Sigurd Ibsen

Sigurd Ibsen (23 December 1859 – 14 April 1930) was a Norwegian writer, lawyer and statesman, who served as the prime minister of Norway in Stockholm (1903–1905) and played a central role in the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905. Early life Ibsen was born in Christiania (now called Oslo), but grew up mostly in Germany and Italy. Being the only child of playwright Henrik Ibsen and his wife Suzannah Thoresen, he struggled all his life to meet his family's high expectations. Ibsen developed 'remarkably early', being able to read at the age of four and was fluent in Norwegian, German and Italian. Growing up however, Ibsen struggled to find friends who were Norwegian and his age, further complicated by the fact that his family was often deep in penury, and thus he appeared throughout his life to be impersonal to others who did not know him. He excelled in academics however, aiming to please both his parents and himself, and subsequently came top in his class for every subject including mathematics, which appears to have been a weak point of his. Adulthood After passing his matriculation exams, Ibsen received a doctorate in law at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1882. He founded a magazine, Ringeren, in which he published articles about the changing roles of monarchy and republicanism.