Lom/Vågå – The Growth of the Soil (Markens grøde)
The Growth of the Soil (1917) is the novel which forms the background for the national celebration taking place in Lom/Vågå in the valley of Gudbrandsdalen on 1 August 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
From Hamsun’s work on Growth of the Soil. Fragment with two alternative titles. Courtesy of the National Library of Norway (Nasjonalbiblioteket). (Click on illustration for enlargement.)
In the novel The Growth of the Soil, Knut Hamsun gave a highly memorable literary depiction of a reactionary utopia, an apologia for the earth, nature and agriculture at the dawn of the 20th century when industrialisation and urbanisation were putting traditional rural society under pressure. We meet the novel’s lumbering backwoods heroes as outsiders in their time, yet fitting perfectly with the land. The author presents them as models for a time which has passed and simultaneously allows us to smile both at and with them as we witness their struggles and their inelegant courtship.
The reactionary aspects of Hamsun’s beliefs can be studied from a political angle in his articles, letters and contributions to newspapers; in The Growth of the Soil we see him creating a dream of a society which had no future.
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Per Thomas Andersen is Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Oslo.
The Growth of the Soil. Fragment. Courtesy of Nasjonalbiblioteket. (Click on illustration for enlargement.)
The National Commemorative Event in Lom/Vågå 1 August: "Oh, Isak!".
Pictures from the event "Oh, Isak!" and from the rest of the programme in Lom and Vågå. (Text in Norwegian only)
