some years later, he decided to have it staged and commissioned edvard grieg to write the music for it. [music] ibsen developed the poetic epic play on an actual character in norwegian folklore who had lived about 100 years earlier. the setting is strongly norwegian: brooding skies, mountain and valley, fjord and forest. in peer gynt, ibsen weaves folktale and fantasy, developing a new picture of emerging man and the problem of heroism in the modern age. peer, like other great literary epic heroes such as beowulf, siegfried, roland and faust, reflects a universal human condition: the search for identity and the mortal consequences of his actions. but peer is a more complex and introspective hero. while on the one hand he is an imaginative storyteller, he is also a liar. though he recognizes the good and the ideal, he consistently opts for evil and compromise. when there is a shipwreck, peer determines that the cook's life is expendable and saves himself. the character of peer gynt marks a critical change in the concept of an epic hero and signifies the advent of an anti-hero concept. p