For tourists trekking through Norway, one of the biggest attractions lies just six miles south of Bergen-Edvard Grieg's last home, the villa Troldhaugen (or "Trolls' Hill" for those who do not speak Norwegian). The composer's ashes are in an urn lodged in one of the rocky recesses overlooking a fjord in his beloved Norway. And though some have said that you can never go home again, Grieg found a way to keep Norway close to his heart and at the core of his music. He was not the first Norwegian nationalist, but he came along at a time when Norway needed champions for its cause.

Grieg was brought up in middle-class Norway, in Bergen. And, although Norway had seceded from Denmark in 1814, Norwegian city-dwellers still valued all things Danish. Danish speech, traditions, and cultural outlook were the things they passed onto their children, and young Edvard got a heaping spoonful. Grieg went to study at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1858, the place that some people have labeled the epicenter of German Romanticism. Grieg attended the public concerts, hearing Clara Schumann play her husband Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto. He even heard Wagner's Tannhäuser. He left the Conservatory in 1862, unhappy with his experience there, and returned to his home. But, his native Norway, with its rich musical history, was still a mystery for Grieg, until the summer of 1864 when he vacationed with one of the leading exponents of Norwegian music, and an old family friend, violinist Ole Bull. Grieg was 21 and enjoyed the colorful Bull with his stories of Norwegian pride.

From the fall of that year until the winter of 1865, Grieg stayed in Copenhagen, rooming with a young composer named Rikard Nordraak. Nordraak, all of 22 when Grieg met him, was at the forefront of the push to begin a Norwegian national school of music. The two became the dynamic duo of Norwegian music, forming Euterpe, a society that promoted Scandinavian music. Grieg was changed by the experience, composing one of his first pieces to use Norwegian folk music-the Humoresque for piano, Op. 6. But their plans were put on hold. Nordraak was gravely ill, and in 1866, he died. Grieg needed to regroup, and he set off for Rome. When he returned home, he was ready to continue what Nordraak had started. Grieg helped launch a Norwegian Academy of Music which opened its doors in 1867, and he completed his first set of Lyric Pieces for piano in that same year. The Lyric Pieces are another symbol of the nationalism that had infiltrated Grieg's music. The pieces have titles like Norsk (Norwegian), Folkevise (Folktune), and Faederlandssang (National Song).

Also in 1867, Grieg married his cousin, the singer Nina Hagerup. Their collaboration extended far beyond the confines of home, with the two performing recitals of Grieg's songs. Grieg wrote 140 songs, modeling them after Norwegian folk poetry, and bringing Norwegian culture to bear on the art song. Still in the warmth of his newlywed glow, Grieg wrote his Piano Concerto in A Minor the following year, and at 25, Grieg's reputation as a composer was set. He continued conducting, composing and traveling, and received a pension from the Norwegian government before he was even 30.