Knut Hamsun

Categories: 1859 births | 1952 deaths | Nobel Prize in Literature winners | Norwegian writers | Norwegian novelists

Knut Hamsun (born August 4, 1859, died February 19, 1952) was a leading Norwegian author and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.

Life

Knut Hamsun was born as Knud Pedersen in Lom in Gudbrandsdalen. He was the fourth son of Peder Pedersen and Tora Olsdatter (Garmostrædet). He grew up in poverty in Hamarøy in Nordland. At seventeen, he became an apprentice to a ropemaker, and at about the same time he started to write. He spent several years in America, travelling and working at various jobs, and published his impressions under the title Fra det moderne Amerikas Aandsliv (1889). In 1898, Hamsun married Bergliot Goepfert (née Bech), but the marriage ended in 1906. Hamsun then married Marie Andersen (born in 1881) in 1909 and she would be his companion until the end of his life. She wrote about their life together in her two memoirs. Marie was a young and promising actress when she met Hamsun, but she ended her career and travelled with him to Hamarøy. They bought a farm, the idea being "to earn their living as farmers, with his writing providing some additional income". However, after a few years, they decided to move south, to Larvik. In 1918, the couple bought Nørholm, an old and somewhat dilapidated manor house between Lillesand and Grimstad. The main residence was restored and redecorated. Here Hamsun could occupy himself writing undisturbed, although he often travelled to write in other cities and places (preferably in spartan housing).

Knut Hamsun died in his home at Nørholm.

Work

Hamsun first received wide acclaim with his 1890 novel Hunger (Sult). The semi-autobiographical work described a young writer's descent into near madness as a result of hunger and poverty. To many, the novel presaged the writings of Franz Kafka and other twentieth-century novelists with its internal monologue and bizarre logic. Other important works by Hamsun include Pan, Mysteries, and The Growth of the Soil. Hamsun received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1920. A fifteen-volume edition of his complete works was published in 1954.

Political sympathies

Hamsun was a prominent advocate of Germany and German culture, as well as a rhetorical opponent of British imperialism and Soviet Russia, and he supported Germany both during the First and the Second World War. Despite his immense popularity in Norway and around the world, Hamsun's reputation for a time waned considerably because of his support of Vidkun Quisling's National Socialist government. Following a meeting with Joseph Goebbels in 1943, he sent Goebbels his Nobel Prize medal as a gift. Hamsun also met with Adolf Hitler and tried to have him remove Josef Terboven from the position of Reichskommissar of Norway.

After Hitler's death, Hamsun wrote some commemorative but also ironic words in the leading Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, describing him as a "warrior for mankind" but also a "man of small stature". It has been argued that his "sympathies" were those of a country that had been occupied. He sometimes used his status as a man of fame to improve the conditions of his area during the occupation. After the war, he was confined for several months in a psychiatric hospital. In 1948 he was fined 325,000 kroner for collaboration, but cleared of any direct Nazi-affiliation. Hamsun himself wrote about this experience in the 1949 book, On Overgrown Paths. The Danish author Thorkild Hansen investigated the trial and wrote the book The Process against Hamsun (1978), which created a storm in Norway. Among other things Hansen stated: "If you want to meet idiots, go to Norway", since he felt that treating an old man like that was outrageous. In 1996 the Swedish director Jan Troell based the movie Hamsun on Hansen's book. In Hamsun, the actor Max von Sydow plays Knut Hamsun.

Bibliography

Books about Hamsun

• Ferguson, Robert. Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York: 1987. ISBN 0374520933
• Humpal, Martin. The Roots of Modernist Narrative: Knut Hamsun's Novels Hunger, Mysteries and Pan International Specialized Book Services. 1999 ISBN 8256011785
• Kolloen, Ingar Sletten. Svermeren 2003 Biography
• Kolloen, Ingar Sletten. Erobreren 2004 Biography

External links

• Knut Hamsun Online
• Biography from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Knut Hamsun as nobel prize laureate
• Biography and bibliography
• Works by Knut Hamsun at Project Gutenbergcs:Knut Hamsun

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