Grieg wrote 181 songs; of these, one is no longer extant; another thirtyfour remained, either complete or in sketches, only in manuscript until the majority were published in the Grieg Gesamt-Ausgabe in 1990 and 1991. There are also fifty-eight works for mixed or male-voice choir and for solo voice with choir. Thus, excluding folk-song arrangements, Grieg composed more vocal music than piano and chamber works together. This alone would make the songs especially noteworthy. Add to it that they were written throughout his life (from op. 2 to op. 70), show all the high and low points in his development as a composer, and reflect his innermost feelings – ‘written with my life-blood’, as he frequently described several of them – and they become a most crucial part of his musical oeuvre. Yet if one were to ask most non-Scandinavian singers to name some of his songs, few could probably list more than half a dozen, and of these it is likely that at least one or two would not be known as Grieg wrote them, thanks – or rather, no thanks – to the treatment many of them have received from publishers and translators.

In the history of music Norway is unusual. It has a long tradition of folk music of great variety peculiar to itself, which has had a major influence on Norwegian art music and is of some antiquity. Nils Grinde has said, ‘A study of primitive cultures in our own time makes it tempting to assume that there had existed forms of primitive song … in our Stone Age’, but there is no absolute evidence for this.

The Vikings had many words that referred to the practice of music, and throughout the sagas there are references to singing and to musical instruments. A number of early writers and chroniclers, travelling in Scandinavia between the sixth and the eleventh centuries, mention (frequently in disparaging terms) music being used at various events, so while it is certain that music of all sorts played a part at least in special occasions, the standard of performance apparently often left much to be desired. In Beowulf, however, set in southern Scandinavia in the fifth and sixth centuries, we read that all music was valued highly and there is a mention at the court of King Hrothgar of ‘a fellow of the king's … whose tongue gave gold to the language, … wrought a new lay’.