IN FAIRYLAND

"We will be in St. Petersburg in September. I am going on a state scholarship to travel to the Caucasus, to the Orient, Persia, Turkey. We have come from Finland, where we have lived for a year. On nineteen marshy islands, Peter the Great built a city exactly two hundred years ago. The Neva pierces the city everywhere, it is strangely torn apart, piecemeal, and it is strangely mixed: magnificent Western European barracks teem with Byzantine domed buildings and delightful mud houses." "I am sitting here and I am at home, that is, away, that is, in my own way. (In Wonderland, 1903)"

1903

In September 1899, Knut Hamsun made a journey from Finland through Russia and the Caucasus to Turkey with his wife Bergljot. The journey resulted in the subjective travelogue In Wonderland. Experiences and Dreams in the Caucasus (1903).

The book is written in a light and humorous style, interspersed with beautiful, lyrical nature sequences. Hamsun is unwaveringly positive in his encounter with the East and draws similarities between the nature of the East and his own Nordland. Like the drama Queen Tamara (1903), In Wonderland is also very positive and open-minded in its presentation of Muslim faith and values.

Hamsun later referred to the journey to the Caucasus as "the only journey I have made in my life" and for a long time believed that the book was the best thing he had ever written.