This article discusses H. Pontoppidan’s social-psychological and philosophical novel at the turn of the 20th century. It is argued that Pontoppidan’s aesthetics were similar to the beliefs of the Modern Breakthrough adherents, he shared Georg Brandes’ anticlerical views and debated grundtvigianisme in The Promised Land (1891–1895), his Lucky Per (1898–1904), like H. Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, exposed his searches for the essence of human existence.