THE ENIGMATIC ONE

"Near a small forest-fringed hill, at the foot of which a small stream wound through the beautiful meadow, lay a magnificent farmhouse. It belonged to the village's richest man, Ole Aae."

1877

The Enigmatic One (1877) is a love story set in a peasant environment.

The stranger Rolf Andersen settles on one of the homesteads of farmer Ole Aa. He falls in love with Aa's daughter, Rønnaug, and his feelings are reciprocated. But it is only when Rønnaug's father learns that the homesteader's real name is Knud Sonnenfield and that he is wealthy that he gives his blessing to the relationship.

The Mysterious One is strongly influenced by Bjørnson, in both language and theme. Like the other two youth works, Hamsun did not want the novel included in Samlede werker . In a letter to his publisher Harald Grieg many years later, Hamsun writes: "I would not have gone and printed something like 'Et gjensyn', 'Den gætefulle', 'Bjørger' if it had not been to show my siblings every time that I was not to be made fun of."