This year, Kilden Teater invites you to a very special experience under the starry sky in Fjæreheia. Just a stone's throw from the grave that inspired Henrik Ibsen to write our nation's most epic poem, you can now experience the premiere of the magnificent musical about Terje Vigen. The quarry exists because Hitler wanted to extract stone to build his third Reich. Now we're going back to the Napoleonic Wars.

The beginning of the 19th century was a tough period for the whole of Europe, but for our ancestors in southern Norway, the period was extra tough. The English grain blockade led to a regular famine, and with the poem about Terje Vigen, Henrik Ibsen honoured all the men and women who sacrificed blood and tears to save their families.

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We all know the first line. "There lived a strange gray-blasted one on the outermost, foggy island." Some visit the poem again and again. Others read it once in junior high school and forgot what it was really about. Our musical about Terje Vigen is both for you who love the poem - and for those who want to hear it for the first time.

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For what is it about Terje Vigen that makes some of us come back to him again and again, both as individuals and as a nation? The poem about Terje Vigen tells of a whole life of twenty minutes. Henrik Ibsen's language is rich and strict. With his uniquely sharp pen and insanely strong language economy, the author has managed to capture one of humanity's biggest dilemmas in a few lines. When Kilden has chosen to turn the poem into a musical, it is to make room for everything that is told between these lines.

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To dive into Terje Vigen's history is to dive into ourselves. Terje Vigen is forced to choose between revenge and forgiveness. A choice we all must make several times in life. Is it only through saving others that we can save ourselves?

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The music Ketil Bjørnstad has composed to order from Kilden, ranging from the simple parting to the epic and monumental. The composer himself sits behind the grand piano every night, along with a full band led by talented Bjørn Ole Rasch. Our own theater manager Birgit Amalie Nilssen is in charge. On stage, outstanding actors, singers and dancers are ready to give you an experience you will never forget.