Comprehensive information and links about Knut Hamsun

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

table in Lom in Gudbrandsdal. 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 (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.

). 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 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 of Norway.

After Hitler's death, Hamsun wrote some commemorative but also ironic words in the leading Norwegian newspaper , 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, (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 has a major article by Jeffrey Frank. It seems to rely on the Ingar Kolloen biography (two volumes, reportedly aggregating about 1000 pages). In English, Hamsun was never popular and remains largely unknown. His infamous audience with Adolf Hitler is recorded to have been mostly him complaining about the Nazi depredations against Norwegians. At this time he was a largely-deaf old man in his 80s. The 21st century consensus puts him in the forefront of modernists, in the William Faulkner and Franz Kafka mode.