Just before and after the year 1900, fiction became a central arena for exploring identity, gender, and relationships.

For much of his life, Hamsun traveled and wandered a lot. In his teens, young Knut wandered to Lom, Bodø, Bø in Vesterålen, Kjerringøy and Tromsø, among other places. Later, he went to Kristiania, Copenhagen, Hardanger, twice to America in the 1880s, to Paris in the 1890s, to Finland and the Caucasus around the turn of the century, wandering around domestic hotels and boarding houses until the end of the 1930s. And then to forced stays in both old people's homes and psychiatric clinics.

How is it that Hamsun, who marketed himself as a "modern author" through depictions of modern division and the sensitive human mind in the 1890s, ended up becoming a critic of everything modern, from democracy to lipstick?

Knut Hamsun was a political person throughout his adult life. He was interested and engaged in what was happening in society. He followed the major changes that characterized Norway during the period closely. Through various types of work, travel and socializing, through what he read and what he wrote, Hamsun came to leave his mark on his surroundings. But Hamsun was no politician. He did not participate in ordinary political work. He was poorly acquainted with the political decision-making processes, and his influence on them was small. More than helping to shape modern society, he contributed with a specific view of modern society.

It is no secret that authors' views on literary quality are often intimately connected to their own ambitions and literary program.

About the non-fiction writer Knut Hamsun

I saw the director twice, each time for perhaps fifteen minutes, he gave the impression of being straightforward and without conceit, it was possible to talk to him. He only made the unexpected mistake of sticking a report of my visit to Hitler in my nose, in which I was supposed to have made an anti-Semitic statement. To this day I have not read this report, let alone acknowledged it. Should I make a statement against the Jews? Moreover, I have had too many good friends among them and these friends have been good friends to me. I kindly urge the director to look through my entire production and see if he can find a statement against the Jews. (On Overgrown Paths, 1949)

Today, Hamsun's writing is often called modernist. But this designation is quite problematic, it is only partially correct. It is difficult to find arguments to claim that all of Hamsun's writing is modernist. Aesthetically, most of the novels he wrote in the 20th century represent realistic literature. However, there is little doubt that some of Hamsun's early works are groundbreaking modernist texts. This is especially true of Hunger and Mysteries, and to some extent also Pan and Victoria. Both thematically and narratively, these texts can be compared to the novels that are most often associated with the concept of modernism in literature, that is, the works of authors such as Joyce, Woolf, Kafka and Proust.

The piece of writing by Knut Hamsun that has provoked the most and at the same time been the most difficult to understand is the obituary of Adolf Hitler that the poet published in Aftenposten on May 7, 1945 – the day before Liberation Day. Here the German dictator is hailed as “a warrior for humanity and a preacher of the gospel of justice for all nations”, “a reformist figure of the highest rank”; but he had the misfortune of working “in a time of the most unprecedented brutality, which ultimately brought him down.” The final statement surpasses most in its blind loyalty: “This is how the ordinary Western European dares to look at Adolf Hitler. And we, his close followers, now bow our heads at his death.”

"I'm sitting here at home, that is, away, in my own way."

The importance of place for love in Pan and the Tramp

Knut Hamsun's three major novels from the early 1890s, Hunger, Mysteries and Pan, have, in addition to being considered the pinnacle of his writing, been seen as three positions in an exploration of the individual's position in the field of tension between culture and nature.

In 1917, Henrik Pontoppidan wrote an article about the relationship between Danish literature and the literature from neighboring countries Norway and Sweden.

I am fat with honor and wealth tonight – yes, but I lack the most important thing, the only thing, I lack youth. Whatever I should now – whatever suits me best – I empty my glass for all youth, for the youth of Sweden, for all youth! (From the speech at the Nobel Prize banquet, 1920)

From the moment Hamsun appeared on the literary scene around 1890, he was concerned with the complex and sensitive spiritual life of modern man.

Right now a new and hopeful generation is swirling up from the underground. It is so newly born and innocent, I read about it, but I don't know its name, it could be the same. It is like wandering lights all gathered together, they come, shine a little and disappear. Coming and going, as I came and went. (On Overgrown Paths, 1949)

Childhood and youth: But it was the children in all sorts of blue and red and yellow and black and gray clothes that dominated. There were perhaps twenty of them, beautiful children, mostly little girls, some of them big and already in love, they walked with the big boys. A daughter of the pharmacist was surrounded, she sat on a box and had a reception. (Ringen sulttet, 1936)

The Orientals seem to me to stand high in ethical wisdom. They were from ancient times the happy possessors of contentment with life, they smiled at the restless antics of the Occidentals and bowed their heads in contemplative calm, they had enough of their own. ("Festina lente", 1928)

Thus, the small town also has its greats, its solid houses with fine sons and daughters, its constancy and authority. And the small town is concerned with its greats and follows them with interest, the good small town people basically look after their own well-being thereby, they live under the shelter of power and thrive under it, that is how it should be. (The Women at the Fountain, 1920)

He knew he had his large congregation in the city, Kristiania could not exist without him, there he was in his element! What importance did it have then that a couple of Trøndere or a handful of Totninger resigned from his magazine? Other readers came instead, people whose innermost political opinions he had just affected by his changed attitude. Yes, he had weathered bigger storms. And he questioned Leporello daily about the city's attitude to the issues: But what does the city think? What do they say in Grand? (Editor Lynge, 1893)