Henrik Ibsen is known as one of the four great Norwegian writers, and his poem "Terje Vigen" ranks among his notable works. The poem is believed to have been inspired by verbal accounts that Ibsen got during the time he lived in Grimstad in his youth. Verbal accounts about the hardships the people in the area had to suffer during the Napoleonic wars, when British ships sieged Norwegian ports. The blockade lasted from 1807 to 1814, and brought poverty to Norway. A poverty which caused people to start dying from starvation. The dire circumstances even compelled many impoverished Norwegians to row over to Denmark to get food, in order to save themselves and their families from starvation. Many of whom were captured and imprisoned. This forms well-known historical facts. The poem revolves around these historical facts. It tells a tale about how the common and poor Norwegians were impacted by these events. In the poem, Terje Vigen must row to Denmark in order to provide the life-saving food his family needs. But as he is about to arrive home in Norway on his way back, he is captured by a patrolling ship, and taken prisoner in England. Terje Vigen spends five years in prison, and when he gets back to Norway afterwards, he learns what has happened to his family while he was in prison.Later in the poem, Terje Vigen encounters the captain of the ship that took him captive, and Terje gets a chance to take revenge for the losses and grievances the imprisonment imposed on him. Though this poem is based on real life events, there exists no solid proof that a man named Terje Vigen ever existed who did all the things accounted for in the poem. The poem must therefore, even if it is based on knowledge of real-life events, be categorized as a fictional work of literature.But even if this work of literature remains a fictional one, it nonetheless provides an opportunity to imagine how life was for some of the people impacted by this event in history. And if we further keep in mind that life in Norway, for the majority of the population, throughout centuries has been a life of mere subsistence, we can let ourselves be persuaded that this poem not only provides an artistic rendition of the life and events of the possibly fictitious Terje Vigen and those taking place in the poem in particular, but paints a picture of life as it historically has been for many Norwegians in general.