Island. The painting is called The Pilot from Haaø Island. This painting is placed in Ibsen's house in Grimstad, and is owned by Grimstad Museum. Reception In his biography of Ibsen, Edmund Gosse indicates: "He was perhaps momentarily saved by the publication of Terje Vigen, which enjoyed a solid popularity. This is the principal and, indeed, almost the only instance in Ibsen's works of what the Northern critics call "epic," but what we less ambitiously know as the tale in verse. Terje Vigen will never be translated successfully into English, for it is written, with brilliant lightness and skill, in an adaptation of the Norwegian ballad-measure which it is impossible to reproduce with felicity in our language." "Among Ibsen's writings Terje Vigen is unique as a piece of pure sentimentality carried right through without one divagation into irony or pungency. It is the story of a much-injured and revengeful Norse pilot, who, having the chance to drown his old enemies, Milord and Milady, saves them at the mute appeal of their blue-eyed English baby. Terje Vigen is a masterpiece of what we may define as the "dash-away-a-manly- tear" class of narrative. It is extremely well written and picturesque, but the wonder is that, of all people in the world, Ibsen should have written it." The poem and the character of Terje Vigen has become a core icon of Norwegian coastal culture and a sense of a national identity. Every year the poem is read at festivals and included in dance and music performances. Best known are the wood boat festival at Risør and the Ibsen festival in Grimstad. Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK, broadcasts on the radio a reading of Terje Vigen on New Year's Eve at midnight. Notable adaptations In 1917, Victor Sjöström directed an eponymous Swedish film based on the poem, retitled A Man There Was in English-speaking territories. A German remake of 1933, Das Meer ruft aka The Lake Calls, starred Heinrich George and was set on a fictional Baltic island under Russian occupation during the First World War. The Norwegian composer Guttorm Guttormsen wrote his Terje Vigen for bass soloist and orchestra in 1977. In 1994/5, Jon Mostad wrote music for Terje Vigen for recitation, choir (SSA) and symphonic wind band. Film maker Torstein Blixfjord directed a major multimedia adaptation in Yokohama, Japan in November 2006. The production involved a film projected across five cinema screens set