CHRISTIANIA

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)

Kristiania was the name of the capital of Norway until 1924. Hamsun set the plot of three of his novels in Kristiania, namely Hunger (1890), Editor Lynge and New Earth (both 1893).

Kristiania represents the big city in the author's work, and especially in Hunger the use of the big city links the novel to modernism. For the other two novels the use of Kristiania is more a part of the attempt to write trend-setting literature with recognizable characters and environment.

Hamsun had an ambivalent relationship with Kristiania, or Oslo, as the city was called from 1925. Apart from a longer stay from November 1926 to April 1927 where the Hamsun couple both underwent psychoanalysis, Knut Hamsun never lived in Oslo for anything more than short periods.