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Georg Brandes is usually considered the initiator and major inspirational figure of the Modern Breakthrough in Scandinavia, with Henrik Ibsenâs A Dollâs House (1879) as one of its first and foremost literary outcomes. A prominent example of this narrative is the one presented in Jørgen Knudsenâs multivolume biography of Brandes. This article argues that from a Norwegian perspective, focusing on the developments of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson as well as Ibsen, the modern breakthrough had a multilinear genealogy, partly stretching back long before the appearance of Brandes in the early 1870s. The article details the chronology of the breakthrough and its dynamics, and explores the complex and partly conflictual relationship between Brandes and Ibsen: their starkly contrasted habitus, Brandesâ critical responses to Ibsenâs works, and their very different international trajectories and intellectual networks. After A Dollâs House and Ghosts (1881), Ibsen set out to severe his ties with Brandesâ âliterary partyâ. Brandes on his side did not much appreciated Ibsenâs work through the 1880s, and he played a rather marginal role in Ibsenâs international breakthrough from around 1890.