In Haugtussa and the 19 norske Folkeviser, landscape emerges in Grieg's music as an essentially nostalgic presence. It is concerned, above all, with the evocation of space and distance, and with the suspension of regular musical time, so that it dwells ultimately on a sense of hollowness, isolation and loss. This can be read as a metaphor for Grieg's own creative conditition, particularly his sense of alienation from perceived mainstream centres of musical progress. But it is more deeply concerned with a powerful sense of regionality, embodied both in the dialect language forms that were synthesised by landsmål and in the locations associated with particular tunes or poems. As argued in the preceding chapter, Grieg's work becomes a form of Heimatkunst, dedicated to the creation and promotion of a particular regional identity in music, a process that was part of a broader cultural-political project in Norway at the end of the nineteenth century. But landscape in Grieg's music can also be heard as a form of structural discourse, as a means of organising specific musical gestures and events such as nature sounds, folk songs and lures. The more abstract aspect of Grieg's work, involving the systematic use of register, motivic cells and voice-leading progressions, cuts against the associative aspects of landscape. Landscape therefore highlights a creative tension in Grieg's music, between its representational function (particularly the evocation of visual modes of perception) and its structural character.