.
A roaring is heard that is fearful and stark; Your back will get shivers of terror.Yes, sometimes so awful is ocean and speed, The land and the houses are quaking indeed, As if heavy thunder were roaring.And if it so happens that counterwinds blow, The waves will as high as the mountaintops flow And have nothing comparable elsewhere.Should anyone dare to attempt the sea then, He would not see near ones of dear ones again; His grave would be watery bottom.(P.106)

Conclusion
The major comparability of The Seasons and The Trumpet is their initialising impact on the literary tradition in their respective countries.Just as The Seasons was the starting point of Lithuanian literature, Norwegian literature was resumed with Petter Dass' Trumpet after several hundred years of hibernation.They are both major contributions to European literature, describing nature, living conditions and culture in relative proximity in ways that show their close affinity in spite of considerable differences of life and conditions in Baltic fields and forests and on Arctic seas and shores.