EVEN ARNTZEN: HAMSUNS WALKER
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.
In other words, it is not surprising that the wanderer is a recurring symbolic figure in much of Knut Hamsun's writing. He is already present in Hamsun's debut novel The Mysterious One (1877); the rich man's son Knud Sonnenfield has taken on the false identity of a pauper "Rolf Andersen" and fled the city and into the countryside, before, towards the end of the novel, he returns to the city. In Hamsun's next novel, Bjørger (1878), we become acquainted with a distinct wanderer through the protagonist Bjørger's constant forays into natural space. The nameless hero of Hunger in Hamsun's actual debut novel, Hunger (1890), is also very much a wanderer. This is probably most clearly embodied in his feverish and labyrinthine street wanderings in Kristiania, but the wandering motif is also present through the fact that the hero of Hunger is someone who comes from outside, that is, a visitor, a wanderer. And it is the (northern) dialect that reveals him:
"Are you a stranger here?" he said.
Yes.
[…] By the way, he had immediately heard that I was a stranger; there was something in my tone that told him so.
The peculiar kven (a term used for a person of Norwegian and Finnish descent) Johan Nilsen Nagel in Mysterier (1892) uses the term “wanderer” twice about himself, but then with the adverb “stanset” in front. This adverb, “stanset”, of course refers both to Nagel’s outsider position and his sense of alienation, but probably first and foremost to his fundamental feeling that his life has come to a standstill, perhaps also to the fact that his drive and zest for life are, if not gone, then at least reduced.
Lieutenant Thomas Glahn in Pan (1894) also has obvious wanderer traits. Firstly, he has renounced his military career (a career associated with civilization, urbanity) and traveled north, into nature and the forests of Nordland, in desperate search for love, authenticity and the intoxication of the atmosphere. Secondly, when this feverish search fails and the dream of love brutally breaks, he wanders far east, all the way from Nordland to the Orient, to the Indian forests, where he perishes in alcohol and disillusionment.
The miller's son, Johannes, in Victoria (1898), also has much of the typical Hamsunian wanderer character about him. Not only does he leave his hometown and go to the city and eventually also abroad (before returning to his hometown), but he is also – like both the Hunger hero, Glahn, and to a certain extent Nagel – also a misfit poet and a victim of unhappy love. Much of the same can be said of the title character in the verse drama Munken Vendt (1902). Like former lieutenant Thomas Glahn, the former theology student Munken Vendt has also broken with his civilized career and sought north to the forests of Nordland, where, in a state of nervous exhaustion, he acts as a poet and womanizer, a drunkard and a wild man – with tragic consequences.
The very fascinating book In Fairyland (1903) is based to some extent on the journey Hamsun made with his first wife from St. Petersburg to Batum on the Black Sea in the autumn of 1899. But only to some extent; the first edition had the subtitle "Experienced and Dreamed in the Caucasus", and it cannot be emphasized enough that this text is as much "dreamed" as "experienced", meaning that it predominantly, in many places, veers very far towards fiction. And here it is none other than the author Hamsun himself who appears as a wanderer and author figure and thrill-seeking rider in the night. It is worth noting how the eastern "fairyland" strangely conjures up a whole series of images of the western "fairyland", that is, the Nordland of his childhood and the Hamarøy of his childhood: "There is no one, no thing in the world like being away from everything! I think further. I remember that from my childhood when I went herding the cattle at home."
In the so-called Wanderer trilogy – Under the Autumn Star (1906), A Wanderer Playing with a Mute (1909), The Last Joy (1912) – Hamsun takes on his old name, Knut Pedersen. Common to all three novels is much of the same pattern that we see in both Glahn and the verse drama The Monk Turned: a departure from the urban space and a search into nature. The first two of the Wanderer books are set in the Eastern Norway/Kongberg region, but in the last of them Knut Pedersen goes all the way north to the forests of Nordland. A triggering factor for the vagabondage in all three Wanderer books seems to be Knut Pedersen's nervous weakness: "Yes, I still have my neurasthenia", it says in Under the Autumn Star . And in A Wanderer Playing with a Mute : "[…] it is my nerves". Likewise in The Last Joy : "And the neurasthenia […] follows me".
In the double novel Benoni and Rosa (both 1908) we find a number of wanderer characters, including Svend Vekter, Nikolai Arentsen, Gilbert Lapp, Edvarda, but especially Munken Vendt and the first-person narrator in Rosa, student Parelius: "My errand was that I had an acquaintance and comrade in these countries and his name was Munken Vendt; the two of us had agreed to join forces on a journey."
In a certain sense, Thobias Homengraa – in Barn av tiden (1913) and Segelfoss by (1915) – can be considered a wanderer: the poor boy from Segelfoss who returns to his hometown as a rich man from the big world and starts a mill and other large-scale activities. But there is probably another figure who is more of a typical Hamsunian wanderer, namely the frivolous telegrapher Baardsen. Towards the end of Barn av tiden, the broad-shouldered Baardsen comes waddling into the Hamsunian arena. It is worth noting that Baardsen repeatedly appears as an expression of an existential-philosophical pessimism and tragic consciousness of life that is in line with Schopenhauer's philosophy, which Hamsun was clearly influenced by.
Also, sheriff Geissler in Markens grøde (1917) is a wandering character, as he wanders here and there, back and forth to Sellanraa, around up in the mountains, to Sweden, to Trondheim. Moreover, there are several features of Geissler that make it plausible to see him, at least in part, as a mouthpiece for Hamsun himself: "I am something, I am the fog, I am here and there, I swim, sometimes I am rain in a dry place." Geissler also indicates that he, like Hamsun himself, is from Garmo in Lom: "I remember from the age of eighteen: I stood swaying on the barn bridge at Oppigard Garmo in Lom and smelled a certain smell. I still smell that smell."
The lustful liar August in the August trilogy – Landstrykere (1927), August (1930), Men livet lever (1933) – is of course a distinctly wandering figure, as he is on the prowl, on land and at sea, both in Northern Norway, Europe and America. There is no doubt that Hamsun has an extremely ambiguous attitude towards the fantastic August; on the one hand he acts like a schoolmaster, moralizing and condemning, on the other generous, embracing and friendly. But perhaps not so strange, since the mysterious, fabulating, restless and fiction-creating August can be interpreted as a grotesque split-off of the poet Hamsun personally.
With Martin from Kløttran on Hamarøy ( On Overgrown Paths , 1949), Hamsun creates both his last wanderer and his very last fictional person:
But suddenly I heard him use a real salty expression: Don't regret it!
A memory passed through me at these simple words, my heart heard them. Are you from Nordland? I asked.
"Oh, yes," he said. "But you don't know me."
It is very likely to perceive Martin as a kind of distorted mirror image of Hamsun himself, the parallels are many: Like Hamsun, Martin is a wanderer from Hamarøy who has gone astray, Martin also speaks in gatherings, he also writes stories about Nordland and a girl named Alvilde (who appears in Hamsun's poem cycle "Feberdikte"), they share a writing cave in the forest, but first and foremost they share a deep sense of belonging and identification by virtue of their common homeland, of being from Nordland and Hamarøy.
What does the wanderer motif contain , literary and most profoundly? Why do so many of Hamsun's characters wander to such an extent as they actually do?
On a completely literal level, the wanderer motif of course denotes a physical and geographical journey, but this journey always reflects a spiritual and mental quest, sometimes also a mental development and a mental realization. But again: What are Hamsun's wanderers really wandering towards, what is the driving force, what is the goal? Is it about a richer realization, more knowledge, authenticity, origin, existential peace and belonging, the search for one's own identity, homeland and common cohesion? Yes, to a certain extent all of this, but just as much it is about a detachment, an unconditional break from everything called homeland, a total liberation from the existing – not infrequently in pantheistic intoxication and with an underlying artistic motivation. With some justification, one can say that many of Hamsun's wanderers are alienated outsiders, alienated both from their surroundings, from human civilization and not least from themselves, but it is precisely through the walk, which often takes place in a natural space often accompanied by artistic "activity", that a certain fullness of being is achieved.
In summary, one can say that many of Hamsun's wandering figures definitely have a touch of his own skin. They are often nervous and full of "neurasthenia", typical artist natures, crammed with sensibility, intensity of life and erotic appetite, many are semi-anarchistic in their attitude to life, unstable dreamers and complainers, in opposition to most established truths and systems of power.
And a great many are from Northern Norway, or otherwise have an affirmative or fateful relationship with the region.
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Even Arntzen is an associate professor at the University of Tromsø, a central figure in the Hamsun group at the university and head of the Hamsun Society. He has written and edited a number of Hamsun publications.
