{"product_id":"2940013117280","title":"Knut Hamsun","description":"Contents\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Wanderer:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   Early Life in Norway                           3\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   From the Wheatfields to the Fishing Banks     20\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   The Author of _Hunger_                        32\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Poet:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   His Own Hero                                  45\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   The Hero and the Heroine                      58\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   God in Nature                                 76\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   With Muted Strings                            89\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   The Literary Artist                          104\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Citizen:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   Holding Up the Mirror to His Generation      119\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   Growth of the Soil                           148\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   The Wanderer Arrived                         163\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePortraits\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Knut Hamsun                         _Frontispiece_\u003cbr\u003e   Photo by Wilse\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hamsun as a Young Man                           38\u003cbr\u003e   From a drawing by Erik Werenskiold\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Knut Hamsun                                     86\u003cbr\u003e   From a painting by Henrik Lund\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hamsun and His Family                          134\u003cbr\u003e   Photo by Wilse\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE WANDERER\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEARLY LIFE IN NORWAY\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKnut Hamsun has become identified in our minds with the lonely figure\u003cbr\u003ethat recurs again and again in his earlier books, the Wanderer who is\u003cbr\u003efor ever outside of organized society and for ever pays the penalty\u003cbr\u003eof being different from the crowd and unable to conform to its\u003cbr\u003estandards. That this lonely creature is really himself in a certain\u003cbr\u003eperiod of his life we know from the testimony of his own works.\u003cbr\u003eYet this vagabond and iconoclast sprang from the most conservative\u003cbr\u003estock of Norway. He is the descendant of an old peasant family in\u003cbr\u003eGudbrandsdalen, one of the interior mountain valleys in the heart of\u003cbr\u003ethe country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGudbrandsdalen is a region of proud historical traditions. There,\u003cbr\u003enine centuries ago, King Saint Olaf struggled to foist the new\u003cbr\u003ereligion on a stiff-necked race of pagans, and not far from Hamsun's\u003cbr\u003ebirthplace one of the oldest churches in Norway proclaimed his\u003cbr\u003evictory. There, six centuries ago, the Scotch invader Sinclair was\u003cbr\u003eannihilated with all his force when \"the peasants of Vaage and Lesje\u003cbr\u003eand Lom their whetted axes shouldered,\" as the ballad tells us, and\u003cbr\u003ethe story is still cherished, still repeated to every traveller. In\u003cbr\u003ethis as in other secluded valleys in Norway a peasant aristocracy\u003cbr\u003edeveloped, a hard, strong race, intensely proud of its family and\u003cbr\u003eland, looking on any one who had been less than three generations in\u003cbr\u003ethe neighborhood as an interloper, and scorning the classes of people\u003cbr\u003ewho were not rooted to the soil by inherited homesteads. For the\u003cbr\u003eNorwegian roving blood is strangely tempered by a passionate\u003cbr\u003eattachment to inherited land, a trait that is perhaps a salutary\u003cbr\u003esafeguard against the national restlessness. Artistic handicrafts\u003cbr\u003eflourished in the valley. In the Open Air Museum at Lillehammer we\u003cbr\u003emay see them even now, marvellous creations of hammered iron,\u003cbr\u003etapestries picturing scenes from the Bible, wood carvings in mellow\u003cbr\u003ecolors and with a Renaissance exuberance of design overflowing even\u003cbr\u003ethe commonest kitchen utensils, all of a rich yet disciplined beauty\u003cbr\u003eas if built on age-old artistic traditions and standards.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHamsun counted among his forefathers many of the artistic craftsmen\u003cbr\u003ewho set their stamp of culture upon their community. His father's\u003cbr\u003efather was a worker in metals. The arts did not bring wealth to those\u003cbr\u003ewho practised them, however, and his parents at the time of his birth\u003cbr\u003ewere in straitened circumstances. He was born, August 4, 1859, in\u003cbr\u003eLom, in one of the small well-weathered houses which look so bleak\u003cbr\u003eand insignificant against the mighty Gudbrandsdalen uplands. When he\u003cbr\u003ewas four years old his family removed to the Lofoten Islands,\u003cbr\u003eNordland, in an effort to better their fortunes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo strains may be traced in Knut Hamsun's personality. By virtue of\u003cbr\u003ehis blood and birth he had his roots in a community characterized by\u003cbr\u003ean unusually firm and solid culture based on centuries of tradition,\u003cbr\u003eand this heritage we shall find coming out in him more and more in\u003cbr\u003ehis later years. The moralist and preacher who wrote \"Growth of the\u003cbr\u003eSoil\" is a true scion of the best old peasant stock. Through the\u003cbr\u003eimpressions of his childhood and early youth he became affiliated\u003cbr\u003ewith the volatile race of Nordland, a people as alien from the\u003cbr\u003eheavier inland peasant as if they lived on different continents. The\u003cbr\u003efishermen who play with death for the wealth of the sea and depend\u003cbr\u003efor their livelihood on the caprices of nature do not easily harden\u003cbr\u003einto traditional moulds.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47165123592432,"sku":"2940013117280","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013117280_p0.jpg?v=1763577015","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013117280","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}