Grimstad – On Overgrown Paths (På gjengrodde stier)
On Overgrown Paths (1949) was written at Nørholm, Knut and Marie Hamsun’s home outside the town of Grimstad. It was the starting point for the last of the four national Hamsun commemorations which took place in September 2009. Below is a brief description by Professor Per Thomas Andersen of the position of the work in the literary landscape.
by Per Thomas Andersen
With On Overgrown Paths Knut Hamsun created not just a plea of defence throwing light on the court case against him after the war; the text also remains one of the most remarkable conjunctions of non-fiction and fiction in Norwegian literature. Such conjunctions appear to be of greater interest to authors, readers and researchers than ever before. In the text, Hamsun alternates between autobiographical information and expressions of concrete opinions, on the one hand, and stories and a highly literary use of props, not least ‘wayfarer props’ such as shoes, a walking stick, penknife etc. on the other. The relationship between fact and fiction originating in the author’s own life makes the work an interesting precursor to a contemporary hybrid genre often referred to as performative biography.
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Per Thomas Andersen is Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Oslo.
From Knut Hamsun's manuscript of On Overgrown Paths (click on illustrations for enlargement):
 On Overgrown Paths. First page. Courtesy of the National Library of Norway. |
 On Overgrown Paths. Second page. Courtesy of the National Library of Norway. |
 On Overgrown Paths. Penultimate page. Courtesy of the National Library of Norway. |
 On Overgrown Paths. Final page. Courtesy of the National Library of Norway. |
The whole manuscript of On Overgrown Paths (in Norwegian: Paa gjengrodde Stier).
Trond Haugen: On Overgrown paths – summary
