For the fourth, final and undoubtedly most propitious time in his career, Grieg's song-writing genius was matched with great Norwegian verse. The lyricism of Garborg's Haugtussa, with its descriptions of nature and country life, was of the genre that Grieg understood best and to which he responded most successfully. The innate musicality of the landsmål language especially appealed to him, and it is no small miracle that Garborg's finest work should also have found the composer at the summit of his powers as a song-writer, a combination which culminated in one of the greatest song-cycles of the nineteenth century.

Grieg first appears to have come across the work of Arne Garborg (1851–1924) in 1893, when Beyer sent him a copy of the novel Fred (Peace), for which Grieg wrote to thank him: ‘Dear Frants! Thank you for Garborg's Fred! It is a brilliant piece of work, a reflected image held out in front of the countryman. But I wonder if he saw himself in the mirror?’In so wondering, Grieg was very perceptive, for most of Garborg's work reflected himself and his own feelings, not least Fred.

Arne Garborg was born near Stavanger. Although he never graduated, he studied at the university in Christiania and was at various times a teacher, journalist, writer and linguist. He was a great enthusiast for landsmål and the leader of the movement in his time, continuing and extending the work begun by Aasen and Vinje. He translated into landsmål many great works by, amongst others, Homer, Shakespeare, Moliere and Goethe, and he saw the language become accepted when its use was permitted in schools in 1879 and when, by 1892, it had become a compulsory subject for teacher training. Apart from the landsmål movement, Garborg was concerned with many aspects of contemporary life – the plight of the country students in the city, religious and political matters – and his ever-changing subject matter reflects the ever-changing attitudes in Norwegian culture at the end of the 1880s. In 1887 he married a fellow writer, Hulda Bergersen, and moved back to the rural area near Stavanger, to Jaren, the region which provides the natural background to Haugtussa.