This study examines the intellectual campaigns that transformed the Christiania Theatre from a Danish stage into the forerunner of Norway’s National Theatre. It focuses on the culture wars between the Norwegian nationalists and the so-called Danomanians in the 1830s; the promotion of the Hegelian and national romantic cultural-agenda in the 1840s and 1850s; Bjørnson’s and Ibsen’s rejection of both radical nationalism and the entrenched Danishness of the theater in the 1850s; and Bjørnson’s ambitious attempt to reform the theater in the mid-1860s.