Vildanden

Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck follows the Ekdal household in a Norwegian town, where a husband, wife, daughter and the family's aging father live under one roof. Their closeness hides strains that have built up over years, and the household's fragile calm is tested when an outsider arrives with a demanding sense of honesty. The play is set in a cramped domestic world of bourgeois appearances, self-deception and old debts.

The central figures are Hjalmar Ekdal, a photographer who dreams of a great invention, his wife Gina, their daughter Hedvig, and Hjalmar's father, a former army lieutenant who has lost his standing. Gregers Werle, a former schoolmate of Hjalmar's, returns to the town with his own ideas about what people owe one another. A loft where the family keeps a wild duck becomes a symbol of the wider questions the play raises.

Written in five acts, the drama is a study of family life, idealism and the role of illusion in keeping people going. It is widely read in literature courses and remains a standard text for readers of modern theatre.