Editing Henrik Ibsen (section)

===Knud Ibsen's marriage to Marichen Altenburg===

[[File:Altenburggården i Skien.jpg|thumb|The roof and one of the windows of Altenburggården can be seen in the middle of the picture. Altenburggården was Marichen Altenburg's childhood home, and Henrik Ibsen lived there aged 3–8.]]
[[File:Venstoep Skien.jpg|thumb|Venstøp outside Skien, originally the Ibsen family's summer house, where they lived permanently 1836–1843. It was a reasonably large farm with large, representative buildings.]]
In 1825, Henrik's father Knud acquired the burghership of Skien and established an independent business as a timber and luxury goods merchant there, with his younger brother, Christopher Blom Paus, then aged 15, as his apprentice. The two brothers moved into the Stockmanngården building, where they rented a part of the building and lived with a maid. On the first floor the brothers sold foreign wines and a variety of luxury items, while also engaging in wholesale export of timber in cooperation with their first cousin Diderik von Cappelen (1795–1866). On 1 December 1825, Knud married his stepfather's niece Marichen, who then moved in with them. Henrik was born there in 1828. In 1830, Marichen's mother Hedevig left Altenburggården and her properties and business ventures to her son-in-law Knud, and the Ibsen family moved to Marichen's childhood home in 1831. During the 1820s and 1830s, Knud was a wealthy young merchant in Skien, and he was the city's 16th largest taxpayer in 1833.<ref name="Haave" />

Older Ibsen scholars have claimed that Henrik Ibsen was fascinated by his parents' "strange, almost incestuous marriage", and he would treat the subject of incestuous relationships in several plays, notably in his masterpiece ''[[Rosmersholm]]''.<ref>Ferguson p. 280</ref> On the other hand, [[Jørgen Haave]] points out that his parents' close relationship was not that unusual among the Skien elite.<ref name="Haave">{{cite book |last=Haave |first=Jørgen |author-link=Jørgen Haave |year=2017 |title=[[The Ibsen Family|Familien Ibsen]] |publisher= Museumsforlaget|isbn=9788283050455}}</ref>