This movement was portrayed by Robert Simpson as arising from the ashes and ruins left by the conflict in the first movement.; In the first edition of his book he expressed hesitation over analysing this part, feeling that it either requires a very deep analysis, or should be described in the fewest possible words. Jack Lawson, founder and president of The Carl Nielsen Society of Great Britain, commented that in the second movement, the listener "inhabits a world reborn, at first calm but a world which produces new struggles and menacing dangers" and "transports the listener through the depths or above the heights of more standard musical perceptions".
